The aviator

The film begins with nine year old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease: "You are not safe." This shows the root of his obsession with germs. The film next shows him as a 22-year old preparing to direct Hell's Angels. He hires Noah Dietrich to run Hughes Tool Co, while he oversees the flight sequences for the film. He is two cameras short and unsuccessfully tries to get loaners from Louis B. Mayer, who laughs at him and tells him to go back to Texas. Realizing that the audience will not be able to have a sense of space from the shot dogfight footage, Hughes becomes obsessed with finding "clouds that look like giant breasts full of milk" to re-shoot against. He hires UCLA meteorologist Professor Fitz to determine the perfect formation, and ends up waiting eight months. When the Professor tells him there are clouds in Oakland, California, Hughes moves production there, and re-shoots the dogfight himself.

Cate Blanchett as Katharine HepburnAs Hughes's fame grows, he is seen with more starlets. He takes an interest in commercial-passenger travel, and purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), the predecessor to Trans World Airlines. In 1935, he test-flies the H-1 Racer, breaks the speed record of Charles Lindbergh, and crashes in a beet field. "Fastest man on the planet," he boasts to Hepburn. Three years later, he flies around the world in four days, shattering the previous record by three days. Meanwhile, Juan Trippe, owner of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster worry over the possibility that Hughes might beat them in the quest for commercial expansion. Brewster has just introduced the Commercial Airline Bill, which will give world expansion solely to Pan Am. Trippe advises Brewster to check to the "disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes."