The central figure in The Flight of the Phoenix is an old man from the old school played by James Stewart. Stewart is a dinosaur. He believes that the way he's always done things is the only way to do things. He tries to bully everyone around him into doing things his way, and when that doesn't work, he tries to reason with them. At almost every turn in the film, however, Stewart's character is flat-out wrong. I think the odd part of The Flight of the Phoenix is that the movie's perspective on this man isn't critical. He is the film's protagonist, and the film isn't really interested in a critique of this awful character so much as it is in heroizing him. In other words, I think this film thinks that he's somehow a good guy despite how awful and wrong he is. The film's central conflict – between an engineer who has figured out how to build a plane to help them escape and the captain, who just doesn't like that he's German and bossy and that he came up with the idea first – is the best example of this, of course, but there's another one that will give a good idea of how I feel about this captain.
A bossy military officer played by Peter Finch keeps coming up with harebrained ideas for ways to get out of the desert. His first idea is that he wants to walk 100 miles. He asks who wants to come with him, but he volunteers his sergeant to come with him, even though his sergeant doesn't think walking 100 miles in the desert is a good idea. So the sergeant "twists his ankle" and has to be left behind. The captain judges the hell out of this guy for reasons I found unfathomable. Then in act three of the film, the officer (who has come back after nearly dying) decides to try to talk to some travelers who are nearby but who everyone thinks will probably kill him. He again orders his sergeant to come, even though this is certain death. His sergeant refuses. After they find the officer dead, the sergeant asks, "He's dead, isn't he?", and James Stewart's character punches the sergeant in the face. The film lets the violence end the scene without any criticality, as if somehow this sergeant who totally did the right thing was somehow in the wrong or at fault. I was yelling at my screen by this time. Who the fuck do you think you are, asshole? But I guess the real question is: who the fuck does The Flight of the Phoenix think this guy is? He's not a hero to me, despite the movie's approach.
