20 Actors Who Quit Movies For Insane Reasons

3. He Found The Flying Scenes "Silly" - John Travolta (Flight)

Paradise City John Travolta
Saban Films

Robert Zemeckis' terrific 2012 drama Flight was originally set to star John Travolta in the role of alcoholic pilot Whip Whitaker, and though Travolta was in love with the central concept, he ended up quitting the film during development over creative misgivings with the script.

Travolta, who is himself a private pilot and owns numerous aircraft, found the central plane crash sequence "silly," feeling that the moment where Whitaker inverts the damaged plane and flies it upside down in order to correct its trajectory was "a bit much."

As a trained pilot Travolta is certainly liable to know more about this than Joe Public, but at the same time Whitaker's manoeuvre in the film is absolutely scientifically possible, albeit extremely difficult to execute - which is very much how it's depicted in the final film.

Either way, considering that Washington received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance and Travolta went on to do... not much worth mentioning in 2012, he probably should've just trusted Zemeckis to convincingly pull the sequence off.

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.