Airplane! Themes
Absurdity
The universe of Airplane! is just…strange. And that's putting it mildly. From smoking tickets to suicidal seatmates, ZAZ's absurdist masterpiece is chock-full of surreal humor and self-referentia...
Films and Filmmaking
Inspired by the 1957 melodramatic thriller, Zero Hour! as well as the popular disaster films of the 1970s including the Airport series, Airplane! borrows heavily from the narratives and dialogue of...
Warfare
War is hell, even in a ZAZ disaster movie spoof. Though it's handled rather flippantly throughout the film, there's an important, actually quite serious undercurrent running through Airplane!: an e...
Art and Culture
Airplane! is totally self-aware. It has to be, right? From contemporary disaster films, to professional athletes, to household food storage containers and coffee commercials, it seems that no cultu...