The real reason you couldn’t make Airplane! today is that it’s a parody of a type of movie that doesn’t exist anymore in part because Airplane! made fun of it so hard
The 70s-style disaster film was already dying but Airplane becoming, by far, more known, more watched, and more liked than any real example of the genre even though it was the most popular type of movie right up until Star Wars is one of the most magnificent examples of Weird Al-ing something
The jester mocking the court advisor so deftly, the curse on the king breaks because His Majesty realizes that guy does suck.
To quote Daniel Craig: “We had to destroy the myth because Mike Myers fucked us.”
One unbelievable fact I learned looking for that quote: the Austin Powers sequels outgrossed both of the last two Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies.
Man those Brosnan Bond movies are such a weird transitional moment in pop culture. People tend to analyze that by going “well the Brosnan Bond films were Bond trying to figure things out after the Cold War ended, Craig is post-9/11 Bond” when the actual dividing line is the start of the Austin Powers Era of History
The best satire self destructs.
Satire that lasts 50 years and still elicits “OMG so true"s ain’t worth SHIT to me. If it’s still true after that long, it’s just snark with no bite. Real satire is a knife (or sometimes a scalpel) that dispatches the target of its criticism and in so doing makes itself irrelevant (if not incomprehensible). It’s Jon Stewart getting Crossfire cancelled, it’s Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin so seamlessly that her ticket was unelectable, it’s Duchamp mocking the art scene so hard he irrevocably changed its course.
If satire is still relevant long after its creation, it has failed at its mission. It might be funny, it might be good comedy, but it’s not good satire.
A lot of satire is of its time and one of the better signs of that is how many satirical works just. Outlast what they were parodying and no one knows they’re a parody anymore
Obviously that describes 90% of Weird Al’s songs, but like, Lord of the Flies is a parody of a specific type of British adventure novel (and a specific novel, even) and it’s outlasted it so long that people bring up the satirical aspects of Lord of the Flies to criticize Lord of the Flies.
largishcat