Much like Apollo 13, Sully is about a near-miss and contains an ending about which we’re all aware. (Unless, of course, you’ve been living in your doomsday bunker. If so, allow me to pass on the message: The chair is against the wall. The chair is against the wall. John has a long mustache. John has a long mustache.) But even so, the movie has already grossed more than $92 million domestically in three weeks. So what’s the draw?
For starters, Sully is directed by Clint Eastwood and stars Tom Hanks. That alone will lure a crowd. But there has to be more. According to Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman:
Of course the National Transportation Safety Board’s role as the movie’s antagonist is debatable. “The machinations of the NTSB and their remarkable hostility toward Sully strain credulity,” writes Sonny Bunch in the Washington Free Beacon. Likewise, our own John Podhoretz adds, “it’s only a few minutes in when you get that the movie’s take on the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’—Sully’s fear he is going to be blamed by the [NTSB] for making a bad decision that will cost him his job and his reputation—is a load of hooey.”
Nevertheless, Podhoretz admits, the movie “just knocks your socks off.” (Bunch likes it too, I think. Although I’m sure if he were aboard that Airbus A320, Bunch’s first word after landing on the Hudson would have been, “Meh.”) I also suspect audiences have a greater yearning for heroes and happiness when the world around them is lacking in both (not an original idea, I’m sure). La La Land, a musical set in modern-day Los Angeles, has already generated tremendous buzz and doesn’t come out until December. Whereas the cheery world of the late 1990s featured blockbusters like Independence Day (1996), Deep Impact (1998), Godzilla (1998), and Armageddon (1998). Yes, three films showed the destruction of New York City in a single year. (I myself look back wistfully on 1998. No kids, no wife … oh wait, never mind. Awful year!)
Gleiberman’s larger point is worth contemplating: “What’s bracing about ‘Sully’ is that it presents us with someone who acted out of fearless strength and skill, and was justly lionized for it all over the world, and the movie says: In our era, it’s not just you or me who can feel worked over by the bureaucracy. Even ‘Sully’ Sullenberger got worked over by the bureaucracy. If he’s not safe, who is?”
