History Film / Flight2012

* NailedToTheWagon: The night before the NTSB public hearing, his layer and union rep check Whitaker into a hotel room whose mini-bar has been stripped of alcohol. [[spoiler: Too bad that the interior door to the next room over was accidentally left unlocked]].

** While extremely dramatic, two errors that didn't appear all that necessary crop up. First, Whitaker narrates dramatically to Air Traffic Control when the aircraft was uncontrollable; real-life pilots know that communicating their issue to ATC just wastes valuable headspace, speech, and time that simply can't be spared when dealing with an extremely dangerous control malfunction; a pilot calls Mayday only when the situation has somewhat stabilized. Second, each engine gives a fire warning, and the First Officer correctly activates the fire handles on each engine (which cuts off all fuel to the engine, then sprays the engine down with fire retardant, i.e., shutting down the engine permanently so that it does not destroy the wing) and yet, after deliberately shutting down each engine, the First Officer seems surprised when each engine spins down and loses power.

* ItsNotMyFault: Whip insists through the majority of the movie, that it's all the defected plane's fault for the crash and the death of some of the passengers and crew.

* TheCaptain: Whitaker subverts the archetype in many ways, but there's no doubt who the man in charge on that plane was and who got it on the ground in more less one piece. The movie juxtaposes his absolute calm and mastery of the aircraft with the absolute lack of any control in his personal life.

* DrunkenMaster: Verging on BrokenAesop territory. Whip can pull off a maneuver to save his plane that no other pilot can do ''while drunk and high''. He also bluffs his way through questioning and hearings...[[spoiler:until the NTSB offers to make Katerina the scapegoat and he refuses to do it.]]

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: Subverted. Although the more intense Christian believers (like Evans and his wife) may come across as eccentric at first, they all show genuine courage in the face of life-changing disaster.

* NeverTrustATrailer: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLSADFCyjE One TV ad]] for the movie sold it as a suspense\thriller, with hints of government conspiracy ("it's a lie, Whip"), while the movie itself establishes Whitaker's drinking and drug habits from the start.

* ActorAllusion:
** When Nicole is on the set of the porn film, Kip suggests she can play Desdemona. Kelly Reilly did play Desdemona in a 2007 production of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}''.
** "SympathyForTheDevil", which serves as Creator/JohnGoodman's {{Leitmotif}} in ''Flight'', was also heavily featured in [[{{Fallen}} another movie starring him and Denzel Washington.]]
** Director Robert Zemeckis' last live action film before Flight also [[{{CastAway}} featured a plane crash]]!

* NightmareFuel: The main theme of the film, airline pilots abuse of substances, is scarily TruthInTelevision as the number of alcoholic pilots and pilots which fly inebriated is staggeringly high. A few years back British Airlines introduced breathalyzer tests after the management found out that a majority of their pilots had at one point or another piloted their aircraft while under the effects of alcohol and that a very big number of them were functional alcoholics. It's the only airline that went public with this problem but all airlines have to deal with it. It's a public secret in the industry that a lot of airline pilots tend to deal with the pressure of being responsible for that many lives trough alcohol.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Whip confesses he was intoxicated during the flight and is sent to jail, but he is freed of his alcoholism and guilt and manages to reconcile with his friends and family]].

* BrokenAesop:
** Alcohol will destroy your life. [[spoiler:Cocaine can counteract it though.]]
** Drugs and booze turns you into Chuck Yeager. God gives you cancer, destroys your life and marriage, and [[spoiler: puts you in jail for five years.]]

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: The movie ends [[spoiler:in a prison yard, with the sound of a commercial jet flying low overhead.]]
** The large amount of Christian symbology sprinkled throughout the movie - the plane even clips the steeple off a church during its crash landing, and the congregation is the first on the scene of the crash.

** Drugs and booze turns you into Chuck Yaeger. God gives you cancer, destroys your life and marriage, and [[spoiler: puts you in jail for five years.]]

* DeathBySex: Arguably, [[spoiler: Katerina, as she was having sex with Whip the night before she died in the crash.]]

* DrunkenMaster: Verging on BrokenAesop territory. Whip can pull off a maneuver to save his plane that no other pilot can do ''while drunk and high''. (Though, based on what happened in the RealLife accident, he was saved as much by more limited control damage as he was by his CrazyAwesome piloting - perhaps a literal DeusExMachina?). He also bluffs his way through questioning and hearings...[[spoiler:until the NTSB offers to make Katerina the scapegoat and he refuses to do it.]]

* CrazyEnoughToWork: Flip a plane upside down to arrest a nosedive? Sure. And the crazy part is, this is very much TruthInTelevison.

!! This work includes examples of:

** When Nicole is on the set of the porn film, Kip suggests she can play Desdemona. Kelly Reilly did play Desdemona in a 2007 production of ''{{Othello}}''.

* BeliefMakesYouStupid: Subverted hard. Although the more intense Christian believers (like Evans and his wife) may come across as eccentric at first, they all show genuine courage in the face of life-changing disaster.

* WhereDaWhiteWomenAt: Whip and Nicole

* ImprobablePilotingSkills/AcePilot: To drive the point, the airline had ''eleven'' other pilots attempt to save the plane as Whitaker did in simulations. ''All failed.''

* DeathBySex: Arguably, [[spoiler: Katerina,as she was having sex with Whip the night before she died in the crash]].

* OscarBait: Transparently so.
* ProductPlacement: Budweiser, Smirnoff, a veritable wetbar of endorsements. Not all of them were appreciated, however, Budweiser objected to him drinking their beer while driving around town.