Did they intend to use F-15s originally?? - Iron Eagle (1986) Discussion

[–] swest-15 18 years ago

That's funny, I never considered that.

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[–] pbdye 18 years ago

They couldn't have - since the movie was shot in Israel. Israel didn't take delivery of F-15I until after this movie was shot.

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[–] andre-140 18 years ago

Actually, Israel operates the F-15 since before the movie (the models A/B)...

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[–] pbdye 18 years ago

I stand corrected. The F-15I is just a heavily modified version:

From - http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f15_13.html:

"Four FSD F-15As (serial numbers 72-0116/0118 and 72-0120) were delivered to Israel beginning on December 10, 1976 under a Foreign Military Sales project known as Peace Fox. It has been reported that the Israeli Labour Party government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin later fell because these four planes happened to arrive in Israel during the Sabbath.

These were followed in Peace Fox II by the delivery of 19 F-15As (76-1505/1523) and two F-15Bs (76-1524/1525). They entered service with 133 Squadron at Tel Nof in late 1978. The F-15A/B is known as Baz (Eagle) in IDF/AF service."

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[–] freyw 16 years ago

The F-16 is a better fit for the movie, though. The F-15A was pretty much an air superiority fighter, while the Falcon is more of a jack-of-all-trades. "Iron Eagle" was probably just chosen because it sounded cooler.

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[–] politic_swatch 15 years ago

Imagine watching the entire movie with Eagles in place of the Vipers.

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[–] gus00 14 years ago

Half the fuel consumption and a much lower, per-hour, operating cost probably made the F-16 a winner over the F-15 for the production company bean-counters.

Gus
"It needs more cow-bell"

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] wntermute 13 years ago

I believe they used the term "Iron Eagle" since the aerial club the teenagers belonged to were called the Eagles. Chappy likely knew about their club, since he somehow knew they were "running the Snake" before they could get to the airfield and wanted to give him a callsign he'd feel more familiar with.

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[–] Director-21 13 years ago

I would guess that the screenwriters chose to name the club 'The Eagles' since the movie was to be called "Iron Eagle." Chappie's line "imagine that plane you're in is...an Iron Eagle that nothing can penetrate would make even more sense if Doug was flying an F-15 Eagle. Also it would make sense that a flying club composed of Airforce brats would call themselves 'The Eagles' if their Dads worked on an F-15 squadron. I wouldn't be surprised if the origional idea was for it to involve F-15s and for whatever reason* they chose to switch it to F-16s.

*perhaps the Israeli Airforce didn't have any F-15s to spare for a movie shoot. Perhaps somebody at the studio thought that F-16s were newer and cooler than F-15s so the switch was made.

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[–] tbeller80 12 years ago

Look at the year the movie was made. The F-16 was just hitting the Air Force in great numbers and this would have been a good opportunity to talk up the new plane to the public. Most 1980s cold war movies featuring the US Air Force had F-16s.

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[–] MartyScorsey 11 years ago

Nice theory. Have to admit the F-15 is a much cooler plane (in my opinion).

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] Hendry_William_French 8 years ago

Chappy explains it in the movie, when he's encouraging the hero he says "you have to believe nothing can stop you. You have to believe that plane you're in is like a suit of armor. Like an Iron Eagle that nothing can penetrate". So there you go. Doug Masters and his F-16 are Iron Eagles.

The cheese is old and moldy. Where is the bathroom?

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[–] rob-2423 8 years ago

Yeah, I wondered that, myself.

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