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The 10 Best Plane Movies of All Time

Airplanes are a useful mode of transportation, reliable subject matter for hacky stand-up comics, and a linchpin for some of the most memorable movies ever made

By Tim Grierson
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Bear Grylls//Digital Spy

Airplanes: They're a useful mode of transportation, reliable subject matter for hacky stand-up comics, and a linchpin for some of the most memorable movies ever made. We present the 10 best films involving planes.

Ironically, many of our choices would never play on an actual airplane: They'd be too upsetting for most passengers. But that's what links these otherwise very diverse movies: The thrill and terror of flying is the perfect dramatic device to create chills, scares, and big laughs.

10. Snakes on a Plane

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This supremely dopey action-thriller has a killer hook: What if some bad guys released a ton of dangerous snakes onto a commercial flight in order to kill one of the passengers—and the only person who could save the day was Samuel L. Jackson? Snakes on a Plane is B-movie nonsense pumped full of cheeky self-awareness—it's so bad, it's good—but the film gets a jolt from its claustrophobic, aviophobic, ophidiophobic premise. Sure, every single snake in this movie looks totally fake, but when they're attacking people in all types of creative, ghastly ways, there's a giddy, funhouse glee to the proceedings. Jackson may have gotten tired of those M-F snakes, but we never did.

9. Red Eye

Horrormeister Wes Craven shifted gears for this close-quarters thriller that takes its main character's fear of flying to scary new heights. Rachel McAdams plays Lisa, a hotel manager, who befriends fellow passenger Jackson (Cillian Murphy). Quickly, though, she discovers their encounter is anything but random: He holds her hostage, coercing her into helping him with a terrorist plot by threatening to have her father killed if she doesn't comply. Red Eye reveals in its Hitchcockian vibe, trapping Lisa and the audience on the plane as our heroine tries to outsmart her cunning adversary while 30,000 feet in the air.

8. Hell's Angels

Those who have seen The Aviator know the story of Hell's Angels' making—how eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes invested his fortune and years of his life to produce what he hoped to be the most realistic air-combat movie ever. Hell's Angels doesn't hold up as a great film, but those dogfight scenes remain extraordinary. Modern eyes have become so used to absorbing terabytes of CGI trickery that it's frankly shocking to watch this World War I drama as real pilots fly real planes while being filmed by real cameramen. 

In Hell's Angels, nothing comes out of a computer, and the high-wire intensity is gasp-inducing and thrilling. It was also very dangerous: The shoot required 87 planes and 137 pilots, three of whom died during filming. Hughes' mad vision has inspired plenty of subsequent audacious cinematic aerial assaults—particularly, the helicopter raid in Apocalypse Now.

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7. Flight

Not much of this Oscar-nominated drama takes place on a plane. But the part that does … good lord, is it terrifying. Denzel Washington plays Whip, an alcoholic airline pilot who has to react fast when his plane malfunctions midflight. The rest of Flight deals with the aftermath of his risky crash-landing, which exposes his addiction and inspires some severe soul-searching. 

Nonetheless, the movie's opening aerial sequence might be the most frightening ever filmed. Real-life pilots dismissed Flight as being unrealistic on a number of levels, but director Robert Zemeckis and his team of technical wizards leave you clutching the armrest with such force that you don't have time to quibble over details.

6. Sully

There are two films going on simultaneously in this biopic of celebrated airline pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. In one, Sully (Tom Hanks) is under investigation for his handling of a 2009 emergency landing in the Hudson River, which remarkably resulted in all of his passengers getting out alive. In the other, better movie, we're treated to a harrowing re-creation of Sully's daring handling of that infamous US Airways flight in which both engines were knocked out and certain doom seemed assured. 

Director Clint Eastwood won't let you breathe for a second, and Sully's realistic depiction makes the buildup to the crash even more terrifying. After watching this movie, you'll be even more impressed with Sully's calm command under immense pressure.

5. Air Force One

The 1990s: a time when every other action movie was a rip-off of the Die Hard "guy trapped in a ____" formula. (Speed? Just Die Hard on a bus. Under Siege? That's Die Hard on a boat.) But one of the most successful was Air Force One, where Harrison Ford plays the President of the United States who's trapped on his souped-up personal aircraft after terrorists (led by Gary Oldman) take him hostage.

Ford and director Wolfgang Petersen (In the Line of Fire) were at the height of their popularity, and the movie is full of old-school Hollywood craftsmanship, effortlessly moving from one suspense sequence to the next. The filmmakers have a blast turning Air Force One into an action-movie playground, and Ford is the perfect clenched-jaw hero as the most ass-kicking POTUS ever. He's such a bulletproof star he even gets away with that totally hokey "Get off my plane!" line.

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4. Top Gun

After Top Gun, it was impossible to look at Tom Cruise or Navy pilots the same way ever again. Director Tony Scott's high-flying, super-melodramatic action-drama has been analysed to death. Regardless, Top Gun may be the most '80s of 1980s movies, following hotshot flyboy Maverick (Cruise) as he and his buff buds attend an elite training program when they're not busy playing volleyball and scamming on gals.

Decades later, the flight sequences are still stunning, and the film contains the best aerial fight scenes since Star Wars. Perhaps more importantly, no movie made flying look as awesome as Top Gun did—even if no one understands why you would take a highway to the danger zone.

3. United 93

Airline travel was never the same after the 9/11 terror attacks, and this tense, sobering depiction of that fateful day commemorates the horror and heroism that occurred amidst impossible circumstances. Before United 93, director Paul Greengrass was best known for The Bourne Supremacy, and he incorporated that film's jittery, handheld energy for a meticulous drama that recounts how the passengers of United 93 fought back against the terrorists who hijacked their plane, preventing them from executing their mission by rushing the cockpit. Cutting back and forth between the plane and the ground, as the FAA tries to figure out what's just happened and how to respond to the attack, United 93 is hard to watch, but it's a supremely intelligent and moving account of a terrible moment in American history.

2. The Right Stuff

Although The Right Stuff is rightly remembered as the story of America's first astronauts, much of the movie concerns the important steps these men had to go through first before they could prepare for space. The flight sequences in this Oscar-winning drama remain utterly stirring, as we watch Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) break the sound barrier in a plane so tiny we're sure it's going to break apart at any second. 

Plenty of movies capture the danger and exhilaration of flying, but The Right Stuff also taps into the guts, patriotism, and daredevil spirit that informed these pilots' every decision. By the time the film leaves Earth's orbit, we don't just understand the risks involved in going into space but also the courage and character of the individuals crazy enough to try.

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1. Airplane!

Cinematic comedy can be divided into two eras: before Airplane! and after Airplane! An hilarious riff on 1970s disaster movies—especially the little-remembered Zero Hour!—this 87-minute masterpiece takes everything that's irritating and nerve-wracking about flying and weaponises it into some of the most brilliantly stupid gags to ever grace the silver screen. 

Airplane! helped popularise the Hollywood parody, but more importantly, it created a self-aware, smart-ass brand of comedy that celebrated total irreverence and a cheeky enthusiasm for lower-than-lowbrow humour. Though a lot has changed in the last 40 years, Airplane!'s flying-centric gags remain timeless with a chipper stewardesses, annoying seatmates, terrible airline food, weirdly self-serious pilots, and the nagging fear that the plane could go down any second. Airplane! didn't just revolutionise comedy but proved to be the last word on its subject matter. Assume crash positions!

From: Popular Mechanics
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