Dominic Corry on his favourite plane crashes on film – some fatal, others phenomenally lucky, and all spectacular.
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Master of psychological suspense Alfred Hitchcock spent the first half of his career on action adventures and spy thrillers – popcorn blockbusters of their day that generally rule. Foreign Correspondent is one such film, a doozy primarily remembered for its climactic crash scene.
Displaying the technical creativity that would define his approach to cinema, Hitchcock set the scene up by projecting footage of the ocean rushing towards the camera on a giant water tank and with the fuselage set in front of it. With the camera inside the cockpit, the plane appears to plummet towards the sea – then they explode the side of the tank at the moment of impact and water rushes furiously into the cockpit. It works remarkably well.
The World According to Garp (1982)
My favourite movie plane crash scene of all time is also one of the most fun on this list because nobody dies. Robin Williams and Mary Beth-Hurt play a young married couple who in this scene are looking at suburban houses to raise a family in.
They’re about to be taken inside by the realtor when they hear the buzzing sound of a small aircraft in trouble. They turn around to see a plane heading towards them which then proceeds to crash into the second storey of the house. The pilot emerges and asks if he can use the phone, and Williams’ Garp immediately agrees to buy the house, theorising that it’s been “pre-disastered” and will provide his family with a safe home. Awesome.
Alive (1993)
Probably the most harrowing scene on this list, director Frank Marshall forever upped the ante for cinematic plane crashes in this underrated film about the Uruguayan rugby team who crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972.
With expert pre-CGI use of models and gimble/blue screen work, Marshall details the nightmarish specifics of the actual crash – the plane hit the ridge of a mountain on its way down which essentially cut the fuselage in two, sending the front section hurtling through the air. The mid-air scenes inside the broken fuselage where one passenger after another gets sucked out the back of the plane are particularly brutal. If that wasn’t enough, they then had to eat their mates.
Con Air (1996)
This benchmark for ridiculous ’90s cinema spends all of its running time building up to its climactic crash, in which the enormous prison transport plane careens down the Las Vegas strip.
Like the rest of the film, the scene is not marked by nuance – various Vegas icons are cut down by the broad wings as a million tiny lightbulbs pop and splutter. The CGI isn’t especially impressive, but Steve Buscemi sings ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ as the plane comes to pieces around him, so there’s that.
Fight Club (1999)
The air carnage scene in Fight Club is pretty brief, but still very effective. Presented with the kind of digital slickness that only David Fincher seems to be able to pull off, the scene has the Narrator (Edward Norton) calmly keeping himself together as another plane collides with his passenger jet.
The side of the fuselage is ripped away and passengers get sucked out into the night air as the Narrator considers his existence and thinks about soap. It’s of course a dream sequence (or Fight Club‘s version of a dream sequence) and the plane never hits the ground, but it remains one of the most jolting moments in a film filled with them.
Final Destination (2000)
In a five film series marked by creative carnage, the opening plane crash sequence from the first Final Destination film still holds up as one of the franchise’s highpoints. In the lead up to the set-piece, director James Wong builds up the tension masterfully with various shots of creaking wings and rusted doors.
Once the engine explosion rips open the side of the plane, we get some Alive-esque moments of passengers being sucked out into the rainy night with the added delight of some other passengers being immolated in their seats. It was fun to (SPOILER WARNING FOR Final Destination 5) revisit this scene in the latest FD film, and it reminded me how effective it was the first time.
Cast Away (2000)
The crash that results in Tom Hank suffering the titular fate in Cast Away recalls Foreign Correspondent in how it is shot from the inside of a plane plummeting into the ocean. It’s all seen pretty much from Hanks’ character’s perspective, making it one of the most effective “first-person” crashes put on screen.
As water rushes into the cabin, an extremely claustrophobic tension is evoked, and is only exacerbated by the stormy night-time environment. This is director Robert Zemeckis’ trademark technical brilliance at its best.
Superman Returns (2006)
Time has not been kind to Superman Returns – met with critical indifference upon release, its reputation has only gotten worse since then. But there’s one sequence everyone can agree worked unconditionally, and it involves the man in red and blue tights preventing an out of control 747 smashing into a baseball game.
So yeah, technically not a crash, but this surely counts. Supes slows the fall with extreme power and crunching metal, before gently laying the plane down in front of a giant crowd, who promptly cheer wildly. It’s a pretty great moment in an otherwise not great film.
Knowing (2009)
The passengers aboard this crashing plane aren’t shown in Alex Proyas’ unfairly derided (I LOVED IT) sci-fi thriller, as we experience the impending crash as an on-the-ground spectator and then the immediate aftermath in a manner never before seen on screen. In a single dazzling (special effects-assisted) steadycam shot, Nicolas Cage runs through the flaming wreckage of a passenger jet, dazed by the carnage around him.
It’s a bravura single shot that builds on those in Alfonso Curaon’s Children of Men. One particularly gruesome moment shows passengers who survived the crash get enveloped by exploding wreckage. It’s worth seeing Knowing just for this scene.
Flight (2012)
The second Robert Zemeckis-directed crash on this list, Flight was always going to have to do something creative with the crash that its plot is hung upon.
It succeeded by focusing on the build-up to the crash – once the plane hits the ground and Denzel Washington’s pilot is knocked unconscious, we don’t see anything more of it. But up until that moment we’ve seen a jet airliner fly upside down then right itself, plus all the resulting in-plane carnage. Then as it’s going down, it hits the top of a church, sending worshippers scrambling for cover. Denzel’s pilot is out-of-it on drugs and booze, so it probably would’ve seemed extra intense to him.
