Airplane II: The Sequel

Airplane II: The Sequel (titled Flying High II: The Sequel in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and the Philippines) is a 1982 American parody film written and directed by Ken Finkleman in his directorial debut and starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges, Chad Everett, William Shatner, Rip Torn, and Sonny Bono. A sequel to the 1980 film Airplane!, it was released on December 10, 1982.

The team who wrote and directed the original Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker) had no involvement with this sequel. Paramount, having faced a similar situation with Grease 2 earlier in that year, hired Finkleman, who wrote Grease 2, to write and direct Airplane II as well. Ultimately, the film received mixed reviews from critics and was a commercial disappointment, grossing $27.2 million against a $15 million budget. A third film, Airplane III, was announced in a post-credit message, but was cancelled due to the film's lackluster performance.

Plot
Sometime in the near future, the Moon has been colonized and supports a station on its surface. The XR-2300 lunar shuttle, known as Mayflower One, is being rushed to launch from Houston for its inaugural commercial flight. The head of the ground crew, The Sarge, does not like what is occurring, but he defers to airline management. Meanwhile, in the terminal, the head of the space center, Bud Kruger, argues with the commissioner about the spacecraft’s still-pending government approval, explaining that the ship failed to meet safety regulations, but the commissioner stresses that “the board” is under pressure to keep the launch on schedule.

The ship's computer officer, Elaine Dickinson, expresses her concerns about the shuttle’s poor test results, but her fiancé Simon Kurtz, a member of the flight crew, reminds her that the reports were filed by her former lover, Ted Striker, a test pilot who lost his credibility after suffering a mental breakdown. Having been committed to the Ronald Reagan Hospital for the Mentally Ill after a lawsuit following a test flight that Ted piloted and in which the lunar shuttle crashed, Ted reads a newspaper headline about the imminent shuttle launch, concluding that his hospitalization was meant to silence him regarding dangerous safety issues related to the lunar shuttle. Although he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his actions in "The War" – specifically the loss of his entire squadron above "Macho Grande" – resulting in a relapse of his "drinking problem", he crash-landed a commercial 707 airplane in 1980, on which Elaine was a flight attendant. Later that evening, he escapes from the asylum, determined to save her and the other passengers.

Ted encounters Elaine just before she boards and declares that the shuttle must be stopped, but she declines. Although the flight is full, he buys a ticket from a scalper and boards the spacecraft. As Captain Clarence Oveur, navigator/co-pilot Unger, and first officer/flight engineer Dunn prepare the shuttle for takeoff, he tries to convince her to terminate the mission. Once airborne, Ted takes his seat and details the court case that ensued from his complaints about the lunar shuttle to his elderly seatmate. At the trial, Simon blamed Ted’s incompetence for the shuttle test crash, but Ted insisted the plane was a “flying death trap," and survivors from the 707 crash landing testified to Ted’s heroism.

Back in the cockpit, the crew discovers the spaceship’s core is overheating due to a short circuit, and Elaine realizes the artificially intelligent computer system, R.O.K., is overriding her orders. While attempting to rewire the system and extinguish a fire, Dunn and Unger are blown out of the airlock. Thrown off course, the ship enters an asteroid field headed toward the Sun. The insurgent computer system releases gas through cockpit vents, which kills Captain Oveur and leaves Elaine to pilot the runaway vessel alone. After Simon abandons Elaine and escapes in the sole escape pod, air traffic controller Steve McCroskey reveals that passenger Joe Seluchi had boarded with a briefcase containing a time bomb that he had purchased at a gift shop, intent on committing suicide to provide an insurance payout for his wife. Just before the ship reaches the Sun, Ted manages to wrestle the bomb from Joe, detonates ROK with it, and successfully regains manual control of the ship, setting course for the Moon as originally intended.

As ROK's destruction has caused collateral damage to the shuttle, the flight is not yet out of danger. En route to the Moon, flight control shifts to the Alpha Beta Lunar Base, headed by Commander Buck Murdock, one of Ted's wartime comrades. Contemptuous of Ted because of Macho Grande, he nonetheless agrees to help and attempts to talk Ted through the landing process, but the ship approaches the Moon too quickly. As a last resort, Ted jams Elaine’s hair pin into the control panel, shorting the system and destroying the auxiliary engines, and the ship crashes through the base, safely landing on the Moon's surface. As the passengers frantically evacuate, Ted and Elaine passionately embrace each other and are eventually married. After the wedding, Joe looks into the cockpit and requests that his briefcase be returned to him.

Production
Most of the first film’s cast agreed to return for the film while Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker were involved in the early stages of development. However, Abrahams and the Zuckers decided to make the television series Police Squad! instead, starring Leslie Nielsen from the original movie, and publicly distanced themselves from the sequel during its marketing.

Filming began June 2, 1982, in Los Angeles and lasted eight weeks, with double the budget of the first film.

Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 42% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100 based on nine critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Variety remarked, "It can't be said that Airplane II is no better or worse than its predecessor. It is far worse, but might seem funnier had there been no original". Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, saying it "never really seems to know whether it's about a spaceship. It's all sight gags, one-liners, puns, funny signs and scatological cross-references".

Airplane II opened in the United States the same weekend as The Toy and 48 Hrs. and finished second for the weekend behind The Toy with a gross of $5,329,208 from 1,150 screens. Grosses dropped 45% the following week and the film went on to earn only $27.2 million in the United States and Canada, compared to the original's $83 million box office total.