The Aviator: Encyclopedia II - The Aviator - Synopsis

The Aviator - Synopsis

The Aviator - Summary

The movie is a biopic of the aviation pioneer Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). It follows his life from the late 1920s through the 1940s, a time when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies as well as test piloting his own groundbreaking new aircraft.

Orphaned at 17, Hughes was the son of a Texan inventor, who left him most of his tool company upon his death. At the time, he was a college student at Rice University. From there, he moved to Los Angeles to become a movie producer, helping fledging actors launch their careers, such as Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani), whom he cast in Hell's Angels. He also produced Scarface. Later in his career, he branched out into other industries, such as electronics, and most significantly aviation. His company Hughes Aircraft was responsible for the Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose. Hughes's mental deterioration with his obsessive-compulsive behavior is a major plot thread through the film.

The movie also details Hughes's romances with Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), and his battles with Pan Am's Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), who has allegedly bribed Maine senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) into granting Pan Am a coercive monopoly on international air travel. Hughes admits to having Congressmen in his pocket, too, which he did in real life.

The Aviator - Detailed synopsis

The film begins with nine year old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of diseases and infections. This shows the root of his fear-ridden obsessions with germs, and next there is a jump cut to 1927 when a 22-year old Hughes is preparing to direct Hell's Angels. He hires Noah Dietrich, John C. Reilly, to run Hughes Tool Co, while he personally oversees the flight sequences for the film. However, he is two cameras short and unsuccessfully tries to get a loan from Louis B. Mayer, who laughs at him and tells him to stop wasting money. Determined not to be called a fool, Hughes takes things too seriously, by wanting "clouds that look like giant breasts full of milk" in the background of the flying scenes. He hires a meterologist, Ian Holm, to determine the next perfect cloud formation, but they end up waiting eight months for the proper clouds! In order to get the shots right, Hughes takes flight to the skies to shoot the scenes himself.

By 1929, the film is finally completed and ready for release, but Hughes discovers 'talkies' are more popular than silent film now, thanks to The Jazz Singer. He spends another year and nearly his entire chain of assests on re-shooting the movie for sound, despite the urgings of Dietrich to give up. One year later, the film is a huge hit, and Howard Hughes is the one laughing now. Thanks to the success of his flawed masterpiece, he is now able to make films such as Scarface and the controversial The Outlaw. However, there is one goal he rentlessly wants to pursue: aviation. During this time, he falls in love with the beautiful Katherine Hepburn, and the two hit it right off, enjoying going to nightclubs, playing golf, and flying to see the sights.

As Hughes' fame grows, he starts taking more and more girls with him to premieres and the public. He also takes an interest in making a commercial-passenger airline, too, and he purchases the majority of stock in Trans-World Airways. In 1935, he test-flies the H-I monoplane, breaks the speed record of Charles Lindbergh, and manages to crash in a beet field, due to exhausting his fuel tank. '"I'm the fastest man on the planet,"' he boasts to Hepburn. Three years later, he accomplishes the goal of flying around the world in three days. Meanwhile, Juan Trippe, played by Alec Baldwin ,owner of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster, played by Alan Alda, worry over the possibility that Hughes might beat them in the quest for commercial airline expansion. Brewster has just introduced the Commercial Airline Bill, which will only give world expansion to Pan Am, and Hughes and TWA is a threat to their plans. Trippe advises Brewster to check to the 'disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes.'

When Hepburn takes Hughes to meet her family, the resulting conversation over dinner turns into a disaster, because they are Democrat supporters and he is for the Republican. Things get uglier when he continues to take other women to parties and movie priemeres, and it angers a disgusted Hepburn, who decides to go back to Spencer Tracy. Hughes simply decides to move on and get a new girlfriend, in the form of fifteen-year old Faith Domergue. He also fights the Motion Picture Association of America over the steamy sexual scenes of The Outlaw. During this time, he learns of Pan Am's efforts to try and run TWA off the map. Then, he settles with the military on a contract for two projects, a spy plane and a troop plane. By using a massive dinner party for the military, he is able to convince them to give him the necessary budget. Next, he is hounded by the press, after being caught in public with Ava Gardner by an angry Domergue, he fears the same will happen to Hepburn, who is now enjoying her new life with Tracy. Prepared to take measures, Hughes meets with a shady tabloid editor, Willem Dafoe in a brief cameo, to purchase all the photo negatives of Hepburn and Tracy's private pictures.

Afraid of the media trying to find him, Hughes places microphones and taps the phonelines of Ava Gardener, to keep track of any suspicious activity. After being confronted by Gardener, he returns home to find the FBI searching his house for incriminating evidence leading to embezzling government funds. Hughes meets with Sen. Brewster for lunch afterwards, and Brewster offers to drop the charges, if Hughes supports the CAB Bill and sells the TWA stock over to Trippe. However, Hughes refuses the offer and sinks into a deep depression, locking himself in his screening room, terrified of germs. Katherine Hepburn tries to talk to him from outside the door, thanking him for buying all those negatives and apologizes for having treated him badly years ago. She begs Hughes to take her flying, to which he promises he will. Later, Trippe pays Hughes a visit, trying to save a lot of embarassment, but Hughes refuses to listen to the terms of the agreement. Throwing a fit of rage, he vows he will not sell TWA and bids him goodbye. Trippe warns Dietrich that the world will see what Howard has become, if he arrives at those hearings, and he also adds that Hughes will have one month to appear there. After nearly three months in the room alone, Hughes finally emerges and prepares to face court, with encouragement from Ava Gardner, who has forgiven him for spying on her.

Hughes finally arrives at the Senate Hearings, and he starts off with counter-claiming Brewster's charges in front of the whole court. Humilated and enraged by this turn of events, the senator formally states that Hughes has spent forty-five million USD for planes that never flew. Then, Hughes states that several companies did not deliver planes for the war, and somehow, they have not been charged with embezzlement like he has. In a final blow to Brewster and Trippe's Pan Am monopoly scheme, Hughes exposes their offer to drop the charges, if he sold his stock over to Trippe and Pan Am, and he adds that on their little date, Brewster told him this would never take place, if he would just give up. In the end, Hughes is acquitted of all charges, the CAB bill is defeated in the Senate, Trippe's plans for Pan Am's entire global expansion is ruined, and TWA starts to expand to Europe and the Far East. Shortly afterwards, Hughes proves he was right about the Spruce Goose by personally test flying it himself for a whole crowd of people to watch. Following the flight, he starts planning a new jet-liner for the airline and makes a date with Ava Gardner, but then he also sees three buisness-men in suits and white gloves. This is a scene heavily debated on whether these men are his 'Mormon Mafia' or merely figments of his imagination, but it is generally implied by Dietrich that they are real. '"Everybody works for you Howard,"' he states. This suddenly sets Hughes into a obsessive-complusive fit, constantly repeating "The wave of the future … the wave of the future."' Dietrich and his aides hide Hughes in a bathroom, planning to get him away to a doctor before anyone finds out. Inside, Hughes has a flashback of his boyhood self, realizing that he has accomplished all the goals he made as a child and that he has already built the grounds for the future. As the film ends, he keeps muttering "the wave of the future," which many fans believe he is trying to think of what to do next. The darkness closing in around him, Hughes has finally fell victim to his fears and obsessions at last.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Synopsis", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki