Films not to watch with others on a nine-hour flight
There are worse things than a long-haul flight with no entertainment
11 October 2024 - 05:00
byTymon Smith
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Swedish director Ruben Ostlünd’s particular talent for dissection of the shallowness of bourgeoise upper-crust vanities was last unleashed in his Oscar nominated film Triangle of Sadness.
That film was set on a luxury yacht and included a memorably hard-to-stomach extended scene of projectile vomiting. For his next project, Ostlünd has chosen the horrors of the broken in-flight airplane entertainment system as his satirical target.
It is titled The Entertainment System is Down, with a cast that includes Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton and Daniel Brühl. The film takes as its premise the truly terrifying prospect of a failed entertainment system on a long-haul flight to Australia and the consequences for this on the sanity of its passengers as they fight against the crushing weight of boredom.
Ostlünd was apparently inspired by a study conducted at Virginia University, published under the title “The challenge of the disengaged mind”, which found that participants had a terrible time being forced to sit alone in an empty room with nothing but their thoughts for company for six to 15 minutes. It might also offer easy bait to the new online viral trend called “rawdogging”, when tattooed, muscly bros film themselves determinedly refusing to make use of the in-flight entertainment system on long-haul flights, in a spectacle that has distinctly machismo sexual overtones.
One can only wonder what Ostlünd might then make of a recent news story about what happened when the entertainment system malfunctioned on a real-life Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo. The technical fault didn’t completely incapacitate the flight’s entertainment system but it did make it impossible for passengers to choose their own movies to watch during the flight. The compromise was that, in the style of in-flight entertainment on cheaper European airlines or overnight bus trips, everyone could watch the same movie at the same time. In solid, democratic fashion, the passengers were polled to decide what film should be shown. The film they chose would soon create a new problem all of its own.
That film is Daddio, a small, under-the-radar indie, two-hander in which Sean Penn plays a taxi driver and Dakota Johnson is the passenger he picks up at the airport. The entire film takes place in the taxi as the two characters engage in a long, wide-ranging conversation that may intrigue lovers of serious theatre but is not an obvious choice for diverse audience on a nine-hour plane ride.
It’s especially perplexing when one considers that other options available to them included Pixar’s smash hit sequel Inside Out 2, the Ryan Reynolds action comedy The Fall Guy, Will Smith’s comeback blockbuster sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die and the horror franchise prequel A Quiet Place: Day One starring Lupita Nyong’o.
As Guardian writer Stuart Heritage wondered: “Who on earth are these people? What sort of ridiculous pathology causes a majority of passengers to decide that, to silence the niggling thought that human flight is a betrayal of God’s wishes and that only a thin sheet of metal separates them from an unimaginably horrible death, they should watch one hour and 41 minutes of Dakota Johnson mournfully gazing through a car window?”
Perhaps they were lured by the seeming inoffensive, easily relatable charm of the title or curious about seeing the former 1980s’ bad-boy turned Oscar winner and social activist offering life advice to the daughter of Miami Vice star Don Johnson and also a star in her own right. Whatever their reasoning, the hive mind of flight QF59 soon got much more than it bargained for.
Writer director Christy Hall’s film isn’t just a play set in a cab. As the passengers were made uncomfortably aware, it includes scenes of a sexual nature that definitely are not appropriate for younger viewers transmitted by means of a steamy sexting session that Johnson’s character is engaging in while been driven by Penn. Most notably in the scene that broke the moral back of the passengers, one character sends explicit messages, clearly readable to viewers, before the arrival of the inevitable punchline — an unsolicited picture of an erect penis.
Because of the technical faults, the screens on board could not be paused or dimmed and taking off your headphones will not save you from on-screen sexting. You might argue that this was just desserts for everyone who, when voting for the film, either failed to notice or chose to ignore its R rating for “language, sexual material and brief nudity” or that the crew should have been more circumspect by removing any R-rated films from the list of possible candidates.
Either way, the damage was done and, according to a Qantas spokesperson, “all screens were changed to a family-friendly movie for the rest of the flight” and the airline assured customers that it was “reviewing how the movie was selected”. A passenger went on social media after the flight to decry the film as “40 minutes of boobs and penises” and sympathise with, “the poor kids and their parents because you should have heard the audible gasps across the plane”.
You can catch Daddio in your own time via Apple TV+ but chances are you won’t be seeing it on offer on any Qantas flights again. Perhaps the whole debacle has given credence to the value of “rawdogging” long-haul flights and shown that sometimes the only hell worse than nothing to watch on a long, uncomfortable flight is having to have an unwanted dick pic waved in the face of your children.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
Films not to watch with others on a nine-hour flight
There are worse things than a long-haul flight with no entertainment
Swedish director Ruben Ostlünd’s particular talent for dissection of the shallowness of bourgeoise upper-crust vanities was last unleashed in his Oscar nominated film Triangle of Sadness.
That film was set on a luxury yacht and included a memorably hard-to-stomach extended scene of projectile vomiting. For his next project, Ostlünd has chosen the horrors of the broken in-flight airplane entertainment system as his satirical target.
It is titled The Entertainment System is Down, with a cast that includes Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton and Daniel Brühl. The film takes as its premise the truly terrifying prospect of a failed entertainment system on a long-haul flight to Australia and the consequences for this on the sanity of its passengers as they fight against the crushing weight of boredom.
Ostlünd was apparently inspired by a study conducted at Virginia University, published under the title “The challenge of the disengaged mind”, which found that participants had a terrible time being forced to sit alone in an empty room with nothing but their thoughts for company for six to 15 minutes. It might also offer easy bait to the new online viral trend called “rawdogging”, when tattooed, muscly bros film themselves determinedly refusing to make use of the in-flight entertainment system on long-haul flights, in a spectacle that has distinctly machismo sexual overtones.
One can only wonder what Ostlünd might then make of a recent news story about what happened when the entertainment system malfunctioned on a real-life Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo. The technical fault didn’t completely incapacitate the flight’s entertainment system but it did make it impossible for passengers to choose their own movies to watch during the flight. The compromise was that, in the style of in-flight entertainment on cheaper European airlines or overnight bus trips, everyone could watch the same movie at the same time. In solid, democratic fashion, the passengers were polled to decide what film should be shown. The film they chose would soon create a new problem all of its own.
That film is Daddio, a small, under-the-radar indie, two-hander in which Sean Penn plays a taxi driver and Dakota Johnson is the passenger he picks up at the airport. The entire film takes place in the taxi as the two characters engage in a long, wide-ranging conversation that may intrigue lovers of serious theatre but is not an obvious choice for diverse audience on a nine-hour plane ride.
It’s especially perplexing when one considers that other options available to them included Pixar’s smash hit sequel Inside Out 2, the Ryan Reynolds action comedy The Fall Guy, Will Smith’s comeback blockbuster sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die and the horror franchise prequel A Quiet Place: Day One starring Lupita Nyong’o.
As Guardian writer Stuart Heritage wondered: “Who on earth are these people? What sort of ridiculous pathology causes a majority of passengers to decide that, to silence the niggling thought that human flight is a betrayal of God’s wishes and that only a thin sheet of metal separates them from an unimaginably horrible death, they should watch one hour and 41 minutes of Dakota Johnson mournfully gazing through a car window?”
Perhaps they were lured by the seeming inoffensive, easily relatable charm of the title or curious about seeing the former 1980s’ bad-boy turned Oscar winner and social activist offering life advice to the daughter of Miami Vice star Don Johnson and also a star in her own right. Whatever their reasoning, the hive mind of flight QF59 soon got much more than it bargained for.
Writer director Christy Hall’s film isn’t just a play set in a cab. As the passengers were made uncomfortably aware, it includes scenes of a sexual nature that definitely are not appropriate for younger viewers transmitted by means of a steamy sexting session that Johnson’s character is engaging in while been driven by Penn. Most notably in the scene that broke the moral back of the passengers, one character sends explicit messages, clearly readable to viewers, before the arrival of the inevitable punchline — an unsolicited picture of an erect penis.
Because of the technical faults, the screens on board could not be paused or dimmed and taking off your headphones will not save you from on-screen sexting. You might argue that this was just desserts for everyone who, when voting for the film, either failed to notice or chose to ignore its R rating for “language, sexual material and brief nudity” or that the crew should have been more circumspect by removing any R-rated films from the list of possible candidates.
Either way, the damage was done and, according to a Qantas spokesperson, “all screens were changed to a family-friendly movie for the rest of the flight” and the airline assured customers that it was “reviewing how the movie was selected”. A passenger went on social media after the flight to decry the film as “40 minutes of boobs and penises” and sympathise with, “the poor kids and their parents because you should have heard the audible gasps across the plane”.
You can catch Daddio in your own time via Apple TV+ but chances are you won’t be seeing it on offer on any Qantas flights again. Perhaps the whole debacle has given credence to the value of “rawdogging” long-haul flights and shown that sometimes the only hell worse than nothing to watch on a long, uncomfortable flight is having to have an unwanted dick pic waved in the face of your children.
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