Movie makers used artistic license
10/10
Author: madmatt7800 from Winston-Salem, NC
2 October 2005
Several things must be said here, the most important being the artistic thought processes of telling a story on the screen. It has been said Flight of the Phoenix has reality flaws, engineering flaws, and (the most "interesting" one) characterization flaws.This movie is based on a novel - a work of fiction. The fun thing about writing, producing, directing, and acting out a film like this is that you can "bend the rules" a bit to tell your story - otherwise known as using artistic license. Many critics don't seem to understand what that means.
A sandstorm of the magnitude that was depicted in the film would have definitely brought the plane down, smashing it into tiny pieces. That is a fact of reality. However, if you stuck with this then you'd have no movie. The film would be over, because all the characters would be dead. Therefore, the filmmakers chose to (very well) crash the plane dramtically and have most of the passengers survive. Speaking of the sandstorm, yes, it was huge, and yes, it was computer-generated, and no, I did not even think about that when I watched the movie. All I could do was get sucked into the action and story, watching this tiny plane get sucked down by this bigger-than-life force of nature.
Building a new plane out of a wrecked one is certainly a far-fetched idea, and from an engineering standpoint is ridiculous. That's the hook that gets you into the story, you see. It's the whole "They can't do that, can they" thing that keeps suspense, along with their struggles with surviving with each other and with limited food and water. These are good things that make for a stress-filled (in a good way) film.
The acting in this film isn't Oscar-winning, but it is real - real characters put together in an unbelievable situation. The struggle with the characters, as well as with a lot of the rest of the film, I think, comes when people who have seen the Jimmy Stewart version try to compare it, as if the new filmmakers were going to do a shot-by-shot, line-by-line recreation. No, this film is a re-interpretation of the story, and Dennis Quaid is NOT James Stewart. All of the characters have been reinterpreted, each actor giving a new, personal spin on the story. It's a different pilot, a different engineer, and a different passenger list. Some names might stay the same, but that's about it.
The screenwriters chose, out of their rights as artists, to rework and update an old story, and they did quite well. I have not seen the 1965 Phoenix, as I'm sure most of the contemporary movie-going public has not, so there's nothing for me to "compare" the new film to. The movie makers succeeded in what they set out to do - bring the story of the Flight of the Phoenix to a new generation of film audiences. The problems only come if you try to compare it to the old one.
