Scenes That Stick With You
The Emotional Impact of Planes: Fire and Rescue
My oldest son was absolutely obsessed with the movie Planes: Fire and Rescue for close to a year. We must have watched that movie once or twice a week for that entire year. Sometimes more than once a day, God help me.
But like Bluey, this movie is one of those kids shows I don’t mind watching (within reason, of course).
The movie is the second in a series set in the very popular Cars universe. The basic idea is in this universe different machines or creatures (cars, planes, forklifts, tractors, etc.) are found in the place of humans and other creatures. The two movies follow the exploits of Dusty Crophopper, a crop dusting airplane who has dreams of being a world-class air racer.
In the first movie Dusty, through a lot of hard work and help from his team, overcomes a host of challenges to beat his arch nemesis Ripslinger in an air race around the world, launching a successful racing career.
The movie has some really funny quotes scattered throughout for you adults out there.
“Baby, did you just fall from a B-17? Cause you da bomb!”
“She left me for a hybrid! I didn’t even hear him coming.”
There’s a lot of story packed in the beginning of Planes: Fire and Rescue, and I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen the movie. The short version is that due to a failure in his gearbox and a resulting accident, Dusty has to take some time off from racing.
The first few minutes of the movie meant I spent a year trying to explain to a four year old what a gearbox is, how it works, how it fails, how to fix it, how to build a new one, and how complicated they can be. I’m not joking, I was showing him gearbox engineering videos on YouTube. It was never-ending.
Back to the important bits. Two important things result from the opening scenes:
Dusty’s gearbox is out of production, so unless he can find a new one he’s unable to fly at maximum power, so no racing.
Faced with the end of his racing dream and an impending shutdown of his home airport after the accident, he decides to go get certified as a firefighter, specifically a Single Engine Air Tanker (SEAT).
Dedicated to the courageous firefighters throughout the world who risk their lives to save the lives of others.
-Opening Dedication of Planes: Fire and Rescue
Here’s the beginning of the emotional impact: my dad was a firefighter for more than twenty years.
Growing up I lived with the knowledge that my dad’s job was to rush in to perilous situations and save other people’s lives. Right when the dedication appeared, I was already choked up and committed to this movie. Granted, not everyone is going to have that reaction, but I certainly did.
Back to the story: Dusty travels to something very similar to Yellowstone National Park (including an almost perfect recreation of Old Faithful) to start his training as a SEAT.
As he arrives, you’re introduced to most of the team Dusty will be working with. Shortly thereafter they get a report of a wildfire and have to go deal with it. Dusty follows to watch and runs afoul of the leader of the group, Blade Ranger (sweet name).
Emotional Point Two: This movie has incredibly good use of music. As the planes and vehicles get ready to load up to go fight the first fire, the forklift manning the control tower puts on AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. The song is perfect for the situation, and the actions of the characters are perfectly synced with the music. It’s very well done and yet again sparked something in my son: Thunderstruck is still his favorite song today.
Cabbie (Cargo Plane): “I will never understand why you gravel crunchers want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.”
Smoke Jumper: “We’re not, we’re jumping out of you!”
What follows is like if you take the other Planes movie or one of the Cars movies and cross it with the Bootcamp section of Starship Troopers. Dusty struggles to deal with Blade, disappointing him at every turn.
The most important lesson, delivered early, is this: All aircraft will be on the ground 30 minutes after sunset. Flying low at night is the best way to get your picture on the wall (a Memorial Wall).
The crisis point of the movie comes when two things happen at once: Dusty’s hopes for getting a new gearbox are dashed after news from back home that no one can track down a replacement. And secondly the group must deal with a large fire threatening the main lodge of the park.
Emotionally compromised, Dusty doesn’t pay attention to orders and drops his retardant in the wrong location. He then defies orders to try and refill his water tanks from the surface of a lake, where he stalls out after almost crashing. After being swept downstream, both he and Blade end up trapped on the ground with the fire rapidly approaching.
During the heated argument that follows, Blade learns Dusty’s secret of the broken gearbox. The two try to hide in an abandoned mine, and Blade is badly injured protecting Dusty from the fire.
After the team recovers the injured Blade, they return to the airfield at dusk and are greeted with the news that thousands of park guests are trapped by the runaway wild fire and unable to get out.
This begins the emotional low point of the movie. When they try to load up retardant, they discover they have no water to fill their tanks. With the light fading, the group makes the decision to go out and save those people, regardless of the situation. The group departs the field and heads into an inferno.
As the team flies towards the trapped tourists, they see the raging inferno of the wild fire in the distance. Here the music becomes threatening, almost dangerous, ramping up the tension.
The group is forced to fly through the smoke plume, and when they enter it’s like a wet blanket is thrown over the music. Everything becomes muffled, you hear the faint roar of flames and debris scorching through the sky. Dusty’s friends are shouting to each other, but you can barely hear.
Then they come out of the smoke and see that almost the entire park is engulfed in flame. It is frankly apocalyptic. The first few times my son watched it he was very afraid. It’s an extremely impactful moment, and very well done.
But slowly, very slowly, the music changes. The threatening tones from earlier become hopeful, then triumphant as the tankers drop on the fires blocking the park exit and the smoke jumpers descend from the heavens to cut away the smoldering debris and free the guests.
That’s not the end of the movie, I won’t spoil the rest for you if you haven’t seen it. It’s worth watching, especially if you have a little one of your own.
And Dusty, well he gets a brand-new gearbox in the end. A custom, epicyclic concentric reduction gearbox. This is exactly what they say in the movie, and yes, this is a real thing.
It’s a great movie. One about brave people (yes, people) doing incredible deeds and fighting against overwhelming odds. The kinds of things I love to write about. If I ever learn to evoke such emotion in my art as this movie did in a four year-old boy, I’ll consider that a win.
Wow! I've seen both the Cars with G-Kid, but not the planes movies. May have to check it out.
I may have to watch it just to watch it.
I remember this coming up in our group when we discussing that scene and how much of a gut punch the silence is. My experience with this is a surprisingly similar scene in Godzilla and a written scene in my recent Steampunk story. It's so amazing how this relates to writing.