It absolutely was, and Kinja mocks me with my uncorrectable error.

Counterpoint: My daughter loved repeatedly watching it in the DVD era of Netflix when she was around 10.

Leaving questions of talent aside, and perceptions may be skewed in this particular commentariat, I think Williams probably has a bit better name-recognition in the wider public - certainly in the U.S., and perhaps even in Europe.

Clear and Present Danger is probably Clancy’s best book, but that has a lot to do with the multiple plots spinning (more than any 2 hour movie could hancle), and a pretty good “twist” ending that the movie bypassed by turning the villains into neo-Nazis. I don’t think a better director could have helped all that much.

I was puzzled by the name, as US Navy destroyers have traditionally been named after people — but Wikipedia clarifies that the ship here is technically the USS Keeling, and “Greyhound” is its callsign/codename assigned for this convoy mission.

The original Airport is definitely structured that way — Bert Lancaster’s airport manager has a number of plotlines spinning around him. That most of them converge on the plane/bomb plot is meant to play out as sort of a twist, rather than the crisis being the main driver of the narrative. Of course, all the sequels…

If it finds a whole new audience, who knows, maybe it’ll join Independence Day and Twister in becoming a franchise decades later.

While Airport is generally thought of as kicking off the “disaster movie” boom, it was itself arguably a revival of an earlier wave of “aerial thrillers” including The High and the Mighty and (Airplane’s inspiration) Zero Hour that had flourished in the ‘50s. Airport’s author, Arthur Hailey, had previously written Zero…

It’s a nice touch, featuring actual Rod Serling narration on an old TV documentary the crew watches. I couldn’t nail down exactly what was being shown, but he was the voice of several Jacques Cousteau TV specials.

As I’ve noted before, when some old-timer calls something “As slow as molasses in January”, you can point out that’s really about 35 miles per hour.

the 1906 quake provided San Francisco’s screenwriters with an additional hassle, having taken place at 5:12 a.m., when most of the city was asleep.

Maybe they told the extras they were going to be in a movie about the Johnstown flood... That’d be kind of surprising...

I recall the summer of ‘89 as the age of the “collateral hit” - Batman was so huge that all the showings were sold out, and other films apparently did unexpectedly good business on the overflow. I remember Weekend at Bernie’s as the most notable beneficiary.

not all that different from the kind of deluded overgrown goofball characters that Will Ferrell would play more than three decades later. The difference is at least partly in the sweetness and restraint of the performance.

Work in a CGI James Mason, and you’ve got a deal!

I recall honestly enjoying Alien From L.A., at least as one of those “punching above its weight class” video store finds back in the late ‘80s. Directed by Albert The Sword and the Sorcerer Pyun (which is similarly enjoyable cheese).

I quite enjoyed the Twin Peaks revival, but damned if this doesn’t seem like a parody of it. Not that that didn’t sometimes seem like a parody of itself. You could splice this in place of that floor sweeping scene and not change very much.

Not so much for some of us...

A Bug’s Life is more directly The Three Amigos, with its whole “fake/entertainer heroes” twist. I find that an interesting chain — Samurai/Magnificent/Amigos — which ultimately produced both A Bug’s Life and Galaxy Quest. I don’t offhand know of any similarly distinctive movie “ripoff” chain.

It was their whole team van as I recall, and probably at least two assistants. I’m not sure it was suppose to be cheer-inducing, though — more of a head-shaking “wages of greed” kind of thing.