Air Force One's Screenwriter Had One Concern About The Film's Most Famous Line
In Wolfgang Petersen's 1997 thriller "Air Force One," Harrison Ford plays President James Marshall, the rare commander-in-chief who is just as capable at punching a-holes in the jaw as he is at policy. Although the Cold War was over by 1997 — the Russian coup d'état happened in 1991 — Russians were still a handy movie "bad guy" in American cinema for a few extra years. As such, the bad guy in "Air Force One" was a bitter Russian jerkwad named Egor Korshunov (Gary Oldman) who felt the collapse of the Soviet Union could still be undone. President Marshall didn't take kindly to Korshunov's attempts to hijack Air Force Once, and the President kills multiple Russian goons over the course of the movie.
The film ends with Korshunov and Marshall grappling near an open cargo bay door, engaging in an action movie's usual round of merry fisticuffs. Before dispatching with Korshunov, Marshall angrily yells "Get off my plane!" It was an iconic moment for a few months in the summer of 1997. Since then, few people have discussed "Air Force One" with much enthusiasm. The credited screenwriter for "Air Force One" was Andrew W. Marlowe, also the author of the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller "End of Days" and the Kevin Bacon Invisible Man flick "Hollow Man." He also created and served as executive producer on the hit TV series "Castle." Clearly, Marlowe has an ear for Hollywood blockbusters.
When it came to "Get off my plane," Marlowe had a few words of trepidation to express, words he shared in a recent interview with SyFy. It seems Marlowe thought the line was a little cheesy.
Ah'll be back
Marlowe noted that certain lines of movie dialogue have burned into the collective unconsciousness in a way that even their writers couldn't have predicted. Often, he notes, it takes a certain kind of timing and a certain actor's reading to lodge a line in the brain. Even incidental lines can become recognizable through a quirk of filmmaking. He said:
"You never know what lines are gonna become iconic. When you think about 'The Terminator' and you look at it on the page, the line, 'I'll be back' [it's nothing special]. But you pair that with Arnold Schwarzenegger's delivery in that moment ... it becomes incredibly quoted."
From that, one can infer that Marlowe wasn't hoping to pen a typical "badass" line when he wrote "Get off my plane" for his lead character. "[W]hen I wrote it," he said, "I didn't know." Indeed, Marlowe felt that his quotidien action line was better thought of as a placeholder until he could think of something better. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — he never did. Harrison Ford was stuck saying "Get off my plane." Luckily, it all worked out in the end. Marlowe said:
"I was just looking for a visceral line, this guy's anger and rage, talking to the person who has invaded his home and taken his family. And the plane is symbolic of his home ... But I was always concerned that the line was a little cheesy, so I was like, 'Okay, I'm gonna think of something better.' And then I didn't and when Harrison performed it, it turned out just to be pitch-perfect for the character. Harrison really took ink on paper and breathed enormous life into it, so that it even reverberates today."
It is, fairly, one of the film's better moments.
And the Russian thing?
As for relying on ex-Soviet bad guys, Marlowe was actually thoughtful. Sure, generic Soviets had served as villains in movies for a generation, but Marlowe felt that post-Soviet Russians were a very real threat that carried with them a real-world political dimension. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, there did appear to be — at least by Marlowe's estimation — a schism between the progressives and the old-world hardliners who wanted the glory days of Gorbachev back. Marlowe said:
"I liked looking at the complexities within the Soviet Union. You had these reformers who were looking to push Russia into the future after Gorbachev. And then you had these hardliners that saw the breakup of their empire. So creating a character who wanted to reestablish Russian glory, who was opposed to the reformers, I thought gave some complexity on the other side, so it wasn't just mustache-twirling bad guys. One of the things I tried to do [with Korshunov] was make him, in his mind, a good guy. He's a patriot, he's somebody who's trying to defend this country."
Marlowe also noted that, given the rise of Vladimir Putin — a world leader keen on upholding a warlike, gangster's oligarchy in Russia — his vision of hard-minded, corrupt hardliners eventually proved to be timely. While "Air Force One" may be a relic of the 1990s, a rewatch might possibly be in order. For one, it may offer some insight into the current climate of Russia, and for another, we can all still enjoy Harrison Ford growling "Get off my plane!"