There's really nothing better than a movie to help get through a long flight. But that being said, there are some Hollywood adventures that are best left landlocked. Whether it be politically motivated extremists, an oversized gorilla, or aggravated reptiles, some movies have given audiences plenty of reasons to be afraid of airplanes besides altitude.
The best examples of aircraft-centric films have an appreciation for the claustrophobic potential. In effect, they present a combination of prevalent phobias. When it comes to watching movies on planes, it doesn't even have to be from the horror genre to be scary.
9 Air Force One (1997)
The plot of this film follows Harrison Ford's President James Marshall as he evades and confronts a group of Russian extremists hellbent on undoing the fall of the Soviet Union.
Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One was amongst a slew of remarkably solid big-budget action films from the '90s. Like fellow airplane-set action movie, Con Air, it's intense but occasionally disregards logic (though to a lesser degree). Regardless, a movie about Russian terrorists hijacking a plane probably shouldn't be watched up in the air, even if it's on the titular aircraft.
8 Rampage (2018)
One of the best video game movies, Rampage is a big-budget actioner with a tense plane scene. George, an oversized gorilla — and the film's protagonist monster — is kept aboard a military aircraft. Former Special Forces soldier and current primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) tries to calm him down, to little success.
The audience knows it's a bad idea to put George on the plane the same way Okoye knows, and they're waiting for it to crash. It doesn't exactly make for a relaxing watching during a long-haul flight.
7 Passenger 57 (1992)
Passenger 57 is one of many middling (yet somewhat entertaining) Wesley Snipes action films from the 1990s. In it, he plays an airplane security expert who is fortunately on the very flight that is being hijacked.
It's a movie that is more than a little reminiscent of Die Hard (released three years prior), but with a skyscraper replaced by a commercial flight. Unlike the first John McClane film, Passenger 57 features a villain who is less a brilliant mind than he is a caricature of what the screenwriters deem to be features of mental illness (something that is unfortunately used as a punchline in the film several times). Regardless, it's one of Wesley Snipes's best movies, even if your flight would be better spent on another trip to Nakatomi Plaza.
6 Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Twilight Zone: The Movie is no classic, but it does contain a remake of The Twilight Zone's best episode: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."
John Lithgow takes over the William Shatner role: a man on a plane who is prone to experiencing panic attacks. As his flight progresses, he begins to notice a gremlin (unrelated to Gremlins) clawing at the wing. Before long, the plane is going down and Lithgow's character is carted off. The adaptation also carries over the episode's ending but removes some of the creepy anonymity.
5 Snakes On A Plane (2006)
More of a meme than a movie, expectations were high for Snakes on a Plane. It didn't meet them, but it's still a serviceably fun ride.
Still, even diehard Samuel L. Jackson fans would be better off waiting to hit the ground before putting in the DVD. From the snakes leaping out of the toilet to the oxygen mask compartment, flyers would have trepidation about every corner of the plane for the remainder of their flight.
4 Airport (1970)
Airport was a massive movie when released in 1970. As one of the best disaster movies ever made, it is essentially the template for similar films that would follow, including The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
While not all of the film takes place on an aircraft, a fair chunk of it does. Even when the audience is not joining Dean Martin and others on the plane, the narrative is focused on how it could plummet to the ground at any moment. Watching Airport on an airplane would be an exercise in anxiety production.
3 Red Eye (2005)
This later addition to Wes Craven's filmography is a tightly-paced thriller that stands apart from much of his work. It is also primarily set on an airplane.
Red Eye spends the vast majority of its runtime with hotel manager Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) and the at-first-friendly Jackson Rippner. In reality, Rippner is a domestic terrorist, and he needs Reisert to arrange for his organization's target to be in a specific hotel room. Cillian Murphy's performance is what makes Red Eye a movie to avoid while flying. He seethes sinister in a way that makes the audience genuinely unsure if Reisert will ever get off the plane.
2 Final Destination (2000)
The first (and arguably the best) Final Destination movie is easily one of the last to watch while on an airplane. It opens with an inventive yet terrifying prolonged sequence of a Boeing 747 exploding.
The lead, Alex Browning, is a high school student about to board a flight to France with his peers. He has a premonition of the plane systematically being dismantled by spewing fire and flying debris. Each of his friends is killed one by one. Then he wakes up and causes a scene, in effect saving his life and others. He and his friends watch the plane explode mid-flight, but soon come to the realization that death isn't through with them.
1 Cast Away (2000)
If Cast Away were screened on an airplane, it wouldn't take long for the viewers to grow uncomfortable. The beloved Tom Hanks film has several scenes that left a mark, but it's the plane crash in the first act that would cause the flying audience to turn it off.
While Chuck Noland's screaming for "Wilson" is the movie's most iconic scene, the FedEx plane going down is legitimately intense. However, even if the audience got through the crashing scene, they'd have to contend with the part that has forever associated ice skates with amateur dental surgery.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3C0cP45
0 Comments