By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Everyone who tells a time travel story has to deal with the inevitable thought process, “Why not go back in time and change everything?” The most common thought is to go back and kill Hitler, thus preventing World War 2, but a 1980s sci-fi military classic took a different spin, and asked, “Could a single modern aircraft carrier prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor?” The Final Countdown, a gorgeously shot time-travel film, is about that very thing, with the U.S.S. Nimitz, a real ship, standing between the Japanese fleet and Hawaii, but the question comes up: even though they can prevent the attack, should they?
It’s The Final Countdown
The Final Countdown makes a mystery out of where the Nimitz ended up after passing through a strange vortex, though the use of a recon plane shown reveals, based on the state of Pearl Harbor and the ships present, that they’ve landed before December 7, 1941. How far is the question, but soon the crew is rescuing civilians from an attack by Japanese planes, one of whom happens to be a United States Senator who disappeared just before the attack. With it clear that they are in the past, the crew slowly starts to split between those who want to stop the Japanese and those who want to find a way home, worried about altering the timeline.
It would have been simple for The Final Countdown to focus on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier single-handedly defeating the Japanese Pacific Fleet, a scenario tabletop wargamers have been playing out for decades, but the film decides to instead lean into the philosophical drama of the situation. Kirk Douglas plays Captain Yellen as the stern commander who doesn’t want to change the future, while Commander Laskey (James Farantino) thinks it’s foolish not to try and save as many lives as possible, and both men are shown to be right and wrong as the film progresses. Ultimately, there is a choice.
Time-Travel Adventure Ahead Of Its Time
Kirk Douglas isn’t the only Hollywood legend to appear in The Final Countdown; Martin Sheen plays Lasky, a civilian contractor joining the Nimitz for the mission, and acting as the audience surrogate into the world of the United States Navy. That’s important, since the film was made with the full cooperation and support of the U.S. Armed Forces onboard the actual Nimitz, complete with servicemen as extras and a real emergency landing making it into the film. Before Top Gun, this was the film that the Navy wanted to use to drive recruitment, and they helped make sure that every sequence with a fighter jet was gorgeous from start to finish, with cinematography that had to have influenced, even a little, the Tony Scott classic.
Ahead of its time, The Final Countdown was unappreciated during its box office run, earning only $16 million, and though it was profitable thanks to a budget of $12.5 million and strong VHS sales for years, critics lambasted it. Deemed slow and boring by no less than Siskel and Ebert, the film eventually became a success thanks to the focus on the Naval war machines and the time-travel plot becoming relevant thanks to Back to the Future’s arrival in 1985. Today, it’s a cult classic notable for the thoughtful approach to sci-fi, the pairing of Sheen and Douglas, and of course, the planes.
The Final Countdown is streaming for free on Tubi.
