The Red Baron (film)

2008 Film based on the life of German fighter pilot--the ace-of-aces-- Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron.


 * Ace Pilot
 * Blue Blood: The Baron is, and the film makes a point of reminding the viewers that the royal families of the warring European countries are all close relatives.
 * Big Screwed-Up Family: The ruling families of Europe.
 * Cool Plane: perhaps the original cool plane, The Red Baron's signature all red Fokker Dr.1 triplane. However, as the film accurately depicts, he actually scored most of his kills flying Albatross D.II, D.III and D.V biplanes. His first red plane was a D.III
 * Combat Pragmatist: The younger von Richthofen points out to the Baron that war is about killing the enemy; this is echoed later by the Canadian pilot the Baron twice shot down.
 * Downer Ending / Foregone Conclusion: Von Richthofen doesn't survive the war and dies at the end of the film.
 * Everyone Went to School Together: Eton, apparently.
 * Historical Hero Upgrade: Von Richthofen himself in the film. While the film portrayed him as a proto-pacifist we instructed his men not to kill enemy pilots, the real Von Richthofen showed no such tendencies, and actually encouraged his men to aim for the pilots of enemy planes, since it was the easiest way of shooting them down.
 * Honor Before Reason: Von Richthofen refuses to kill pilots if he can settle for crippling the plane. This has mixed consequences: while it earns the same mercy for him and the others, it results in complications later, when he sees a Canadian pilot he refused to kill repeatedly reappear--a skilled fighter who was probably responsible for many German deaths.
 * Hollwood Tactics: Made fairly obvious in the brief ground combat scenes, which are clearly intended to be symbolic rather than accurate.
 * Just Plane Wrong: Zigzagged: beautifully rendered CGI images of authentic WWI aircraft that perform in realistic ways -- but most of them are from the wrong period of the war. This is especially noticeable with the French and British planes, which are almost all models introduced in the last few months of the war.
 * Manly Tears
 * Memetic Badass: Von Richthofen's reputation was carefully fostered by government propaganda.
 * Officer and a Gentleman: the German fighter pilots considered themselves sportsmen, not killers. Von Richthofen leads an unauthorized sortie into British territory in order to drop a wreath on the grave of an enemy pilot. Said pilot is apparently a distant relative, and a schoolmate of one of the other members of the squadron.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A nurse chastises Von Richthofen for his naive view of the consequences of war.
 * Putting on the Reich: The German military really outdoes itself once those guys come into power, but even in WWI their uniforms were pretty pimp. Of course, the Baron inspired the iconic style of the fighter ace, which foreign aviators eagerly imitated, and eventually came to be universally associated with aviation in general--to include leather gloves, boots, helmets and jackets, jodhpurs, white scarves and steam-punky goggles.
 * Token Minority: The Jewish German pilot, whose most important role seems to be reassuring everyone that it is okay to like Von Richthofen, because he's not one of those Germans.
 * Too Cool to Live
 * Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Somewhere a Historian is crying. The film works much better as allegory then history, and reflects modern German attitudes more than those prevalent at the time. The real von Richtofen, who instructed his men to "Aim for the man and don't miss him" was the exact opposite of the character portrayed in the film.
 * World War I
 * Worthy Opponent: The aforementioned wreath had a ribbon that read in part "enemy and friend." In Real Life, Von Richthofen was buried with full military honors by the British.