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Nov. 22nd, 2022 11:45 pmAs many of you are no doubt aware, James "Biggles" Bigglesworth is a fictional WWI fighter pilot from a extremely long series of midcentury Adventure Novels, in which he does things like hunt treasure and get stranded on desert islands and foil plots against Britain and have homoerotic tension with enemy fighter pilots. Unlike much of my DW reading list at this juncture, I have never read a Biggles book. However, a.) ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer and genarti have both read and enjoyed several Biggles books, and b.) the Biggles movie is a notorious mess and I enjoy mess! so when osprey_archer was staying with us a few weeks ago we were all in accord that the Biggles movie had to go on the docket.
This movie is properly titled Biggles: Adventures In Time and it is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon that will give Germany a decisive advantage in the war!
Sorry. Let me amend. About 35% of the movie is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon. The rest of the movie is about Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive and Marty McFly Lookalike, who is simply trying to keep his TV dinner company afloat but keeps accidentally finding himself zapped to the past to help foil a sonic super weapon plot, because Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, is his Time Twin!
What is a Time Twin? GREAT question. We don't know either. The only person who knows: Peter Cushing, who keeps popping up to tell Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive, that he must temporarily abandon his TV dinner career because he has an important Biggles-related destiny that he cannot ignore!
This movie was released a year after Back to the Future and it cannot be a coincidence. Everyone in the WW1 era is doing their level best to really enthusiastically and affectionately embody an iconic archetype from a series of much-beloved adventure novels, and meanwhile every modern actor wanders dazedly through the plot like they have no idea why they are there or what they are doing*, which you might think is method acting for the experience of being transported unexpectedly into WWI, except they also do that in scenes where they are, for ex., pitching a new kind of fancy TV dinner to a big TV dinner buyer at the local TV dinner expo.
*except Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing always knows where he is and what he is doing and even why he is doing it [to get that paycheck] and will carry it off with supreme confidence and panache regardless of how objectively stupid it is.
Anyway, our working theory is that the Biggles cast were in fact hired to do a straightforward pulp adventure and then halfway through filming some executive somewhere saw an early cut of that year's Big Hit Time Travel Film and was immediately struck with a Brilliant Notion.
Particularly notable moments in Biggles: Adventures In Time:
( I guess technically this is all spoilers )
If you are interested, you, too, can experience this full experience on YouTube for free! We had a great time but I would not advise paying money for it.
osprey_archer and genarti have both read and enjoyed several Biggles books, and b.) the Biggles movie is a notorious mess and I enjoy mess! so when osprey_archer was staying with us a few weeks ago we were all in accord that the Biggles movie had to go on the docket.This movie is properly titled Biggles: Adventures In Time and it is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon that will give Germany a decisive advantage in the war!
Sorry. Let me amend. About 35% of the movie is about Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, foiling an evil German plot to develop a sonic super weapon. The rest of the movie is about Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive and Marty McFly Lookalike, who is simply trying to keep his TV dinner company afloat but keeps accidentally finding himself zapped to the past to help foil a sonic super weapon plot, because Biggles, WWI fighter pilot, is his Time Twin!
What is a Time Twin? GREAT question. We don't know either. The only person who knows: Peter Cushing, who keeps popping up to tell Jim Ferguson, TV Dinner Sales Executive, that he must temporarily abandon his TV dinner career because he has an important Biggles-related destiny that he cannot ignore!
This movie was released a year after Back to the Future and it cannot be a coincidence. Everyone in the WW1 era is doing their level best to really enthusiastically and affectionately embody an iconic archetype from a series of much-beloved adventure novels, and meanwhile every modern actor wanders dazedly through the plot like they have no idea why they are there or what they are doing*, which you might think is method acting for the experience of being transported unexpectedly into WWI, except they also do that in scenes where they are, for ex., pitching a new kind of fancy TV dinner to a big TV dinner buyer at the local TV dinner expo.
*except Peter Cushing. Peter Cushing always knows where he is and what he is doing and even why he is doing it [to get that paycheck] and will carry it off with supreme confidence and panache regardless of how objectively stupid it is.
Anyway, our working theory is that the Biggles cast were in fact hired to do a straightforward pulp adventure and then halfway through filming some executive somewhere saw an early cut of that year's Big Hit Time Travel Film and was immediately struck with a Brilliant Notion.
Particularly notable moments in Biggles: Adventures In Time:
( I guess technically this is all spoilers )If you are interested, you, too, can experience this full experience on YouTube for free! We had a great time but I would not advise paying money for it.
