Connections - From Airport (1970) to Airplane! (1980)

Airport marks the beginning of the first disaster film wave that was more or less over by the end of the 70s. Airplane! marks the beginning of the spoof wave that more or less lasted until the early 90s. Both are very specific genres that somehow depend on each other. Without serious and often melodramatic films that like to go over the top, there couldn’t be comedies making fun of them. Jim Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker made their name with this one and became the standard which most of the follow-ups failed to reach.

Airplane! actually relies more on the increasingly excessive and absurd sequels to Airport, from Airport ‘75 (1974, Jack Smight), which already feels as if it is parodying itself, to Airport ‘77 (1977, Jerry Jameson), which borrows some elements from The Poseidon Adventure but is maybe the best of the franchise, to The Concorde… Airport' ‘79 (1979, David Lowell Rich), which is so absurd that no parody could do it justice. Still, as seen in the images below, Airplane! still borrows clearly from the first film and shows that despite the mockery, there is a sense of admiration for these films, something than any good spoof must have to be effective (which is a lesson the Scary Movies of the 2000s and everything that followed never seemed to understand).