The action thriller “Airport,” directed by the team of George Seaton and Henry Hathaway, caused a sensation in the early 1970s. The film was a disaster ensemble piece that combined an onboard bomb threat and an airport battling hostile weather conditions to great effect. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, with Helen Hayes winning Best Supporting Actress. It also spawned three sequels, scattered throughout the decade. However, the biggest disaster in all three was that they…well, let’s just say they weren’t very good.
The sequels are not entirely unwatchable, as the old school disaster movies say. 1979’s “Le Concorde: Aéroport 79” even made its way onto /Film’s list of underrated disaster films worth watching. Overall, however, the trend of decline in quality and critical appreciation was extremely noticeable, which seriously hurt the series at the box office. Where “Airport” grossed just over $100 million, “Airport 1975” cut that amount in half with a box office of $47 million. “Airport 77” limped to $30 million, and the $13 million box office haul of “Le Concorde: Aéroport ’79” was the final nail in the coffin. (This is, of course, why it’s so underrated in the first place. It’s hard to appreciate something that almost no one has seen.) Put it all together, and the three sequels combined only grossed $90 million, or $10 million less than the original.
So what exactly went wrong with the franchise going from an awards season contender to the equivalent of the direct-to-video era? Let’s dive deeper into the “Airport” movies to find out.
Sequels and increasingly outlandish plots have undermined the airport franchise
In all honesty, it made perfect sense to turn “Airport” into a franchise. Although there are few disaster films among the best films of the 1970s (it was the decade of “Star Wars,” “Jaws” and “The Godfather,” after all), the genre played a major role during the decade. After Gene Hackman’s “The Poseidon Adventure” legitimized disaster films in 1972, “Airplane” was in prime adapter position to capitalize with a slew of sequels. The problem: At some point, they forgot that these sequels had to live up to the original.
Much of the franchise’s decline is due to a loss of focus. “Airport” is a robust piece of cinema that uses its fast-paced, snowy setting to tell many different stories and boasts a cast that includes names like Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg and Academy Award winner Hayes. “Airport 1975,” directed by Jack Smight, is a different film altogether, depicting the control tower’s struggle to convince someone to safely land an unmanned and stricken Boeing 747. Jerry Jameson’s “Airport ’77” adds a generous splash of “The Poseidon Adventure” to the mix by sinking an entire hijacked 747 into the sea and turning the film into an underwater survival drama.
By the time David Lowell Rich’s “Concorde: Airport 79” took flight, all caution was thrown to the wind, and the film’s meager audience watched a supersonic passenger Concorde barrel-roll through missile attacks while a high-tech device serves as a MacGuffin time bomb – a fun idea, sure, but hardly capable of following in the footsteps of an award-winning Oscar. Film after film, the series became its own parody, until the late 1970s also ended the franchise.
The Airport franchise caught some serious strays from the 1980s parody genre
There’s another reason why “Airport” doesn’t have the cultural legacy it could enjoy without its increasingly far-fetched sequels. In 1980, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker released their classic parody “Airplane!”, which remains incredibly hilarious after more than 40 years. Can you guess which franchise he’s tackling?
“Plane!” borrows liberally from the film “Zero Hour!” from 1957, but several scenes were also either heavily inspired or taken directly from “Airport 1975”, in particular. The sick child, the nun with a guitar, the unlikely hero pilot responsible for landing the plane, a courageous and romantic flight attendant… it’s all there, and it’s “The Airplane!” versions that made their mark in popular culture.
If “Airplane!” » Using the “Airport” franchise’s own tools to hijack the first class seat in the commercial flight disaster movie genre isn’t enough, the series then caught another major deviation from the 1980s parody genre. The only connecting tissue of the four “Airport” films is Oscar winner George Kennedy, whose aviation-friendly character Joe Petroni – a man of multiples hats who could serve as a mechanic, a Columbia Airlines superior, or a pilot depending on the plot required – appeared in all four films. In 1988, Kennedy became a major part of the other major spoof film of the era, playing Captain Ed Hocken in “The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad.”
As luck would have it, Kennedy’s character is the boss of protagonist Frank Drebin…who, of course, was played by the comedy legend and “Airplane!” The remarkable Leslie Nielsen. It’s probably safe to say that Kennedy is now much more associated with “The Naked Gun” series than “Airport,” which cost “Airport” yet another point in the pop culture game.
