6/9/19 Airplane

Post date: Jun 2, 2019 1:39:56 PM

I saw Airplane came out in 1980. It was a totally silly movie and it was fast paced. Most comedy movies at that time were more situational. Build up a awkward situation and play off of that. Airplane set up a basic situation just to hang jokes and gags off of.

The movie was a parody of a 1956 dramatic tv teleplay called "Flight into Danger". Believe or not I had to read this story in Grade six. One of the class, I read the part of the doctor. It is a totally melodramatic story about a doctor and a ex-pilot meeting on a airplane. During the first part of the flight, the pilot tells his back story about suffering from a bad experience in the war which causes him to stop flying. Half way through the flight, half the passengers get sick by eating the fishmeal. This includes both pilots. The ex-pilot has to step up and get over his fears to land the plane safely and save all the passengers.

This story became a template for the disaster movies of the 1970s.

Movies like Airport, Airport 1975, Airport 1977, and Airport 1979. This spawned a whole series of disaster movies. Some Include: Earthquakes in "Earthquake", snipers in "Two Minute Warning", sinking ships in "The Poseidon Adventure" and burning buildings in "The Towering Inferno". All of these movies were the same format. Populate your movie with as many above the title movie stars you could afford, them bump them off in your disaster. A lot of the movie posters would have small pictures of all the stars in the movie. The whole disaster movie industry was brought down by a 1978 over budget movie about killer bees that flopped at the box office. The final nail on the coffin was "Airplane" which laid bare how silly these movies were.

I was hoping that this would put an end to the disaster movies. Unfortunately, with the advancement in cgi special effects, the disaster movies have come back with a vengeance. Twister about tornados, Dante's Peak about volcano eruptions, Armageddon about a asteroid attack, Independence day and Mars attacks about Alien invasion. There have been so many disaster movies, they have run out of ideas so we get San Andreas about earthquakes again, Skyscraper about a burning building again, Titanic about sinking ships again. Somebody needs to stop this. We do not need any dinosaurs kill people in the infinite number of Jurassic park movies!