New film, “Battle over Britain”

[Timelord]

Saw a review today of a new film coming to the cinema: “Battle over Britain”. From the same team that did “Lancaster Skies” so I look forward to the informed opinions of PPruners. From the trailer the flying looks OK but the haircuts less so!

[reynoldsno1]

Not a Hurricane in sight ...

[VM325]

There's a trailer...
https://youtu.be/hJwprAzF0X8?si=aSXdQuuoNk7tAPVf

[VM325]

And a review in the Guardian.. (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/27/battle-over-britain-review-spitfires-tin-hat-production)

This unabashedly retro war story, set over 24 hours in August 1940, strips the action down to the rivets with a small cast and a handful of locations, including the cockpits of several Spitfire planes (or perhaps one plane used to stand in for several). You’d think it might have cost no more than a tin of biscuits and few packets of tea to make – except that the aerial photography, never a cheap component, looks authentic and presumably special effects were required to create the dogfights in which our heroic fly-boys duke it out in the skies against the Luftwaffe.

Directed by Callum Burn and co-written by him and his father Andrew, it’s of a piece with the previous features from their Lincolnshire production company Tin Hat (http://www.tinhatproductions.com/), specialists in second world war tales of heroism and aerial derring-do. Given the numbers of actual veterans and survivors of the conflict are swiftly dwindling now, you have to wonder how much interest is out there to make this tiny niche in film production profitable. Presumably, there are enough people who yearn for a simpler time when men were men, women wore boilersuits and everyone was pretty much united in one virtuous common cause.

The slightly dodgy figure here is Nathan Walker (Vin Hawke, good even if the haircut is more 2020s footballer than 1940s pilot), who is obsessed with winning the betting pool on who can shoot down the most Jerries. His cynicism puts him at odds with his fellow pilots, especially Cochrane (Tom Gordon) and wistful Cooper (Micky David) who wants to survive long enough to marry his sweetheart Nancy (Hannah Harris, rocking the aforementioned boilersuit). In between missions up in the air fighting the enemy, the men relax at the dispatch hut near the runway and banter. The ringing of the telephone becomes a frequent augur of death: after each sortie someone won’t come back, or might land just in time to die accompanied by some sentimental music.

One’s lip would have to be stiff as postwar Festival of Britain-era concrete not to find such sacrifices at least a tiny bit moving – at least the first few times, but it does get a bit monotonous. Still, plaudits to the Tin Hat team for keeping the home fires burning for those who served.
Battle Over Britain is released on 1 December in UK cinemas.

[Video Mixdown]

Not a Hurricane in sight ...
Not a real aircraft in sight.

[TURIN]

Not a real aircraft in sight.
I spotted at least one.

[212man]

I’m pretty sure 1940 wasn’t “at the height of the war”. One to miss, anyway, from the trailer.

[tdracer]

Not a Hurricane in sight ...
To be fair, I don't recall seeing an Hurricanes in the classic Battle of Britian and no one seemed to complain...

Aside - while the BoB special effects were not bad for when it was made, I wouldn't mind seeing someone with the talents of a James Cameron take the original BoB and update it with modern special effects (yes, the dreaded CGI) while retaining most of the original action using actual vintage aircraft (if not the exact vintage) and those great actors.

[BEagle]

To be fair, I don't recall seeing an Hurricanes in the classic Battle of Britian and no one seemed to complain....

Try looking harder! Of course there were real Hurricanes in Guy Hamilton's 1969 masterpiece!

[Video Mixdown]

To be fair, I don't recall seeing an Hurricanes in the classic Battle of Britian and no one seemed to complain....
Then you can't have been paying attention.

[VP959]

My late uncle was a Hurricane pilot in WWII, and never missed an opportunity to point out that there were many more Hurricanes than Spitfires involved and that, overall, the Hurricane was the better fighter and made the greater contribution to the outcome. His view was that the only reason the Spitfire got so much more attention was because it was a prettier looking aeroplane and film makers chose to highlight it because of that. I can't dispute his view, the Spitfire is a simply beautiful flying machine to look at. My (very) brief time flying one is a memory that stands out above all others, mostly because the view out over that elliptical wing is simply stunning (even if it does sound like a thousand out of tune tractors idling from inside the cockpit).

[tdracer]

Try looking harder! Of course there were real Hurricanes in Guy Hamilton's 1969 masterpiece!
Ok, Ok, I stand corrected (to be fair I haven't watched in recently). They sure didn't get the focus that the Spit's did...
Still like to see an updated version using modern special effects while retaining the original real-aircraft flying scenes.

[Expatrick]

To be fair, I don't recall seeing an Hurricanes in the classic Battle of Britian and no one seemed to complain...


You missed one of the classic scenes?
Repeat please!
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1280x800/screenshot_20231128_204754_7add05e64b10728282a5a1fcdf05ffd5e 80275ac.jpg
(Screenshot from the film)

[treadigraph]

Mind you, at one point the three Hurricanes they mustered were supplemented with three 109s (well Buchons), think it's the "Silence in Polish" sequence.

[Vzlet]

"Dark Blue World" (Tmavomodrý svět) is a Czech film that incorporated some unused "Battle of Britain" footage along with not-too-objectionable CGI graphics.

[Video Mixdown]

Ok, Ok, I stand corrected (to be fair I haven't watched in recently). They sure didn't get the focus that the Spit's did...
Still like to see an updated version using modern special effects while retaining the original real-aircraft flying scenes.
It doesn't need 'updating'. It is a fine film that would be ruined by pasting in a load of hokey computer graphics.

[radar101]

From the same team that did “Lancaster Skies”

Do they still salute without their hats on as they did last film?

[Mogwi]

Do they still salute without their hats on as they did last film?

Standard drill for RN when returning onboard actually. Or at least it used to be.

Mog

[tdracer]

It doesn't need 'updating'. It is a fine film that would be ruined by pasting in a load of hokey computer graphics.
So you don't find it even remotely cringeworthy when a 'crashed' aircraft is 'shown' as some sparkles sort of covering up the (still flying) aircraft as it moves across the landscape?
Heck, I found that annoying when I saw BoB in the theater when it was originally released...

[Post Flight]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNhm09OVcWo

[Video Mixdown]

So you don't find it even remotely cringeworthy when a 'crashed' aircraft is 'shown' as some sparkles sort of covering up the (still flying) aircraft as it moves across the landscape?
Heck, I found that annoying when I saw BoB in the theater when it was originally released...
Irrelevant. That's the way the producers wanted it to look and changing it would be cultural vandalism.

[langleybaston]

Irrelevant. That's the way the producers wanted it to look and changing it would be cultural vandalism.

Readers are losing libido.
no mention of PPRUNE's heart throbber

[Expatrick]

Readers are losing libido.
no mention of PPRUNE's heart throbber

I wondered when that would come up...

[Herod]

Regarding the Geoffrey Wellum film, post # 20. If that is as good as the book, should be well worth watching.

[Video Mixdown]

I wondered when that would come up...
Don't remind tdracer. What she was wearing is probably still illegal in 15 US states.

[Lima Juliet]

Better get the station commander a bloody razor… the CGI looks as poor as it was in FlyBoys… the dispersal hut looks like a cheap (and very small) B&Q garden shed…

I could go on, but it looks truly dreadful. I think I’ll watch Travolta’s screen version of Forsythe’s “The Shepherd” instead, thanks

[tdracer]

Don't remind tdracer. What she was wearing is probably still illegal in 15 US states.
You been to a beach or swimming pool in the US lately? That scene in BoB is quite tame by contemporary standards.

[Post Flight]

Regarding the Geoffrey Wellum film, post # 20. If that is as good as the book, should be well worth watching.
Did not read the book sir.

The movie is worth watching.

My neighbor who was two tours in the F-4 in Viet Nam, and an aggressor pilot towards our forces in the F-5, and a F-15 peacetime puke said that was his favorite movie. Could have been age related, but most definitely combat related, pure. Just ask my father-in-law, a B-17 tail-gunner; or my wife's uncle a B-24 aircraft commander in N. Africa ... you will see them in Heaven if it's your time and place.

The lineage of the courageous and the brave amongst us was true and consistent. Many of us can and did step up for us all to overcome tyranny. I pray that character continues forward for us all.

Roger that, I'm preaching to the choir and right on brothers in arms.

[GlobalNav]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNhm09OVcWo

Magnificent!

[SLXOwft]

Just watching First Light - really enjoyed the book, I may dig it out again - I presume they used AI instead of QJ so they could use footage from the BoB film.

Came across this about Polish pilots by accident while searching for something else, bit irritated by the reconstructions but interesting all the same

Bloody foreigners. Untold Battle of Britain. (polskie napisy) - YouTube

[DAHenriques]

Try looking harder! Of course there were real Hurricanes in Guy Hamilton's 1969 masterpiece!

Keith Park (Trevor Howard) arrives in a Hurricane in the movie. Actually Park favored Hurricanes in real life as well.
The poor old Hurri never did get its just due for its role in the BOB. It did yeoman's work for sure and took a real load off the Spitfire Squadrons.
Dudley Henriques

[SLXOwft]

The pre-opening titles sequences (the roll over refugees, and those with Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw, Ian McShane, Edward Fox etc. are all Hurricanes, they could only get 3 flying examples two Mk IIc's both now with the BoBMF and a Mk XII (sadly later destroyed). They had two taxying examples and a pile of replicas some of which could be taxied.:8

[Treble one]

And the Hurrischmits of course.

Repeat please.

[Treble one]

Keith Park (Trevor Howard) arrives in a Hurricane in the movie. Actually Park favored Hurricanes in real life as well.
The poor old Hurri never did get its just due for its role in the BOB. It did yeoman's work for sure and took a real load off the Spitfire Squadrons.
Dudley Henriques

Sir Keith Park had his own personal Hurricane marked OK1 I believe?

[SLXOwft]

Indeed he did. Here is a picture of P3854/OK1 with the man himself alongside, which I pinched from this article Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park – Officially One of The Few! (https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/blog/air-chief-marshal-sir-keith-park-officially-one-of-the-few/) Apparently his name was not included in lists of 'The Few' as his medal card had gone missing even though, having flown two relevant operational flights, he had been awarded the BoB clasp to his 1939-45 Star.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/400x329/ok1_35c7b0875be8b6b2b07b3ed8d6850424781926f3.jpeg

[Post Flight]

Magnificent!
Amen.