The Twilight Zone: Nightmare At 30,000 Feet - 7 Big Changes To The Original
This new take on a classic completely reverses the original's major themes.
Nightmare At 30,000 Feet, the second episode of Jordan Peele's new reboot of The Twilight Zone, diverges so drastically from its source that it's almost hard to call it a remake at all.
Horror legend Richard Matheson's 1961 short story, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, focused on airline passenger Arthur Jeffrey Wilson as he desperately tried to warn flight staff about a gremlin on the wing. In 1963, Richard Donner directed an adaptation of the story for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Its compelling script and William Shatner's performance as the slightly renamed Bob Wilson led to one of the series' most memorable episodes of all time.
The 2019 reboot, directed by Greg Yaitanes, tells another story entirely. Matheson's gremlin is out, replaced by an eerie podcast that predicts the plane's disappearance. Adam Scott plays investigative reporter Justin Sanderson, who must solve this thrilling mystery before the clock runs out.
It's actually a shame the creators branded this episode as a remake rather than allowing it to stand on its own. Not only does it tell a brand new story, but the original Nightmare's fundamental themes are entirely reversed. The following are just 7 of the most notable thematic reversals in Nightmare At 30,000 Feet.
Warning: With the remake telling a completely new story, pretty much everything here can be considered a spoiler.
7. The Remake Ignores The Shaming Side Of Fear
The original protagonists of Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, are ashamed of their reactions to the gremlin. In Matheson's original short story, Arthur Wilson hides from the judgmental gaze of a teenage passenger as he imagines how his wife and sons might feel to see him in his frightened state. In the 1963 Twilight Zone episode, Bob is already dealing with the shame of a past psychotic break. He worries that his fear has become a burden to his wife, and the gremlin only deepens that concern. Both characters bring this shame on themselves by worrying they'll appear crazy or stupid.
In the 1983 remake for Twilight Zone: The Movie, John Lithgow portrays passenger John Valentine as suffering from these same internal concerns. He is also, however, publicly shamed by a little girl. "You used to be a normal person," she tells him, as if echoing his own thoughts.
The 2019 remake is a different story. Justin aggressively tries to push his fear onto the other passengers and flight crew, yet almost never bothers to provide evidence for anything he says. After one passenger refuses to listen to the podcast because he thinks sharing headphones can spread lice, Justin doesn't try to share his evidence with anybody else until he's detained by an air marshal.
Either Justin is so ashamed of one man refusing to share his headphones that he's stopped trying altogether, or he's simply a narcissist who expects others to take his word on faith. Jordan Peele's ending narration, which describes Justin as "an investigative reporter unwilling to investigate himself," suggests the latter.