Die X-15 startklar

From the late 50s, this early Charles Bronson starrer dramatized the real-life development of the rocket-powered X-15 experimental aircraft, which was launched from the belly of a B-52 bomber and was flown by test pilots to high speeds and high altitude in an effort to touch the edge of space.

The X-15 was a successful part of the development program that also included precursors like the X-1 and the Stiletto, and later produced pilots for NASA and technology used in early space shuttle concepts.

I saw the film more than once on its initial run, and it seems to me this was sometimes double-billed with the somewhat similar air power goings-on of Karl Maulden's BOMBERS B-52.

The recent success of the SpaceShipOne spacecraft brought back to mind the early attempt at sub-orbital flights. Its designer, told us that he based his design on the X-15. Growing up in the 60's and 70's, the space race was part of our lives and the X-15 program was one more step towards space supremacy between the USA and the Soviet Union. Although this beautiful bird was finally shelved, the courage and vision of its designers merits that we take a second look at it. This movie, presented almost like a NASA -US AIR Force documentary, stayed in my mind although I was just a kid when I saw it on TV, some 30 odd years ago. Filmed in the early sixties, this story introduces the viewer to the team of 3 pilots that relay each other in the seat of the X-15 experimental rocket plane. The family life of these test pilots is also interesting as it is explained that these men need emotional stability to do their job. We are introduced to a young Mary Tyler Moore as one of the pilots fiancée. A young Charles Bronson plays one of these family men / test pilots with great presence .The flying scenes footage is of relative good quality but the sub-orbital scenes are poorly crafted animations that look terribly amateurish as we are now used to Computer Generated Images and other new special effects techniques. All in all, this is a good movie for any space race fan, and the DVD fits nicely in the library next to others such as The Right Stuff, From the Earth to the Moon and Apollo 13. I gave it a 7 for historical and documentary value.

If you are an aviation junkie than X-15 is the film for you. You will understand and grasp more readily than any of us ordinary film fans what's going on. I had to consult Wikipedia about the X-15 so I was sure of what I was writing.

The narrator of the film was well known Hollywood aviator James Stewart whose love of flying and flight was deep and sincere. He was in fact a general in the Air Force Reserve from his wartime experiences. Stewart always took a reverential approach to flight, possibly too reverential to make his projects entertaining enough. It was the biggest flaw with Strategic Air Command.

Perhaps had X-15 been done as a straight documentary it would have been better. We never really get involved with any of the characters of the test pilots and their homes and families. It was true that one test pilot of the X-15 was killed during the experiments and one of the pilots is killed in the film.

The X-15 was kind of a not missing link between airplanes and rocket travel. It had rocket power that boosted it straight into the highest altitudes yet known and it sure was faster than anything yet known. The experiments would provide a lot of data for NASA to design the space capsules that our Mercury and later Gemini astronauts used.

It would have made a great documentary the X-15 story. For aviation buffs this film's a 10. It's something less for the rest of us.

Just about 40 years ago I saw this movie in an Air Force theater where I was stationed. It was the very first movie that I saw after basic training. I thought the movie was terriffic then when I first saw it in wide-screen. I just saw it on a premium channel without commercials but it was not in wide-screen so a lot of it was missing. The flying scenes were very good as they were probably mostly shot by the Air Force but the family life scenes off-duty were very boring and predictable and mostly used a filler. What makes me smile is that the characters were just like those in a soap opera, in other words all the wives are gorgeous and the pilots were all perfect male specimens. Since I first saw this movie 40 years ago I have seen many documentarys on tv about the X-15 which were far more interesting and real than this hokey movie. I might be wrong but I thought that in the theater 40 years ago the movie started with Jimmy Stewart at his desk in his Air Force uniform but this was not in this version but I am not sure.

So, this is a Richard Donner movie (his first one), starring Charles Bronson in a lead role and it has James Stewart(!) narrating but yet no one has ever heard off this movie? It sounds all weird but there actually is a very logical explanation for it; the movie just isn't very good or memorable.

It's hard to even really call this a movie in the first place. It's stuck somewhere between being a documentary and a slow moving drama. The entire story is being told in such a way that it almost feels like a documentary you are watching, complete with a lot of technical details and background information about the airplanes and missions. No big surprise, since the movie got actually made with the help of the space program and the air force. In a way you could even call this movie a piece of propaganda.

But the movie also still tries to tell a story. Not hard enough though. Everything remains terribly underdeveloped, this goes for the story as well as for all of its characters. The movie also never becomes a very interesting one to watch because of that very same reason. There is not a clear enough main plot line that it is following and because of that also all of the developments in it fall short and everything feels without consequences. It doesn't matter at all for the viewer when a test fails, or a plane blows up. You just don't ever feel involved enough with any of it, to care about anything.

It all also makes this movie a bit of a boring one and definitely also overlong, since it starts to repeat itself pretty early on already and sometimes scenes just go on for far too long, without serving really a purpose for the movie in the first place.

It really doesn't matter at all that Charles Bronson, amongst others is in this movie. None of the characters get to do anything good or interesting and the acting and whole directing approach of this movie reminded me of a '50's science-fiction flick, that too desperately wanted to be taken serious as a movie. It feels the need to throw in all kinds of technical aspects and nonsensical questions, that are completely irrelevant in todays perspective. It's all very forced and wooden and lacks depth of any sort.

But please, allow me to also still say something positive about this movie. Because it got made with the help of the air force, the aerial moments are great looking ones. Normally movies like this would had uses some standard archive footage of planes flying but this movie is very consistent with its look and often shows some great, insightful, moments in the air, also often from the perspective of the pilot.

At first I also was very excited when hearing James Stewart narrating this thing. However strangely enough the narration suddenly stops half way through the movie and Stewart can't be heard again, until the very end of the movie.

Do yourself a favor and watch "The Right Stuff" instead. It for some part handles some of the same subjects, about the earliest days of the space program and test flying but it does this a far more interesting and exciting way, than this movie ever does.

5/10

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