Oh man, so get this. I was pulling like 1000 Gs in my stolen jet fighter when, naturally, my brain exploded and I blacked out. Now I can’t remember a thing. Am I dead? Regardless, do you remember what happened in Iron Eagle?
Pop Quiz Hot Shot!
1) In the beginning of the film Doug is waiting for a letter. From whom and what about?
2) So what race does he then participate in and who wins?
3) Right after though Doug’s dad is captured in definitely-not-Libya and sentenced to die. How many days does he have before he’s hanged?
4) Welp, if the military isn’t going to do anything, then Doug will! Doug then meets Chappy. Where does his meet him and why does Chappy agree to help him?
5) So what’s the plan, how are they getting his father out of this definitely-not-Libyan prison?
Bonus Question: You;re in the theater waiting for those sweet trailers to drop. When suddenly … is that Doug Masters music I hear?
Answers
1) It is from the Air Force Academy (hooray!) and they are telling him he’s a hothead and probably dumb and so he isn’t in (oh … boo). Which means that Doug can just pound dweebs to his heart’s delight, he has nothing to lose.
2) It is like the Snake River Run or something, but that isn’t important. It is a race between his little prop plane and a local’s sweet dirtbike with a bunch of dumb rules because honestly … there is no way the dirt bike wins in reality right? Surely a plane goes faster than a dirt bike … right? In this case yes, Doug wins despite some last second attempted sabotage by the townies.
3) Three days. Three days to get all the intelligence reports together and make a plan to rescue his dad. It almost seems so implausible as to be absurd …
4) He initially meets Chappy at the airport he raced from where Chappy messed with his plane to basically mod it to allow him to complete the run (explaining that he knows why the other person who attempted it previously died). Later on he explains he didn’t know Doug’s father, but knew the type, and ultimately he is helping him because throughout his career he saw too many good men die in Vietnam and elsewhere, so he’s going to help one live instead. Something like that.
5) The plan is simple. They will steal two fighter jets and fly literally across the world (using mid-air refuels). Once there they’ll go dark and enter not-Libyan airspace. They’ll cruise below the radar and then blow up a bunch of stuff to give them a corridor in and out. And then once they get near the prison they’ll threaten to blow up major infrastructure (mainly oil refineries) until the prisoner is released and brought to a runway. They’ll load him up and fly directly out. And mostly it works, except that there is some subtle deception by not-Libya in that they try and kill Doug’s father on the runway with a sniper, and ultimately there is a final dogfight with David Suchet playing the Minister of Defense for not-Libya as well … which seems insane.
Bonus Answer: You best belieb, except what’s this? Doug Masters is no longer the student, but the masters? That’s right! You’re about to watch the reboot of Iron Eagle. In this one we have our hero (living in South Korea on a U.S. Air Force base) as the son of an Air Force pilot. Here though, uh oh! He enters Russian airspace during a routine mission and is shot down! Now it is up to Doug (played by Jackson Wang from the KPop band Got7) to get his dad back from behind enemy lines (starring Owen Wilson). Yada yada yada, Doug doesn’t listen to rock while flying, instead he listens to his own solo albums Mirrors and Magic Man. “What is this stuff?” says old Doug (played by Jason Gedrick naturally) before being all like “Naw … I kind of like it. Some sweet tunes Doug.” Anyways, in this version of the film no one dies, instead it ends up being a stealth mission and somehow Doug crosses into the Siberian prison (which looks suspiciously like the backside of the Whistler resort outside of Vancouver …) and saves his dad, hooray! At the end they are like “The Russians didn’t even know you were there, international incident avoided.” Except then right at the end you see the big bad Russian bad guy pick up Doug’s walkman and Blow (by Jackson Wang) is blasting, and he’s like … kind of into it? Smash cut to the credits as those sweet tunes blast out.
Obviously this is coming to Disney+ and it mostly just kind of sucks and people are like “it has no conflict of anything, I don’t understand.” It is called Disney’s Iron Eagle.
Bad Movie Twins 