ZAZ 1: Airplane!

Speaking of "uplifting activity recently," did you know that this season, among all the mess that's going on around the world, Paramount has started a new Paramount Presents label, giving new, superior blu-ray editions to some of their biggest catalog titles?  And one of the titles we've already gotten is, hey, Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker's Airplane!  They've given it a new 4k remaster, fancy new packaging and fresh special features.  So let's see just how much better it is.

Update 12/5/24: It's 2024, and we now have 'ZAZ: The Collection!,' a 6-disc set from Paramount that gives us their big three films - including, of course, Airplane! - on BD and UHD!  So let's check it out and see that 2020 remaster on a proper 4k disc, and look to my Top Secret! and Naked Gun pages for coverage of the updates to those films.

You might be surprised to know that Airplane!, as we know it now, was originally intended to play as the centerpiece to another Kentucky Fried Theater-style movie, where it would essentially be a short parody film surrounded by more sketches.  But I think history has shown they made the right choice.  Even though nobody watches Airplane! to get caught up in the drama of a commercial flight in danger of crash landing, having a central narrative to hang everything on does keep the viewer engaged.  With constantly rotating sketches, any joke that falls flat feels like dead air.  Here, the ride is at least smoother until the next bit, that'll hopefully be funnier.  And of course if Airplane! is known for anything, it's known for being packed to the brim with non-stop gags, so it's never a long wait.

Part of what makes Airplane! work so well is that it really nails its target.  It's full of great character actors who were in so many of these dry 70s films as legit straight men, not comic actors.  Veterans like Robert Stack, Peter Graves, James Hong, Barbara Billingsley, Lloyd Bridges... and of course Leslie Nielsen wound up becoming a comedy icon after his pitch perfect performance here.  Then, of course, they packed the film with outrageous cameos and great comics in tiny roles all around them, including David Leisure, Jimmie Walker, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Ethel Merman, plus their own Kentucky Fried people, like Stephen Stucker and, of course, themselves.  What's more, their two leads, Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, turned out to be brilliant discoveries.  And while I can't of course vouch for the veracity of every line and sight gag in a feature film that's carrying a record number of them, the writing overall holds up surprisingly well, especially compared to the litany of similar films it inspired, even most of those by its own creators.

Paramount initially released Airplane! as a pretty nice, anamorphic widescreen DVD in 2000.  There have been plenty of repackagings and arbitrary reissues over the years, but the next version with an actually updated disc was the 2005 'Don't Call Me Shirley' special edition with additional extras.  In 2011, Paramount put it out on blu, and that's been our sole option until recently.  Again, there have been reissues, double-features and alternate packaging, but it's always been the same old blu.  Until the summer of 2020, thanks to the newish Paramount Presents line, which restored the film in 4k for their 40th Anniversary Edition, available in standard packaging or steelbook.  As you can see in the scan above, I chose the latter.  It lasted four years, until Paramount compelled me to replace it with their proper UHD edition in their 6-disc 'ZAZ: The Collection!' boxed set.

1) 2005 US Paramount DVD; 2) 2011 US Paramount BD; 3) 2020 US Paramount BD;
4) 2024 Paramount BD; 5) 2024 Paramount UHD.

For whatever reason, Paramount perpetually insists on releasing Airplane! in 1.78:1, even though it surely should be matted to 1.85:1.  But oh well, whatever.  It's been that way since the earliest DVD... although with a smidgen of pillar-boxing in the overscan areas, the DVDs have technically been 1.78:1.  But while the framing stays virtually the same (The DVD actually shows slivers more around some of its edges, but a bit less along the top), the picture quality keeps on improving from generation to generation.  It goes without saying that the DVD is softer than the blus, but let's say it anyway, because it really looks fuzzy by comparison.  The BD is sharper and pulls out more detail (look at Graves' hair in the second set of shots, for example) that was washed out of the standard def transfer.  It looks lightly tweaked, perhaps with some kind of unsharpening tool, but honestly, by 2011 standards, it was pretty good, not a blu calling for an upgrade.

But as the age of 4k rolled around, we began to see how much better blus could look, and now it's Airplane!'s turn.  Grain is much more natural even on the new BDs, and the entire experience feels more film-like, as opposed to the waxiness of the DVD and tinniness of the old blu.  And unsurprisingly, the 2024 BD has the exact same transfer as the 2020.  Whatever that digital tinkering they did in 2011 is gone, and the colors are deeper and more authentic.  Black levels, too.  It's just a more attractive, satisfying watch, although I have to say, even on the UHD, grain is patchy and inconsistent.  If it were just on the BD, I might've chalked it up to a mediocre encode, but since it's the same on the BD, I suspect a little DNR.  This would've looked better coming from someplace like Arrow.  Still though, it's the best the film has looked to date.

One drawback of these new editions, I suppose, is revisionist audio.  The original 2000 DVD gave the film a new 5.1 remix, and part of the benefit of the 'Don't Call Me Shirley' DVD was they inclusion of the original stereo mix, along with the 5.1.  It also had optional English and Spanish subtitles and a French dub.  Well, for whatever reason, the blu-rays and UHD have dumped the stereo track, only giving us the 5.1.  They all bumped it up to DTS-HD, but that's all we get, at least for English.  The 2011 BD also has French, Portuguese and Spanish dubs with English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles, while the 2020 has a German dub with English, HoH, French, German and Japanese subs.  Now the 2024 BD has German and French dubs with English, German, French and Japanese subs and the UHD has German, Spanish, French and Italian dubs with English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese subs.  I don't know why the foreign language options are different across every single disc, but there you have it.

Special features complicate matters, too.  The 2000 DVD started with an excellent audio commentary by the Zuckers, Abrahams, and producer Jon Davidson.  It also had the trailer.  The 'Don't Call Me Shirley' edition added a "Long Haul" branching option, where you could watch the film with pop-up videos interviewing the cast and crew.  It was pretty fantastic, talking to nearly everybody, from the biggest stars to the non-professional bit players, as well as showing otherwise unavailable deleted scenes and outtakes.  But "Long Haul" was right, it turns the movie into a 4-hour viewing experience.  It also came in a slip cover and included an option to get your own inflatable Otto autopilot.  And the initial blu just ported all of the extras over in SD to their HD disc.

I was wondering how Paramount Presents would treat the Long Haul footage, and disappointingly but unsurprisingly, they dropped it.  And it's a shame, because it's terrific, although the "haul" was tiresome, especially if you'd just watched the film normally first.  But here's the thing I found.  You could easily just rip the disc (DVD or blu; it's all SD either way), stick the interviews files into an editor like Windows Movie Maker, and it plays wonderfully as a roughly 75-minute documentary.  Even without the context of the feature, and each clip just playing in the order they're found on the disc, it's very enjoyable and coherent.  I ripped it to a blank disc and called it "The Direct Flight."  😉

The "Long Haul" documentary

And I'm especially glad for that DVDR now that the 40th Anniversary Edition let it go.  I've just slipped it into the left-hand side of my nifty new steelbook, because to me it's really essential.  The other extras are great, but don't include all the great material found here.  But, to be fair, I have to point out that the 2020 blu came up with some new special features.  There's a roughly 35 minute Q&A recorded at a screening with Abrahams and the Zuckers, which is good though a bit redundant.  There's also a new, retrospective featurette with Abrahams and the Zuckers, which is nice but completely redundant.  I'm happy to get them, but they don't hold a candle to the "Long Haul."  Also, just a final, niggling disappointment, they dropped the trailer.

And in 2024?  Extras-wise, it's the 2020 edition all over again.  Still no "Long Haul" and no trailer, but they have everything else, including the commentary and 2020 interviews.  Curiously, the commentary isn't on the UHD, just the BD, which is a slight annoyance.  But we do get 3 exclusive fold-out posters [see above] and a booklet, including the Zuckers' fifteen rules of comedy and the lyrics to their original Top Secret! songs.  And you'll be happy to hear that the back sheet with the disc info passes Mike from Grindhouse's "does it fit inside the box" test.  👍

So this is almost all good news.  The new transfer is great and hey, I'm happy to take those new extras even if they're not amazing.  I'm a little disappointed we still didn't get the original audio track, but it's a sweet upgrade either way (especially since it's not like the 2011 BD had it).  I'd just add that, in addition to getting this, you should still hang onto or track down an older edition with the "Long Haul."  The good news there is the market has been flooded with them, so they're easy to find and super cheap.  And I'm pleased to see Paramount continuing to show love to their catalog titles with fancy home video releases, even if they're not strictly perfect.