This 1970 Action Thriller Was So Good That It Spawned Three Awful Sequels

Director team George Seaton and Henry Hathaway's action thriller "Airport" was a big deal in the early 1970s. The film was an ensemble disaster piece that combined an onboard bomb threat and an airport struggling with hostile weather to great effect. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, with Helen Hayes winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role. It also spawned three sequels, scattered throughout the decade. However, the biggest disaster in all three of them was that they ... well, let's just say they weren't very good. 

The sequels are not entirely unwatchable, as guilty pleasure old-school disaster films go. 1979's "The Concorde: Airport '79" even made its way on /Film's list of underrated disaster movies that deserve a watch. All in all, though, the trend of decline in quality and critical appreciation was extremely noticeable, which hurt the series severely at the box office. Where "Airport" brought in a little over $100 million, "Airport 1975" halved that with a box office haul of $47 million. "Airport '77" limped its way to $30 million, and the $13 million box office take of "The Concorde: Airport '79" was a final nail in the coffin. (This, of course, is why it's so underrated in the first place. It's hard to appreciate something barely anyone has seen.) Put all that together, and the three sequels combined made just $90 million — a cool $10 million less than the original. 

So, what exactly went wrong with the franchise that went from a lofty award season contender to the era's equivalent of direct-to-video? Let's dive deeper into the "Airport" movies to find out.

In all fairness, it made perfect sense to turn "Airport" into a franchise. While there are precious few disaster films among the best movies of the 1970s (this was the decade of "Star Wars," "Jaws," and "The Godfather," after all), the genre was a massive player over the decade. After Gene Hackman's "The Poseidon Adventure" legitimized disaster movies in 1972, "Airplane" was in prime early adapter position to capitalize with a slew of sequels. The problem: At some point down the road, they forgot that said sequels should measure up to the original.

Much of the franchise's decline has to do with loss of focus. "Airport" is a robust piece of cinema that uses its hectic, snowed-in setting to tell many different stories, and benefits from a cast that features names like Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, and the Oscar-winning Hayes. "Airport 1975," directed by Jack Smight, is a whole different movie, depicting the control tower's struggle to get someone to land a disaster-struck, pilotless Boeing 747 passenger plane safely. Jerry Jameson's "Airport '77" adds a generous splash of "The Poseidon Adventure" in the mix by sinking a whole hijacked 747 in the sea and turning the film into an underwater survival drama. 

By the time David Lowell Rich's "The Concorde: Airport '79" took flight, all caution was thrown to the wind, and the movie's meager audiences witnessed a supersonic passenger Concorde barrel-rolling through missile attacks while a high-tech device serves as a time-bomb MacGuffin — a fun idea for sure, but hardly one that can ride an Oscar winner's coattails. Film by film, the series became its own parody, until the end of the 1970s mercifully ended the franchise, too.

There's another reason why "Airport" doesn't have the cultural legacy it might enjoy without its increasingly outlandish sequels. In 1980, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker unleashed their classic spoof "Airplane!", which remains incredibly hilarious after over 40 years. Can you guess the franchise it preys on?

"Airplane!" borrows liberally from the 1957 movie "Zero Hour!", but several scenes were also either heavily inspired by or directly lifted from "Airport 1975," in particular. The sick kid, the nun with a guitar, the unlikely hero pilot tasked with landing the plane, a plucky stewardess romantic interest ... it's all there, and it's the "Airplane!" versions that have made their mark in popular culture. 

If "Airplane!" using the "Airport" franchise's own tools to hijack the first class seat in the commercial flight disaster movie genre isn't enough, the series later caught another major stray from the 1980s spoof genre. The sole connecting tissue of the four "Airport" movies is Oscar winner George Kennedy, whose aviation-adjacent character Joe Petroni — a man of many hats who could serve as a mechanic, a Columbia Airlines higher-up, or a pilot as the plot required — appeared in all four movies. In 1988, Kennedy became an important part of the era's other major spoof film, playing Captain Ed Hocken in "The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad." 

As luck would have it, Kennedy's character is the boss of protagonist Frank Drebin ... who, of course, was played by comedy legend and "Airplane!" standout Leslie Nielsen. It's probably safe to say that Kennedy is now far more associated with "The Naked Gun" series than he is with the "Airport" one, which cost "Airport" yet another point in the pop culture game.