AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, estimates that a record-breaking 40 million people traveled by plane over the holidays. That's about 40 million pieces of luggage, 40 million stories. So many things can go wrong. No wonder airports are the perfect settings for thriller movies. Our producer Danny Hensel looks at how these movies have changed as our relationship with flying has, well, taken off.
DANNY HENSEL, BYLINE: The new Netflix movie "Carry-On" takes us inside seemingly every nook and cranny of LAX. It's the morning of Christmas Eve, which, for these TSA agents, begins in the break room. They're getting their daily pep talk.
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DEAN NORRIS: (As Phil Sarkowski) So what is going to be our mantra for the day?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Keep the line moving, keep the people safe.
ROBERT DANIELS: Really, really great airport thrillers are the ones that kind of show how easily something bad can happen in these places that we trust.
HENSEL: That's Robert Daniels, a film critic and associate editor at rogerebert.com.
DANIELS: They're claustrophobic settings, but they're also settings that are meant to instill confidence in their very architecture.
HENSEL: Airports, for Daniels, are where your long-held plans can go awry.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: "Airport," the year's most widely read novel, becomes today's most exciting, most timely motion picture.
HENSEL: "Airport," which came out in 1970, is set during a blizzard at Chicago's fictional Lincoln Airport. A plane is stuck in the snow on the tarmac, an elderly woman is a serial stowaway and a man sneaks a bomb on board a flight in his briefcase.
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LLOYD NOLAN: (As Harry Standish) Say, did you see that man with the attache case just now?
JEAN SEBERG: (As Tanya Livingston) No.
NOLAN: (As Harry Standish) Well, if he were coming in from abroad instead of going out, I'd want to inspect it.
HENSEL: Critic Robert Daniels says this movie treats the airport as an object of fascination.
DANIELS: It doesn't take you, I think, into the actual nuts and bolts of what it's like being in an airport. In fact, I think it tries to make it very translatable to a normal person who, by 1970, has maybe been on one flight, you know, in their entire life.
HENSEL: In 1978, the airline industry was heavily deregulated, and ticket prices were coming down.
JANET BEDNAREK: So a lot of people who could not afford to fly before 1978 now could afford to fly.
HENSEL: Janet Bednarek is a professor of history at the University of Dayton. So by 1990, audiences know the airport inside and out. Along comes "Die Hard 2.".
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #2: Christmas Eve.
BRUCE WILLIS: (As John McClane) Is there a cop on duty around here?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Airport police.
WILLIS: (As John McClane) Go get him.
HENSEL: A corrupt foreign military leader is being extradited to the U.S. through Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C, and his goons have sabotaged the airport in order to free him.
BEDNAREK: By the time you get "Die Hard 2," the idea that terrorists could attack airports was very, very real.
HENSEL: Film critic Robert Daniels says, in "Die Hard 2," the action is everywhere.
DANIELS: We are getting into the hangar. We are getting into some of the more behind-the-scene settings.
HENSEL: Like a shootout among the miles of luggage conveyor belts that passengers never see.
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WILLIS: (As John McClane) See some ID.
VONDIE CURTIS-HALL: (As Miller) Sure. No problem.
JOHN COSTELLOE: (As Sgt. Oswald Cochrane) No problem.
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HENSEL: A decade later, the airport changed dramatically, says historian Janet Bednarek.
BEDNAREK: After 9/11, the whole thing was to make airport security as absolutely visible as humanly possible.
HENSEL: Now when you walk into the airport, security is everywhere, and filmmakers are taking full advantage, says Robert Daniels.
DANIELS: The technological component of an airport becomes a setting in itself.
HENSEL: We see that in Netflix's movie "Carry-On," in which terrorists tap into the airport's security system, and the TSA agent assigned to an airport X-ray scanner is being blackmailed to let a bomb through.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CARRY-ON")
TARON EGERTON: (As Ethan Kopek) What's really in the bag?
JASON BATEMAN: (As Traveler) It doesn't matter. The bag stays shut, OK? Say that.
EGERTON: (As Ethan Kopek) The bag stays shut.
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HENSEL: And we stay gripped to our seats, whether on a bumpy flight or on a comfy couch at home. Danny Hensel, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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