I’ve seen a lot of people mistake it for a parody of Airport, which…I think there’s a reference or two in there but Airplane! is a parody of airline disaster thrillers in general and Zero Hour specifically. The sick kid and the stewardess singing with the guitar is actually a reference to Airport 1975.
Airplane! II, The Sequel is a parody of Airport, with the whole bomb in the suitcase plot.
It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
It really worked that Johnny played by Stephen Stucker was the only character who seemed to know what genre of film he was in. You get one character who gets to be wacky.
There’s that perfect moment where he and Peter Graves share a moment. “How long until you can land this plane.” “I don’t know.” “Well can’t you guess?” “Well, not for another two hours.” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” The fun of it is they got serious acting talent to deliver this dumb midwest humor dialog.
Yeah they cast a lot of guys like Peter Graves and Robert Stack that normally appeared in the over-serious thriller type movies. So Leslie Nielsen was just one of that group of actors they cast to have guys deliver silly lines in that stern serious tone that they did in actual serious movies.
But of course Leslie Nielsen was amazing at it, and didn’t need to do those over-serious movies anymore. And don’t call me Shirley!
Airplane! lapped Zero Hour! so hard most people don’t know about the existence of the latter
I’ve seen a lot of people mistake it for a parody of Airport, which…I think there’s a reference or two in there but Airplane! is a parody of airline disaster thrillers in general and Zero Hour specifically. The sick kid and the stewardess singing with the guitar is actually a reference to Airport 1975.
Airplane! II, The Sequel is a parody of Airport, with the whole bomb in the suitcase plot.
it also spawned the whole genre and although Leslie Nielsen made lots of movies before this, his legacy is this as well as the other parody movies
It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
Robert Stack apparently kept trying to play it like a comedy, and it took them a while to convince him to play it completely straight.
It really worked that Johnny played by Stephen Stucker was the only character who seemed to know what genre of film he was in. You get one character who gets to be wacky.
he represents the perfect straight man. the end of airplane when he goes back to the empty cockpit, it’s the coup de grace
There’s that perfect moment where he and Peter Graves share a moment. “How long until you can land this plane.” “I don’t know.” “Well can’t you guess?” “Well, not for another two hours.” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” The fun of it is they got serious acting talent to deliver this dumb midwest humor dialog.
Yeah they cast a lot of guys like Peter Graves and Robert Stack that normally appeared in the over-serious thriller type movies. So Leslie Nielsen was just one of that group of actors they cast to have guys deliver silly lines in that stern serious tone that they did in actual serious movies.
But of course Leslie Nielsen was amazing at it, and didn’t need to do those over-serious movies anymore. And don’t call me Shirley!
TIL Airplane! is a parody.
It’s such a close parody that they actually secured the rights to remake it. Much of the dialogue is exactly the same.
Shit, I’m going to have to watch the original.