The Final Countdown (1980)
Directed By: Don Taylor
22 Feb 2021
A reactor accident onboard the USS Nimitz results in the entire ship and crew being transported back in time to just hours before the Japanese carrier fleet launches their attack on Pearl Harbor. The premise is, well, I mostly came to watch the Tomcats. Sadly the movie was so bad that even the inclusion of all the footage of an operational nuclear carrier and it’s fighter squadrons couldn’t save it.
The final countdown could have been really cool if they had actually embraced the concept and gone full Star Wars. The climax of the movie should have been the USS Nimitz taking on the entire Japanese fleet single handed. The movie builds tension and some of the cheesiness could be forgiven if there was a payoff but it’s so anti-climactic that the movie is entirely ruined. When the time of the final battle is upon them, the mysterious time anomaly suddenly reappears and they are transported back to the present. Seriously, that’s how it ends, right where it began with virtually no changes to the story world. No battle, no lasting impact, no hard decisions to be made.
Imagine sucking so bad that even when the US Navy gives you permission to actually film aboard an operational supercarrier and take cockpit footage inside F-14’s, and gives you a couple of T-6’s converted to look like A6M’s and you make a movie so bad that aviation nerds can’t even watch it just for the jet porn.