'Plane' and the Top 10 Sky Trash Movies

Justice League 2017

The jumping-off joke for the segment: one host claims to have worked on 'the Snyder Cut' and is now 'restoring' the Whedon Cut, i.e. the original theatrical version.

The Suicide Squad 2021

Referenced in passing: Gunn turned down a podcast interview request during this film's press cycle.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 2023

Sean admits to being the one Big Picture listener still excited for it.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods 2023

Out that same week; noted for Zachary Levi's promotional push.

The Flash 2023

Gunn had already called it one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, despite not having made it himself.

Blue Beetle 2023

Gunn's own review, per the hosts: 'that exists over there, good luck to them.'

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 2023

Christmas 2023 release; Sean says he liked the first one and is looking forward to it.

Aquaman 2018

The Fugitive 1993

The Tommy Lee Jones reference for how little patience is left for one more extended-universe rollout: 'I don't care.'

Plane 2023

Gerard Butler's Captain Brody Torrance flies a nearly empty New Year's Eve flight from Singapore to Tokyo through a lightning storm and crash-lands on Jolo Island in the Philippines, a real and genuinely lawless place the film doesn't bother renaming. One of the fourteen passengers is a shackled murderer (Mike Colter) being extradited; once the island's militia shows up, the movie turns into a Raid-style hand-to-hand action picture for its back half. Both hosts wanted more time in the plane and more comic relief from the supporting cast (Tony Goldwyn's fixer, Paul Ben-Victor's cheapo-airline owner); Chris liked it more than Sean, who found it a little too straight-faced for how thin the premise is.

Greenland 2020

The Gerard Butler/Ric Roman Waugh disaster movie the hosts think Plane is chasing: also dead serious, and released into a moment primed to take it that way.

Kandahar 2023

Butler and Waugh's next collaboration, an undercover-CIA-operative thriller also featuring Olivia-Mai Barrett as his daughter (rendered as 'Olivia Mae Barrett' in the transcript).

Top Gun 1986

The hosts' clean definition of the genre: thin story, high action, minimal characterization, maximum jargon.

Top Gun: Maverick 2022

The un-trashy counterexample: all the same ingredients, but weighted down with real feeling about the characters and the decades of movies behind them.

Iron Eagle 1986

Chris's honorable mention: teenagers from Bakersfield launch an air raid on Libya, the same year and same basic plot as Top Gun, but dumber.

Wings 1927

Cited as an early ancestor of the genre, not far off from the sky trash formula decades later.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri 1954

Named among the postwar aerial pictures that built the genre's template.

Flying Leathernecks 1951

The Aviator 2004

Brought up for Howard Hughes's own fascination with flight as cinematic spectacle.

Black Sunday 1977

The hinge point the hosts identify: mid-'70s hijacking anxiety starts bleeding into the genre, through the '80s and beyond.

Sully 2016

A boundary case for both hosts. Chris doesn't count it as sky trash; Sean does, arguing the film invents a kangaroo-court NTSB hearing to manufacture stakes that never existed.

Flight 2012

The other boundary case; both agree this one qualifies, on the strength of a plane crash sequence they call one of the best ever shot, followed by two hours of Denzel Washington in a bender.

Fearless 1993

Peter Weir's plane-crash-aftermath drama, explicitly ruled out: 'not sky trash,' though a clear cousin of Flight.

The Dark Knight Rises 2012

Its cold-open plane hijacking is singled out as genuinely great; the rest of the movie is mocked as incoherent.

Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom 2023

A tangent about the French film industry pinning its hopes on this Guillaume Canet/Vincent Cassel/Marion Cotillard blockbuster.

World War Z 2013

Has a great plane sequence, per Chris, but doesn't clear the sky trash bar on its own.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw 2019

F9 2021

The one where the Fast franchise finally went to space.

Now You See Me 2 2016

A rewatchables request Sean says he gets constantly, brought up while tracing director Jon M. Chu's follow-up path.

Bridesmaids 2011

Praised for one of the great comedic airplane sequences, via Melissa McCarthy's character.

Midnight Run 1988

The steak-and-lobster surf-and-turf scene on the plane gets a shoutout.

Twilight Zone: The Movie 1983

The George Miller/John Lithgow segment with the gremlin on the wing, distinguished from the John Landis segment's real-life tragedy.

Snakes on a Plane 2006

The viral title that became a movie; both agree the title did more work than the film itself.

Passenger 57 1992

Ruled 'fun, but not good,' and more of a Wesley Snipes vehicle than a plane movie.

Air Force One 1997

No. 1 - a Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Glenn Close film from Wolfgang Petersen that Sean insists is trash the moment the Secret Service traitor gets sucked out the door as the plane goes down.

Flightplan 2005

No. 2 - Jodie Foster's Airbus designer wakes up mid-flight to find her daughter missing, with no record she was ever aboard; a Hitchcockian thriller that made $235 million.

Non-Stop 2014

No. 3 - Sean's pick for the best modern version of the genre: Liam Neeson, an absurdly stacked cast, and a plot that delivers exactly what the trailer promises, no more and no less.

Stealth 2005

No. 4 - Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx as stealth-bomber pilots phased out by a rogue AI plane; Jamie Foxx's slow-motion death by mountain is the highlight.

Horizon Line 2020

No. 5 - Allison Williams learns to fly a small plane after her instructor (Keith David) dies mid-flight of a heart attack, inspired by Sean's own account of his wife studying a pilot's controls out of anxiety.

Firefox 1982

No. 1 - Clint Eastwood steals a Soviet fighter jet that fires its weapons only when the pilot thinks in Russian. Released the month Chris was born; he calls it 'kind of bad but also perfect.'

Red Eye 2005

No. 2 - Wes Craven's Rachel McAdams/Cillian Murphy thriller, a charming-stranger-turns-serious-criminal plot Chris pairs with Flightplan; came out the same year.

Flight of the Phoenix 2004

No. 3 - Dennis Quaid leads a cast including Tyrese, Giovanni Ribisi, and Miranda Otto rebuilding a crashed transport plane out of its own wreckage in the Gobi Desert; a remake of the 1965 Jimmy Stewart film, scripted in part by Scott Frank.

Executive Decision 1996

No. 4 - Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, and Steven Seagal in a hijacking thriller built around a B-2 stealth bomber docking with a commercial jet mid-flight.

Flight of the Intruder 1991

No. 5 - John Milius's last theatrical feature, a Vietnam-set Navy bombing mission with Willem Dafoe, chosen as a tribute to Milius's filmmaking rather than the movie's quality.

Die Hard 2 1990

The big omission from both lists. The hosts argue it's spiritually sky trash despite being set almost entirely in an airport, on the strength of one of the most traumatic plane crashes either has seen.

Turbulence 1997

Ray Liotta as a killer aboard a commercial flight; remembered fondly, then rewatched and found wanting.

Broken Arrow 1996

Ruled out for taking place mostly in national parks, not the sky.

Always 1989

Spielberg's aerial firefighting drama, brought up via director Brad Anderson's early work; ruled 'more of a bummer' than sky trash.

Showing Up 2023

The answer to a teased riddle about an upcoming film built around a fear of falling planes, even though it isn't set on one: Kelly Reichardt's next movie.

Fracture 2007

Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins, cited as the model for a future 'courtroom trash' episode.