This movie is a very average movie at best and I'm not sure what people are hyped about. I'll give a breakdown of the main elements of the movie and what I thought about them.
Screenplay: Incredibly standard. If you've ever done screen-writing or know anything about screenwriting, this movie follows the very generic basic outline of what a screenplay should be. It doesn't take any twists or turns and does exactly what you expect it to do. There's no "wow, I didn't expect this to happen" or any real interesting narrative choices in the movie. Everything that happens in the movie happens almost exactly minute per minute the way a generic screenplay outline is constructed and in the most obvious ways that one would expect it to happen. To make matters worse, the vast majority of the movie is told through montages and I felt like every couple of minutes there was another montage. The movie seems to be afraid to actually have characters interact in real time and decides to rely on montages to move things forward.
Characters/Dialogue: There are a few good moments here and there, but everyone is a cliche cut-out of a character with no real interesting characteristics or personality traits. The vast majority of this movie's dialogue is predictable and on the nose to the point where it just feels like everyone talks in exposition: "Hi, I'm the character that wants to shut-down the mission" "Hello there, I'm the character that is nerdy." "Howdy, I'm the character who doesn't want to talk to you." There's no subtlety in the dialogue nor intrigue in what is said. Good dialogue should make us curious and invested in the characters and the relationships between the characters, not inform us as to what role they fill in the screenplay. Going back to the montage issue, the movie really seems afraid to actually spend time on characters doing "character things" and only ones to rush by on the bare minimum of what is required to make a character.
Cinematography: The beginning of the movie has some neat shots with an experimental plane taking off and there are some cool moments here and there when the planes are flying, but the dialogue scenes look like they were all shot in a weekend. EVERYTHING is told in over the shoulder shots or simple Shot/reverse shots. Why can't there be any scenes of all of the characters interacting? Why can't there be any wide shots of characters talking to each other that slowly leads to an increase in tension as the shots get closer? Why does this look so cheaply shot? Everything that involves characters talking to each other is shot with the least amount of artistic intrigue possible with no level of creativity or personality.
Editing/Sound design: This is where the movie really works. The editing in the flying scenes is very good and impactful. While I think the movie does rely a little bit too much on lots of quick editing to make things feel more exciting, I think that might just be due to a lack of footage of wide-shots of planes flying, so everything had to be reduced to close-ups of planes or interior shots only. That being said, I still think the editors did a great job on this film. The sound design is also top-notch and should be applauded for really evoking the power behind a jet engine.
All in all, I'm a little confused by the amount of praise this movie is getting. It's not offensively bad, but it's also not a great film by any means due to shortcomings in the vast majority of the core tenets of filmmaking. Maybe I'm just a nitpicky jerk, but it feels like audience standards have gone downhill since COVID started and now any movie that is functionally competent is seen as a masterpiece in filmmaking.
Screenplay: Incredibly standard. If you've ever done screen-writing or know anything about screenwriting, this movie follows the very generic basic outline of what a screenplay should be. It doesn't take any twists or turns and does exactly what you expect it to do. There's no "wow, I didn't expect this to happen" or any real interesting narrative choices in the movie. Everything that happens in the movie happens almost exactly minute per minute the way a generic screenplay outline is constructed and in the most obvious ways that one would expect it to happen. To make matters worse, the vast majority of the movie is told through montages and I felt like every couple of minutes there was another montage. The movie seems to be afraid to actually have characters interact in real time and decides to rely on montages to move things forward.
Characters/Dialogue: There are a few good moments here and there, but everyone is a cliche cut-out of a character with no real interesting characteristics or personality traits. The vast majority of this movie's dialogue is predictable and on the nose to the point where it just feels like everyone talks in exposition: "Hi, I'm the character that wants to shut-down the mission" "Hello there, I'm the character that is nerdy." "Howdy, I'm the character who doesn't want to talk to you." There's no subtlety in the dialogue nor intrigue in what is said. Good dialogue should make us curious and invested in the characters and the relationships between the characters, not inform us as to what role they fill in the screenplay. Going back to the montage issue, the movie really seems afraid to actually spend time on characters doing "character things" and only ones to rush by on the bare minimum of what is required to make a character.
Cinematography: The beginning of the movie has some neat shots with an experimental plane taking off and there are some cool moments here and there when the planes are flying, but the dialogue scenes look like they were all shot in a weekend. EVERYTHING is told in over the shoulder shots or simple Shot/reverse shots. Why can't there be any scenes of all of the characters interacting? Why can't there be any wide shots of characters talking to each other that slowly leads to an increase in tension as the shots get closer? Why does this look so cheaply shot? Everything that involves characters talking to each other is shot with the least amount of artistic intrigue possible with no level of creativity or personality.
Editing/Sound design: This is where the movie really works. The editing in the flying scenes is very good and impactful. While I think the movie does rely a little bit too much on lots of quick editing to make things feel more exciting, I think that might just be due to a lack of footage of wide-shots of planes flying, so everything had to be reduced to close-ups of planes or interior shots only. That being said, I still think the editors did a great job on this film. The sound design is also top-notch and should be applauded for really evoking the power behind a jet engine.
All in all, I'm a little confused by the amount of praise this movie is getting. It's not offensively bad, but it's also not a great film by any means due to shortcomings in the vast majority of the core tenets of filmmaking. Maybe I'm just a nitpicky jerk, but it feels like audience standards have gone downhill since COVID started and now any movie that is functionally competent is seen as a masterpiece in filmmaking.