A review (with some spoilers and a few complaints!)

Who doesn’t love a good aviation-related movie?

Mayday is an action comedy built very deliberately in the shadow of Top Gun – something it acknowledges with numerous references. It’s fun, doesn’t take itself very seriously and is a little tongue-in-cheek (it stars Ryan Reynolds, after all), but this ain’t no Top Gun.

In fairness, it’s really more of a Cold War, stuck-behind-enemy-lines adventure than a film about aircraft. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse the aviation inaccuracies (in my pompous opinion).

Now, I’m no military pilot, but I’m fairly sure the SR-71 Blackbird didn’t have rear flight controls and wouldn’t handle anything remotely like a fighter jet. So why put the “fighter pilot” in it? With precisely zero training on type? The story could have worked just as well with him escorting the Blackbird in an aircraft he was actually trained to fly.

Clearly, they wanted the Blackbird because it is an objectively awesome aircraft – entirely reasonable – but then they barely reference its extraordinary-ness and they have it shot down (never happened, imagine the Russians getting their hands on the technology back then!) For aircraft lovers hoping for some proper Blackbird action: disappointing. Minus one point.

The dogfighting scenes, however, are fairly well done. They used real L-39s, filmed them up close and then digitally “reskinned” them to appear as F-18s. One point for putting actual aircraft in the sky rather than CGI-ing the whole thing, like the albatross at the beginning. Bird, not plane.

They also filmed aboard the USS Carl Vinson, a 333-metre Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Which brings us to the finale, where Troy lands a Russian ATR-42 on it.

First, he apparently knows how to fly an ATR-42. Fine. An experienced pilot could probably work out the broad principles: push, pull, brake extremely hard. But he also somehow knows exactly where to find the spare fuel tank switch despite everything being labelled in Russian.

Minus one point.

But forget that. The more interesting question is: could you actually land an ATR-42 on an aircraft carrier?

An ATR normally needs considerably more runway than a Carl Vinson or similar has available, but fortunately our heroes have the carrier’s barricade – essentially a huge nylon arresting net. That could conceivably stop the aircraft, although in the film the propeller tears straight through it, which seems rather less convincing.

And why even try? The sea around the carrier is remarkably calm. Why risk ploughing an ATR into the deck of a multi-squillion-dollar aircraft carrier when you could ditch alongside it and have everyone picked up?

High-wing aircraft can fare badly in ditching because of their relatively high centre of gravity and the way the fuselage can interact with the water on impact. Unlike some low-wing aircraft, where the wings may help absorb and distribute some of the initial forces, an ATR risks pitching violently forward, potentially digging its nose in and breaking apart.

So perhaps landing a regional turboprop on an aircraft carrier isn’t quite as stupid as it first appears, and movie-wise makes for better viewing. One point back.

I stopped counting after that.

My overall opinion:

All in all, Mayday is a fun movie if you like Ryan Reynolds. Really annoying if you don’t. And if you know anything about aviation, I’d give you roughly a 50/50 chance of becoming moderately irritated by it, especially if hoping for something to fill the Top Gun gap.

But then again, this isn’t really an aviation movie and didn’t say it would do that. It’s an action comedy that just happens to contain quite a lot of aeroplanes, so maybe just watch to enjoy the action, humour and Kenneth Branagh’s Russian accent.l