“The Blue Angels” from Amazon Studios/Prime Video Showcases Drama of Airshow Season Preparation.
A video trailer for the upcoming release of Amazon Studios’ new documentary on the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Team, The Blue Angels has debuted on YouTube and is racking up views and “thumbs up”.
The new trailer, released on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, is for an upcoming feature length, reality-style documentary that follows the dramas and challenges of a season of preparation for the annual airshow tour of The Blue Angels. The documentary appears to be a shift toward an emerging programming style seen in documentaries covering the behind-the-scenes drama of Formula 1 car racing teams and the Tour de France bicycle race. This “unscripted” programming style uses a more revealing, journalistic voice that appears to tell the story differently than the traditional “spit and polish”, highly produced and strictly scripted depiction of military flight demonstration teams.
Just how “unscripted” and revealing will the documentary be? That remains to be seen, but the U.S. military flight demonstration teams, especially the single aircraft type demo teams, have led the way with a more open style of media depiction that better suits today’s social media audience and the younger demographic that is the target of military recruiting marketers. Based on traffic metrics at least, this newer approach has been largely effective in promoting everything from the public’s perception of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to the role of women in the military.
According to a press release from MGM/Amazon Studios, “The documentary, from Bad Robot [production company], Glen Powell’s Barnstorm Productions Zipper Bros Films, and Dolphin Entertainment, follows a year in the life of the Blue Angela from training through their touring show season filmed with awe-inspiring IMAX cameras”.
With a significant production effort, a large, experienced production crew and a lot of new viewpoint technology in the form of small, high definition action cameras developed from the GoPro era, the film looks like it will be a visual treat for aviation enthusiasts.
Bad Robot production company, the group sharing in making the documentary, has a highly-established catalog of media that includes major studio release films like Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol and Star Trek. The brand-identity of Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell’s association with the project adds further excitement and credibility to what may an exciting debut for general audiences and aviation fans alike.
The documentary is set to premiere in IMAX theaters on May 17, 2024.
Among the team members you can see in this trailer, there’s also the squadron’s first woman F/A-18E/F demonstration pilot. In fact, the the team announced on July 18, 2022, the selection of six new officers for the 2023 air show season. The squadron selected two F/A-18E/F Super Hornet pilots, an events coordinator, a C-130J Super Hercules pilot for “Fat Albert”, an aviation maintenance officer and a flight surgeon to replace the officers that will leave at the end of the 2022 airshow season.
Among those team members selected in 2022, there was also Lt. Amanda Lee, callsign “Stalin”. She was one of the pilots of VFA-106’s Rhino Demo Team out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, and an F/A-18 Hornet flight instructor, as VFA-106 is the East Coast Fleet Replacement Squadron, in charge of training Navy and Marine Corps Hornet pilots and WSOs.
