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Flying high with Marty and Leo
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Aviator, conducted last week, click here.
As a biopic, this film doesn’t attempt to cover the entire life of Hughes; instead, Scorsese and his collaborators focus on his prime period, a 20-year span between 1927 and 1947. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, as this is a famous figure worthy of several different film treatments; his making of Hell’s Angels deserves its own movie, as does his time as owner of RKO, when he helped implement the Paramount Decree and forced the other Hollywood studios to sell off their theaters (not even covered in the 2004 movie).
The Aviator does an impressive job of covering as many of the big events linked to Hughes during this phase as possible, but the filmmakers aren’t as concerned with fidelity to the facts and accuracy as they are with painting a composite of a fascinating yet controversial American entrepreneur. Per critic Stephanie Zacharek: “Even though The Aviator is based on real-life people and events, very little about it seems real or realistic, and that’s clearly by Scorsese’s design: Among other things, The Aviator is a love letter to a time in Hollywood when matte painting and miniatures gave us a reality so heightened that we could scarcely believe our eyes. And yet believing them, even against our better judgment, is precisely the point of going to the movies, a point The Aviator milks deliciously.”
In a film packed with terrific performances, Blanchett shines the brightest, invoking Hepburn’s tomboyish spirit and mannerisms (without delving into caricature). Her romantic relationship with Hughes is contrasted with his dalliance with Gardner, two strong women who refuse to allow the playboy to clip their wings.
The OCD sequences appear accurate, and for good reason: DiCaprio was apparently plagued by a mild form of this malady in childhood and actually experienced a bit of relapse during filming, and the actor did ample homework on the condition ahead of filming, meeting personally with sufferers.
The title “The Aviator” is perhaps a curious one, considering the roughly equal time given to Hollywood pursuits and Tinsel Town relationships as the film devotes to Hughes’ aeronautical exploits.
Detractors argue that Scorsese lets Hughes off too lightly. This was also a man responsible for stunt pilot deaths during the filming of Hell’s Angels, wartime contract profiteering, predatory exploitation of young actresses, systemic racial discrimination, aggressive union-busting, and the erratic destruction of RKO Pictures. On the positive side, without Hughes, commercial air flights and international travel may not have advanced as quickly, while his pioneering aerospace company laid the technical groundwork for the satellites that later connected the world.
Watching The Aviator, we can feel the immense gravity of ambition. Like Icarus, who also flew too close to the sun, Hughes strove to push the limits of aviation innovation and famously failed or suffered serious consequences, as evidenced by his crashing the Hughes XF-11, his experimental twin-boom photo-reconnaissance spy plane, and nearly dying. Hughes also nearly bankrupted his companies on several occasions and spent millions making Hell’s Angels, the filming of which led to four deaths. This film mostly tracks Hughes’ golden period between 1927 and 1947, when he was at the height of his powers, but also depicts the emerging fall, when he would be sidelined as a recluse suffering from mental illness.
Critic Roger Ebert admired how the film explored two interconnected story arcs, the rise and the fall, which he noted was a pattern in other Scorsese works like Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, and Casino.
Hughes was the richest person in the world for a long stretch, wielding wealth, power, and influence unlike anyone else, leveraging those advantages to innovate aviation and moviemaking, and using his status, privilege, and power of persuasion to bed beautiful starlets and best his adversaries. But he wasn’t bulletproof, and this film skillfully shows cracks in his armor. His Achilles' heel was what we now know as obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition he suffered at a time when they didn’t know how to diagnose or manage that illness. Here is a man who could buy whatever he wanted yet was trapped in a paranoid prison of his own mind, unable to even exit a public bathroom without assistance. The Aviator demonstrates that even the strongest are vulnerable to frailty. “Scorsese and Logan and Schoonmaker’s task: finding a thread in a life that was first about fearlessness and motion, and then about terror and stasis,” wrote critic David Edelstein.
But perhaps The Aviator’s primary thematic takeaway is the upside of defying the odds. Time and again, Hughes and his maverick spirit prove his doubters wrong and outmaneuver his enemies. His Hells Angels, considered a costly and unfinishable boondoggle in the press, became a popular hit and critical darling; he managed to get the censors to approve of his controversial film The Outlaw; he turned the tables on Senator Owen Brewster during that politician’s public hearings that were meant to ruin Hughes’ reputation; he beat Pan-Am to the international travel game; and his massive Spruce Goose eventually proved air-worthy.
Similar works
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Amazing Howard Hughes (TV; 1977)
- Melvin and Howard (1980)
- Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
- There Will Be Blood (2007)
- The Social Network (2010)
- Steve Jobs (2015)
- Rules Don't Apply (2016)
- Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Other films by Martin Scorsese
- Mean Streets (1973)
- Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
- Taxi Driver (1976)
- Raging Bull (1980)
- The King of Comedy (1982)
- After Hours (1985)
- The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- Shutter Island (2010)
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
- The Irishman (2019)
