This.
The movie is about a particular style of humor. The purpose of remaking a movie is to attempt to find a better, or different way of telling the same story. But the story just doesn’t matter here. And if the goal here would be to re-tell the same jokes, well, I think the style of the humor itself would feel quite dated.
I imagine the result would be similar top the remake of The Inlaws. (which I didn’t see BTW, but if the trailer, reviews, and comments from others are any indication…).
What would be great is if they did a deadpan, totally serious remake of *Airplane! *They could get, say, Dana Andrews and Sterling Hayden and Linda Darnell to star in it. It would be hi-larious!
I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.
To the tower! To the tower! Rapunzel!
It would undoubtedly end up being remade by the same assholes that gave us movies like “Meet the Spartans” and it would undoubtedly suck horribly.
A remake? What is it?
Well, that’s when they take an old movie and make a newer, crappier version of it, but that’s not important right now…
I’d rather see a good gladiator movie.
And then the Arabs will come - and buy Mercedes Benzes!
The Halloween version of it (directed by Rob Zombie, I suppose), using their reanimated corpses, probably would be a hoot.
Especially the scene where the corpse of Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch (as the pilot) is chatting up the corpse of the man that Raymond Ferrell grew up to be…
Incidentally, I had not known that the cockpit in Zero Hour! had a famous athlete among the crew. I wonder if the ZAZ team had been taking that into account when they cast Kareem.
Seems 100% likely. Much of Airplane! is a very faithful remake of Zero Hour, dialog and all.
Be careful with that. In the original, they cast Leslie Nielsen because they thought his serious gravitas as an actor would make him a good straight man.
I’m deadly serious, and don’t call me Shirley.
I have to say that one of my favourite jokes was something that I never noticed until about the tenth time I watched it. Whenever they cut to an exterior plane shot you hear the drone of a prop-plane.
It makes me laugh, what can I say? I like my humour childish and unsubtle…like my men.
I would say very likely since they originally cast Pete Rose, but filming was during baseball season, so they were not able to use him.
THIS – is exactly why we need a re-make now! 
What the hell. Make EVERYBODY who goes through the scanners come out naked.
[Slight digression]
Way back sometime in 2004, when all this TSA shit was getting started, Ann Coulter wrote a column in which she suggested that we should all just fly naked. The lady makes sense for once!
[/Slight digression]
And you know what else would be hilarious? Find some actor who’s famous for playing drunk guys and have him play the pilot.
(emphasis added)
I think you are smoking something fairly potent and now would be a good time to have even more of it. (Including some to share around.) !!
Question about Airplane!, though: Does someone know the source of that gag, “Surely you jest”
“I’m not jesting and stop calling me Shirley!” (and variations thereof)
Did that gag originate in this movie, or was it used before? I swear, I always thought it was a standard Groucho Marx line (it sure sounds like one, doesn’t it?) – but my attempts to research on-line all point to Airplane! with no mention that I can find of any earlier source. Does anybody know otherwise?
I dunno. Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
No. It came after a decade of disaster movies such as four versions of “Airport”, “Towering Inferno”, “Earthquake” and “Poseidon Adventure”. I suppose if there is any prevalent genre now it is vampire movies but that may not work. Plus "spoof movies’ were relatively rare 30 years ago.
I’ve watched Airplane! at least half a dozen times, and neither of these scenes are in it.