The Aviator

The Aviator is a biographical drama film that tells the story of Howard Hughes, a successful film producer and aviation pioneer who struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder and germaphobia. The movie follows Hughes' life from the 1920s to the 1940s, showcasing his early successes in the film industry and his innovative contributions to aviation. The film opens with a young Hughes being bathed by his mother, who teaches him how to spell "quarantine" and warns him about the cholera outbreak. The story then jumps ahead 14 years to 1927, where Hughes is directing his film Hell's Angels and hires Noah Dietrich to manage his business empire. Hughes becomes obsessed with shooting his film realistically and decides to convert it to a sound film after the success of The Jazz Singer. He becomes romantically involved with actress Katharine Hepburn, who helps ease the symptoms of his worsening OCD and germaphobia. In 1935, Hughes test flies the H-1 Racer, pushing it to a new speed record, but crash-lands into a beet field when the aircraft runs out of fuel. Three years later, he breaks the world record by flying around the world in four days and purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA). Juan Trippe, a company rival and chairman of Pan Am, introduces the Community Airline Bill, which would give Pan Am exclusivity on international air travel. Hepburn grows tired of Hughes' eccentricity and workaholism and leaves him for actor Spencer Tracy. Hughes finds new love interests with Faith Domergue and Ava Gardner but still has feelings for Hepburn and bribes a reporter to keep reports about her and Tracy out of the press. In the mid-1940s, Hughes contracts two projects with the Army Air Forces, one for a spy aircraft, and another for a troop transport unit for use in World War II. In 1947, with the H-4 Hercules flying boat still under construction, Hughes finishes testing the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft but crashes in Beverly Hills during a test flight after one of its engines fails. Miraculously surviving yet again, Dietrich informs him that he must choose between funding the airlines or his flying boat; Hughes orders him to mortgage the TWA assets so he can keep developing the Hercules project. As his OCD worsens beyond control, an increasingly paranoid Hughes plants microphones and taps Gardner's phone, causing her to leave him. The Aviator ends with Hughes alone in darkness amidst his failing health and faltering businesses, a shadow of the brilliant but troubled man he once was. The movie was a critical and commercial success upon release in 2004 and garnered several Academy Awards nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Art Directionand, Cinematographyand, Costume Design, among others

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Some movies that have similar genres and were produced around the same time as The Aviator include The Passion of the Christ, Radio, Doubt, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, Thirteen, Front of the Class.

The Aviator was released in theaters on December 25, 2004.