The Blue Angels (2024)
The Blue Angels have been a staple at air shows mostly around the United States for decades, wowing crowds with intricate close-order formations and impressive feats of aerodynamic skill. I haven’t seen them in person myself, although I did see the Air Force’s Thunderbirds once at Maither Field in the early nineties. However, my dad has watched the Blue Angels several times and has the photos to prove it. He used to go to a lot of air shows in the seventies and eighties.
Anyway, if anyone has ever wondered what happens before, after, and when these elite Navy pilots enter the cockpit, they should look no further than the spectacular IMAX documentary, The Blue Angels.
Acceptance into the Blue Angels is like getting into Top Gun. It’s tough, it’s not for the faint of heart, and it’s obviously not without risks. It’s a co-ed force of established Navy pilots who fly their F-18s in such close formation that sometimes a wing will be eighteen inches above a cockpit. We see things both from the pilots’ point of view as well as alongside the planes, and everything is in motion all the time except for a few brief freeze-frames so we can take it in.
The film focuses on what is basically the Blue Angels’ changing of the guard, when the current Bosses are about to move on, lower-ranking Angels move up, and new Angels join the fold. And it is most definitely a fold. Everyone’s important, from the squadron pilots to the supply officer to the enlisted personnel to the C-130 pilots, or “Fat Albert” pilots, as they’re affectionately known. The Blue Angels number over one-hundred fifty Naval personnel in all.
Blue Angels squadrons always become very close as they work together putting on demonstrations and touring, so when people move on it’s always bittersweet because the cameraderie is intense. These squadrons have their own cheers and inside jokes, plus they enjoy having fun.
There are plenty of stories about the pilots, many of whom dreamed of flying with the Blue Angels from the time they were kids. Some of them have families, some are preparing to have families, and some are hoping to have families, but they all have a strong support system, whether in the Navy, out of it, or both.
We also get to see the newbies in training, and it’s like something out of The Right Stuff, when the Mercury astronauts got ready for those very early space flights. Only in the case of the Blue Angels one of the ways they prepare is by learning to cope with speeds as high as just above Mach Nine without passing out. If anyone thinks what Tom Cruise and company did in Top Gun: Maverick was for the movies, well, what the Blue Angels do isn’t too far off. Among other things, coping with those kinds of speeds seem to involve various ways of bracing oneself.
I only wish the film had gone into the history of the Blue Angels more, but as it is we get a brief smattering about the squadron’s past before moving on to the squadron’s current team. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter too much, because what we do see is absolutely golden, a tribute to the skill of Navy pilots and the proud tradition of aviation itself.
The Blue Angels is currently streaming on Prime. Rated G.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Chris Kapuchansky, Brian Kesselring, Monica Borza, Scott Goossens, Frank Zastouphil, Lance Benson, Greg Wooldridge, Julius Bratton, Cary Rickoff, Jon Fay, Jackson Streiff, Lauren Song, William Huckeba, Kaitlin Forster, Ashley Kesselring, Paul Archer, Oyindamola Michael, Griffin Stangel
Directed by Paul Crowder.