Shadow in the Cloud-- My take on the movie with spoilers!
Plot Summary: A female pilot finds herself saving her crew from gremlins.
Luck plays such an important factor in life. We could be doing everything that is textbook right and things could still go drastically wrong.
Or you could be Maude Garret in Shadow in the Cloud and things just go swimmingly well for you. Spew any lie you want, fall from heights and somehow, always end up on safe ground.
SHADOW IN THE CLOUD Movie Plot
The movie begins with an animated video of gremlins on the plane. Apparently, this is a thing where pilots blamed plane malfunctions on gremlins rather than human error. Not my fault the plane isn't working, it's some fictional creature that caused the plane to almost crash.
Anyway, Maude Garret wears her uniform and heads into a plane called the Fool's Errand. Clearly, it's a foreshadow that what we are about to see is akin to being sent on a Fool's Errand.
Okay, so the movie wasn't that bad and actually has some edge of the seat moments but then later when you sit and analyze it, all you can think about is that Maude is one lucky lady.
Everything literally works in her favour.
So she gets on a plane with a bag that she proclaims is fragile and confidential. She experiences some aloofness from the crew who can't believe a woman is sent amidst them to assist them in a mission. She is sent down into the turret and since there is limited space there, she is forced to leave her confidential package with the only crew member who doesn't mock her for being a woman in the military. She hands the bag to Quaid and then slips into the turret after giving a letter to the crew. The plane takes off and Garret feels obvious relief. She turns on the comms and hears the crew members passing rude comments about her. She makes her presence known and they are hardly embarrassed.
Soon enough it's time for the gremlins to show up. In the olden days, people blamed mischievous gremlins for all their misfortunes. Nowadays we blame other humans for everything that goes wrong.
Maude is shocked and one of the crew members above also notices a weird creature but chooses to deny it rather than agree with a woman.
It is up to Maude to shoot at the gremlin to ward it off only to be reprimanded by the men sitting upstairs for using a gun for no reason.
But this movie is about lucky Maude and so just as the crew members are giving her a hard time and figure out her name really isn't Garret and that she was never commissioned on the flight, the Japanese attack the plane and while the men are trying to wrap their heads around it, because they are apparently not used to being attacked by enemy planes, Maude quickly attacks back.
Yay, Maude!
Immediately the crew members begin to respect her but, of course, they want to know who she is and what package she is carrying. They decide to bring her up in order to interrogate her but she jams the lever and maintains that if they open the package they will be discharged from the service.
They don't care and we hear a baby cry.
SHADOW IN THE CLOUD Ending Explained with Spoilers!
The truth is revealed. Garret is actually Maude Johnson who had an affair with Quaid and got pregnant. But Maude was married to someone else and when he found out his wife cheated on him and came to hurt her, she came up with this amazing plan to get herself on the very plane her boyfriend was on with the baby.
Fortunately for her, things just worked out for her.
While the crew is thinking about what to do with this revelation, they are attacked yet again. Maude spots the gremlins burrowing inside the plane and attacking everyone. Maude sees the gremlin has taken hold of the bag that contains her baby and decides that just like the gremlins, she too is going to climb on the side of the plane to retrieve her baby.
This is Maude we are talking about so it's no mystery that she manages to reclaim the bag and the baby and just as she is about to fall to her death, an explosion from below thrusts her through the opening into the plane. Even the crew member is shocked to see this miracle. But since his name isn't Maude and he isn't a woman, he is shot by the enemy plane. The plane is being attacked and now Maude has to go and cheer on the pilots to land the plane as soon as possible.
But the pilots are shot at and now Maude has to land the plane as well. She hands Quaid the baby who stays back, cowering while Maude takes control.
Of course, she lands it and saves everyone's life. She's Maude.
And just as everyone is rejoicing being alive, she is the only one who notices that the fire from the landing is heading towards the oxygen tanks. Thank God Maude was there because no one thought about that at all.
Maude saves the survivors once again and Quaid realizes it would be safer to have someone like her in his life so that he can have a piece of her luck too. But just as he is about to, a gremlin appears to snatch the baby.
He should have thought better than to snatch Maude's baby. She shows off her melee attacks and finally saves her baby. And now her baby is hungry.
Maude has to do everything while Quaid stands at a distance to admire her glory. Of course, he can't feed the baby but she surely could have helped her take down the gremlin. But nope.
The movie is great at showing that women are capable of a lot of things but can they do away with the male characters being complete jerks and useless?
How is it that none of them was able to defend themselves from any attack whereas Maude the great was able to do everything?
What happened to showing equality?
Scare scale: 3/5
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