Five Films You Should Never Watch On A Plane

Two kinds of commercial airline passengers exist on this earth.

For the first, leaving on a jet plane is the very definition of liberation. These lucky bastards whistle through security checks, sink into their window seats, and long for that diagonal rip into the atmosphere where they watch the earth’s increasing magnitude through the eyes of a baby bird. The stresses and pressures of everyday life wave goodbye from the tarmac as they’re gently ushered into the perfect cross-section of time and space to ponder the nature of existence.

Then there are poor sods like me. Those who spend pre-flight nights staring at the inside of their eye-lids; who arrive to the airport eight hours early to ensure an aisle seat, armed with three sheets of diazepam, 1,200 e-books they’ll never read, a rabbit’s foot, a horseshoe, and enough self-actualising platitudes to fill a Mind, Body and Spirit festval. For these people there’s nothing — no rational statistic or scientific explanation, no gossip mag or Pixar film, no double-scotch or attractive flight attendant — that will ever silence that single, overriding thought: “You’re about to pierce the clouds in a GIANT BUILDING WITH WINGS”.

Although my hatred of flying results in a twisted fascination with onscreen depictions of air travel gone awry, no matter at which end of the spectrum you sit, there’s one thing that any passenger would be mad to do on a plane: watch a movie that’s set on a plane. If any airline company included Non-Stop — this year’s deliciously ludicrous Liam Neeson vehicle — as an in-flight entertainment option, they’d be knowingly committing a crime against humanity.

Tighten those seat belts and clamp both hands to the ends of your armrests — here’s a list of films you should never watch on a plane.

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United 93 (2006)

Paul Greengrass’ re-imagining of United 93’s failure to reach its target is, without a doubt, the best (and therefore WORST) plane movie ever made. Greengrass uses our existing knowledge of the flight’s fate to great effect — devoting the first third of the film to all concerned (both on the plane and on the ground) just going about their day. Then through a crosscutting between locations — from the FAA, to air traffic control, to the defense force, and to the plane itself – the film shows the incremental unfolding of this most unnatural disaster. Using a mixture of unknown actors and real-life 9/11 survivors, meticulous attention to detail, and a great deal of restraint, Greengrass just lets the story tell itself, and the tension tightens exponentially from the opening frame until the eventual crash-to-black.

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Cast Away (2000)

Despite the fact that the majority of this film will remind you that ending up stranded on a desert island for years is one of the BETTER fates for a plane crash participant, Zemekis’ mostly masterful work begins with one of the most immersive nose-dives ever captured on film. He shoots the scene a way that perfectly captures our hero’s disorientation — what we don’t see is just as harrowing as what we do. Lightning flashes, pallets of freight flail around the place, and poor Tom Hanks has to watch every other passenger meet their demise before the aircraft plummets into the ocean. And if Tom’s plight doesn’t make you want to lose your in-flight lunch, then the cringe-worthy post-island third act certainly will (sorry, Helen Hunt).

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Flight (2012)

 

Sure, Zemekis’ return to live-action filmmaking was primarily a showcase for Denzel Washington’s ability to play ‘off his head’, but it began with an improvised landing for the ages. Denzel’s prodigious pilot/functioning addict implements a series of ingenious twists and turns, using procedure-shunting knowledge of physics to land the plane upside down, and saving hundreds of lives in the process. We don’t condone piloting under the influence, but one can’t help but wonder whether the coke and booze in Denzel’s system deluded him into keeping his cool.

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Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) + Air Force One (1997) + Con Air (1997)

This trio of 90’s action classics can easily be lumped into the one category — roguish leading man (Bruce Willis/Harrison Ford/Nicholas Cage) is somehow launched into the middle of a skyjacking, and has to fight for his and others’ survival. Bruce’s John McLean is on the ground fighting terrorists that have overtaken an airport, Ford’s President of The United States is in the air fighting Gary Oldman’s hammy Russian accent, and Cage’s former Army Ranger/unfairly imprisoned Cameron Poe traverses both air and land while fighting off his genuinely evil fellow inmates (played by far superior supporting actors). Granted, all three films are littered with hilarious one-liners and logic-defying stunts, but cheese aside, they all still deserve to be told, in the gruffest of voices: “Get off my plane!”.

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Lost (2004-2010)

 

Although technically not a film, the pilot for J.J Abrams’ island-set headfuck is as grand a spectacle as any blockbuster. Before the show lost focus, it was a genuinely innovative series that brought together a group of strangers and used character flashbacks to colour their on-island behaviours. Over the course of the series’ run we see many versions of the actual crash, but it’s that opening scene, which launches our protagonist into its nightmarish aftermath, that’s burned into our brains. Matthew Fox’s Dr. Jack Shephard negotiates a mess of hellish screams, injured passengers, and man-mincing propellers, to find himself as the unofficial leader of the ‘Losties’, leaving you with nary a moment to breathe. Everyone still looks pretty hot though.

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Jeremy Cassar is a screenwriter from Sydney.