As I sit here surfing for furniture on the web, I’ve got The Omen on the tube. I’ve just seen the shot where Robert Thorne is returning to England from Israel, and he’s sitting in first class on the plane with a wrapped bundle of knives in his lap (the ones he’s supposed to use to kill Damien). My first thought was “geez, that would never play these days!”
But there are other scenes in other movies that mark them so clearly as pre-9/11. For example, in the beginning of Die Hard, John McClane is spotted by his seatmate wearing his gun on the plane; and in Die Hard 2, the old woman sitting next to Holly McClane has a taser(!) in her handbag, which they later use to shut up Dick Thornberg. I’m sure there are plenty more, but I’m blanking now.
What other movie scenes can you think of that are now unthinkable (or nearly so) w/r/t current security attitudes, especially while traveling?
Any scene in which people say goodbye at the boarding gate, or the romantic comedy staple where the man sprints up to the gate to stop the woman he loves from getting on the plane. Tough to believe, but there used to be no such thing as airport security at all.
I know it was done in the spirit of Tarantino, Samuri Sword HOLDERS on planes??? Kill Bill II really stretched the limits of his expressionism through film to show Uma sitting with her sword by her side. Much less, Sword holders in planes means that everyone is expected to have one? Today, Qantas would have even taken her whiteboard marker from her.
I like the John Wayne movie, The High and the Mighty (I think), where the foreign woman says, “In my country, there are armed men at the airports” marvelling at how different it was in the United States. That kind of made me giggle since the last time I had gone to the airport there were Aif Force personel with M-16’s.
Spiderman originally had a scene where he caught a helicopter between the Twin Towers, which was cut after the attacks but before the movie’s release. It did make it into some early trailers.
Hell—wasn’t there a thread awhile back that noted a movie where a character boarded a plane on the runway, and only bought his ticket after getting airborne? :eek:
I can’t think of any specific examples, but I don’t think the general theme of planes crashing into buildings was taboo before 9/11, maybe it still isn’t, but I think it would have to be handled quite differently. Similarly, anything containing large buildings collapsing.
I did that once back in the day on a now defunct airline called “People Express”. The flight attendant went up the aisle with a credit card machine on a drink cart and ran off everyone’s credit slip. I’m thinking it was around 1983
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You always had to do that in Canada. I could never understand movies or TV shows where people met others at the gate as they got off the plane. If they had no boarding pass, how did they get past the security checkpoint? But then I learned things were diferent elsewhere.
As for the OP, how about the original Airport? An important element of the plot is the man who carries a bomb aboard in his briefcase. Of course, when that film was made, there was no airport security whatsoever, so it was entirely possible. But there are other things in there you just don’t see anymore: the pilot strolling through the cabin to say hello to people, for example.
The surprisingly good movie Big Trouble was slated to come out right around 9/11, but since it revolved around a plot to get a bomb aboard a plane, it was delayed and quietly released some time later.
(Seriously, Netflix it. Don’t let Tim Allen scare you away!)