The Blue Angels

The-Blue-Angels
The Blue Angels

In reference to the Navy’s flight team, “The Blue Angels,” a non-fiction IMAX film aims to present the traditional audiences with something more than that. This can be explained in two ways.

First, from an angle of the technology used: ‘The Blue Angels’, as stated by Cineworld’s website, ‘was held on Sony’s Venice 2 IMAX digital devices, offering the IMAX exclusive EAR where it applied throughout the film’.

Second, this is much, and perhaps quite exclusively, an ‘entertainment’ ‘sequel’ that is more a showcase of new inventions and people who became professionals than it is about the Blue Angels people.

The film depicts lots of low-angle ‘heroic ‘ shots of the pilots, over-the-shoulder shots captured with a Steadicam as the pilots operate through the long corridors dominated by moving shots away from the camera and back towards the camera. It is the cameras being used during the slow-motion sequences of the pilots walking towards the planes, the ‘big brothers’ images of putting on and taking off sunglasses, and ‘power walks’ often seen in many Hollywood movies among other things.

This is just a promotional tool for The Blue Angels, the Navy, planes, the military in general, and “the American dream” ideology. For that matter, it is true of ‘Top Gun’ movies, the first of which was memorably referred to by New Yorker critic Pauline Kael as ‘such a poster, which is not about recruiting but is about being a poster’ (the ‘top gun’ type of formations seen in these films are taken from The Blue Angels, by the way, and what about this film one of the producers is Glen Powell, the co-star of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’).

And the flying itself? And the filming of it? It’s an impressive performance from a technical standpoint. So framed without surprise, far less romantic (for sure almost no one hoped that), but impressive. And having been a child, I saw the Blue Angels several times and thought how in the world airplanes can be so big and so close to each other, flying several hundred miles per hour. But they did it. They do it here again during the IMAX shots, which seemed like cameras that were instrumented on the outside and the cockpits of several aircraft.

Narratives that provide a sense of structure are hence constructed, again, with the help of the Blue Angels members, and this part contributes to Paul Crowder’s work as a co-editor of the movie. His attention is probably the most targeted towards the figure of the Commanding Officer and Flight Leader aka “Boss” a former member of the Angels and current Deputy Commander of Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5 Captain Brian Kesselring who remarks: “My feeling is, you should never feel too comfortable in the suit.”

He feels that, while Brian Kesselring is a portrait himself in the movie, he is accompanied by other squadron members who do not remain absent from the screen. There is a sequence that does touch on how the family and marriage dynamic of the pilots most of whom are away for about 300 days in a calendar year is not put in jeopardy by affairs, divorces and so, but is predominantly absent (and the Navy wouldn’t have let it in the first place). The production order was such a multidisciplinary prays that they are fortunate enough to touch base with the Blue Angels and see their very first woman pilot Amanda Lee being inducted.

But it is not the case that: at the end of this production the most perfect stars become the planes and yes even though the filmmakers are quick to remind you about human stories the film intends to focus on the aerial light works which are what the audiences came to see and film does not miss out on this fact.

It’s true that the more extended shots are rare. At first glance, this leads one to wonder whether this makes any sense. To attempt being an IMAX director/producer is one thing, but more daunting is the role of overseeing a watching experience, with high-range surround-sound systems. How about giving the viewer a chance to observe a “scissors cross”, a “delta breakout,” or a “loop break cross” from one of the fliers waiting long enough for audiences to feel pressure from the G forces?

This, combined with the fact that the picture is very sharp (it was made by Jessica Young, Lance Benson, and Michael Fitzmaurice) and the airplane dived, climbed, and rolled, allows one to be impressed with the totality as well. There’s also strong emotion associated with the pilots remembering when they first had the call. It’s about being part of a very exclusive series called the 260, which has only been inducted since its founding in 1946.

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