Airplane! is one of the funniest movies ever made. Its jokes and gags are the stuff of legend, from a jive-speaking June Cleaver to the panicking passenger who gets slapped silly by everyone on the plane. But, to me, the funniest thing about Airplane! isn’t even in the movie itself.

The funniest thing is that it spawned a sequel appropriately titled Airplane II: The Sequel. Let me explain why.

Following in the Footsteps of Airport

I know that Airplane! is a direct parody of the 1957 film Zero Hour! But most people think of it as a playful sendup of the seminal 1970 disaster movie Airport. That film won Best Picture and spawned a decade of disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and Earthquake.

Airport also led to several sequels, beginning with Airport 1975. That’s a flawed follow-up, though I can’t help loving it, especially for its second half. Almost none of the cast from the first film returned for the sequel, except for George Kennedy. It earned slightly less at the global box office and was critically panned compared to its predecessor.

Airplane II feels a lot more like a proper parody of the entire Airport series, and that’s what’s so funny about it. The makers of Airplane! didn’t intend to mock the whole Airport series, but they inadvertently did when this sequel got made by someone else. Airplane II went straight into absurdist territory whereas the first film had been mostly grounded in at least token believability. I adore the sequel’s second half as soon as William Shatner makes his memorable appearance.

Quite a few cast members returned for Airplane II, including Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges. Like Airport 1975, it earned less at the box office and was critically panned compared to its predecessor. It’s as if the makers of Airplane II wanted to elevate the first film by making it more than a funny look at the first Airport film. Suddenly, it became a commentary on the entire disaster genre.

The Legacy of Airplane!

Disaster movies rose and fell during the 1970s. Then they made a comeback in the 1990s with Twister, Independence Day, Titanic, and Armageddon, resurrecting them in a big way. However, disaster movies haven’t been in vogue since the mid-2010s when San Andreas came out, though 2024’s Twisters is a notable exception. They mostly gave way to superhero films.

Parody films have also ebbed and flowed over the years. Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, and Kentucky Fried Movie all made waves in the 1970s. But it wasn’t until 1980’s Airplane! that the parody genre started to really take off.

After that, Top Secret! and the Naked Gun trilogy carried parodies through the rest of that decade and into the 1990s. The Hot Shots! duology, Austin Powers trilogy, and Scary Movie series all delighted audiences for a time. Even though parodies have been absent from theaters for a while, The Naked Gun and Scary Movie got new additions recently.

The Funniest Thing About Airplane!

So there you go. I think the funniest thing about Airplane! is that it somehow managed to capture the essence of Hollywood’s hubris by spawning an inferior sequel and loads of copycats. With Airplane! and Airport, the first film is about as grounded in reality as you can get, and it’s followed by increasingly outlandish scenarios.

Airport and Zero Hour! were based on stories written by the same author, Arthur Hailey. Airport won Best Picture for 1970, while Airplane! was named one of the 10 funniest movies of all time by the American Film Institute. And they each had at least one sequel made by almost totally different people with a major dropoff in quality.

Surely, the cleverest joke is a sharp one that isn’t even intended.

This is the Deja Reviewer telling you don’t call me Shirley!

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