Some People Like Kieslowski, Others Jet Fighters

The Final Countdown is now on DVD!

For those growing tired of the same old artsy-fartsy stuff, Blue Underground has just released The Final Countdown on DVD, in a beautiful two-disc set with a neato aircraft carrier hologram on the cover.

If you're unfamiliar with this 1980 classic, here's a synopsis. Kirk Douglas commands the USS Nimitz on routine maneuvers off the coast of Hawaii. A very young Martin Sheen is on board, as a civilian observer working for the Pentagon. A freak storm suddenly appears, somehow sucking the 100,000 ton aircraft carrier back to December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. It takes a few scenes for Douglas to understand and accept what's happened, then a few more scenes to decide what to do: intervene and change history, or allow the worst naval defeat in American history to take place. As a senior officer exclaims in exasperation: "We are in a war situation! This is a United States WAR ship! Or at least it used to be... Or will be... Or what the hell ever!"

Anyone with a passing familiarity with Star Trek or movies like Back to the Future is familiar with the paradox: if you go back in time and, say, kill your grandfather, how will you ever be born? And if you aren't born, how can you go back in time and kill your grandfather? Since this is only a 90 minute feature film, not a 40-year alternative history, the movie avoids the problem by sucking the Nimitz back to 1980 just in the nick of time. But not without leaving behind a single crewmember, who, using his knowledge of the future (and, particularly, the military technology of 1980), becomes a wealthy defense contractor. It's a nice twist, although I always finish the movie a little disappointed. After all this buildup, you really want to see that epic battle between dozens of late 70s jets and hundreds of early 40s prop planes. But it's hard to imagine how that movie would play out, much less how much it would have cost at the time. Now it could all be done with CGI, of course, but who wants to watch that?

Anyway, one of the things I love about this movie is its plausibility. (Now bear with me here) Of course, it starts with the completely implausible premise of time travel. But given that extraordinary circumstance, the characters and dialogue are extremely natural and believable, especially for a Sci-Fi flick. Initially, they think they're the victims of some kind of hoax or Soviet trick. Radio reports of the German invasion of Russia suggest that World War 3 has broken out. Later, as they figure out which World War they're actually in, they try not to alter history. But they can't stand back and watch people die, so they become more and more deeply involved, until finally they're ready to jump in and stop the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The Final Countdown was my absolute favorite movie in the whole wide world when I was about 8 years old, and it still ranks (currently) #60 on my all-time favorite movies list. Admittedly, I've had a thing for the Navy ever since my parents took me to see the USS North Carolina during a family vacation to Myrtle Beach. But for Navy geeks and groupies, The Final Countdown is unsurpassed as a document of Carter-era hardware. You'll see all kinds of planes that have long since been sent to the scrapheap, including A-7 Corsairs, A-6 Intruders, and RF-8 Crusaders. But the crown jewel remains the F-14 Tomcat, of Top Gun fame, sadly to be fully decommissioned by 2007. Those Tomcats in particular are in full glory, at the time "so new [the crew] were still pulling the wrappers off them" when the film was made, according to one of the DVD featurettes. The Final Countdown features not a single frame of stock footage--it was filmed entirely on location on the Nimitz, with the aerial sequences filmed in Florida with the pilots and planes of the VF-84 Jolly Rogers. And those aerial sequences are spectacular! This has to be the only film in history where modern jet fighters dogfight with World War II-era Japanese Zeros. Again according to one of the featurettes, these sequences were extremely difficult to achieve, as the jets had to fly near their minimum speed, the prop planes near their maximum, with the camera plane (a WWII-era B-25 Mitchell) trying to keep pace with both. Refreshingly, when the Zeros are shot down, no special effects are added. The F-14's vulcan cannon hums (You see, when a cannon fires 6600 rounds per minute, you can't make out the "rat-a-tat-tat" of individual shots--it just sounds like a uniform hum. Listen to an audio clip here.) And when a Zero is shot down with an air-to-air missile, it does not explode in a massive Hollywood fireball, it disintegrates in a flaming mess. That sequence, in particular, was apparently filmed for the movie during an actual live-fire exercise, with an actual missile against an actual unmanned airplane.

Now let me just talk about those featurettes for a minute. When I rent a DVD, I usually watch the movie first (even if I've seen it before), then I watch it again with the commentary on, and then I move on to the featurettes (if any). So, this time around, I watched the movie, then started to watch it again with the commentary. But lo and behold, the commentary was just the director of photography! Couldn't they at least get the actual director? Or Martin Sheen, or somebody a little higher on the totem pole? After a few minutes of hearing about how various shots were set up and lit, I decided to move on to the interview featurettes on the bonus disc. There are two: one with assistant producer Lloyd Kaufman, and another with the aforementioned F-14 pilots. I watched the Kaufman interview first, and it was very revealing. The director didn't do the commentary because he's dead, and even if he were alive, according to Kaufman, he was a hack, and in any case he cared nothing about the movie. Again, according to Kaufman, the only reason the movie is as great as it is is because of Kirk Douglas. The movie was produced by his son, Peter, when Peter was 24. See, when your Dad is Kirk Douglas, you get to make feature films as a hobby. So it seems that Kirk sort of shepherded the film along, helping Peter muddle through, using his enormous clout to get the movie made (for instance, the name Kirk Douglas is the reason the Navy cooperated so completely.) And, apparently, Kirk intervened whenever the director made some boneheaded decision (again, for instance: the director wanted to use stock footage for the aerial sequences).

Having been enlightened by the Kaufman interview, I then moved on to the inteview with the former members of the Jolly Rogers. It's disturbing to see how old these guys are now. You think of F-14 pilots as young and brash, like Tom Cruise. Not gray and wrinkly. I mean, we're not talking about Vietnam here (although some of the pilots did serve there). Ageism aside, they've got some great stories to tell (many of which I've already hinted at). Most charmingly, just as everyone who sees this movie must, they finish the interview by discussing whether they'd try to stop the bombing of Pearl Harbor if they were in Kirk Douglas' shoes. Of course, they all would, except their somewhat more philosophical former commander, who muses on the long-term geopolitical effects of the event. It made me smile to see these guys take the movie so seriously, although I guess military types are really just nerds with muscles.

I did finally go back and listen to the whole commentary. And I give that DP guy credit--he clearly does still care about the movie, maybe more than anybody else who was involved (except those F-14 pilots). His interviewer, on the other hand, is this patronizing British guy who seems bored by the whole exercise. The DP's got some interesting stories to tell, though--filming on a ship that's on active duty presents some significant hurdles. So the commentary wasn't a total disappointment. And I absolutely give the DP guy credit for taking the time to go back and refurbish the film for the DVD release--it looks gorgeous! So, if you like technically-accurate military movies, or time-travel-paradox movies, or you just appreciate a little all-American kitsch, check this one out. It's worth it.