A certain mustachioed pilot named Chesley Sullenberger landed a fully-loaded airliner in the Hudson Fucking River not so long ago with no fatalities.

As for the flawed concept: that's the point. This isn't a challenge to write a good movie. It's a challenge to write a movie that satisfies all the action plot points within the parameters given by the executive producer.

I'm on board with Jeffery's idea, but I'm not going to be the one to explain to the executive producer that he's changed it from a flu virus to a blood-borne pathogen. The marketing people probably will go nuts, because this is scheduled to come out during flu season, man.

I am the son of God, come to earth as prophesied to save my Father's chosen people! All you have to do is believe in me!

—We don't want any!

All right then, I'm opening the offer up to anyone at all. Anybody? Heaven forever? The "chosen people" are now going to hell, by the way.

First, a stab at the basic structure.

There's got to be a someone on the plane who is responsible for the virus sample—which can't be in the baggage compartment or it would be too easy to isolate after landing. It would have to be a deadly strain smuggled aboard to be delivered to a drug lord for nefarious purposes. The mule gets mortally ill immediately to demonstrate the danger, and the virus is therefore known to have contaminated the passenger cabin.

Our heroes should probably be experts on the ground—maybe a crash investigator called in to try to help avert a crash for once and a virus expert from the CDC.

The centerpiece of the film has to be how they actually get the plane down (solving Teague's central conflict). Now, the logical thing to do is to ditch the plane in the water. But if they do that, then our heroes don't have anything more to do. So maybe the structure of the damaged plane would never take the stresses of a water landing.

If they somehow get the disabled plane to a rural airfield where they can quarantine it (piggyback on another plane?), you can then have the mule or some annoying prick escape and turn the story into a manhunt.

I really liked CotBP, largely for Depp's naked thievery of the story and because I had extremely low expectations for a Disney movie made from a theme park ride.

I was prepared for the second movie to be more about Jack, altho I still wanted it told from Will and Elizabeth's POV. But it was much more of an ensemble piece and way too convoluted when it came to the action sequences. And I was really, really ready for Pintel and Ragetti to go off and get gay married and stop interrupting the movie, which they had no business being in. By the time the big barrel/wheel thing starts rolling, and they're still fighting on it, I had tuned out. The movie was over for me, even tho I really liked Davy Jones. They should have had Jack go off and then Will learn that Jack was in trouble with Davy Jones and go after him.

I actually liked the pirate council in the third movie, partly because I just didn't care much anymore about the threads that were left from the second movie, especially after Bootstrap Bill screwed up his own rescue. And I really liked how Elizabeth was able to sort of take back center stage from Jack.

And Secret Window sucked so hard it registered on severe weather alert systems, altho it was not as bad as Hide & Seek, the Dinero/Fanning fiasco that came a year later and seemed to steal from it.

1. Cold war was weird, even the later part. And there was not nearly enough sex.

2. Nobody talked about China by the late '70s. Nixon smooved it all out. That Nixon was a smoove brothah.

3. Once Reagan and Gorbachev met at Reykjavik and the word got out that they had considered total disarmament, the Cold War was over. Gorby was different from all the other boys, anyway.

4. Who gives shit about where iPods are made? Fucking Apple fanboys. You people make me sick.

5. For more Cold War fun, check out Fail-Safe. Walter Matthau's take on Cold-Warrior Herman Kahn will rattle your skull. And Henry Fonda bombs New York!

Just realized I've never made any suggestions of my own.

1. The Incredibles

2. Life of Brian

3. Close Encounters

4. Soylent Green

5. Puppetry of the Penis (is this on DVD yet?)

Am I the last movie lover who doesn't subscribe to Netflix? I used to use Peerflix, but it went under. I still have about 10 movies from them that I haven't watched (you owned them until you sent them on). I also have about 20 other DVDs and Blu-Rays that I haven't watched. And I have at least 40 movies on my DVR that I haven't watched (I have 2 external hard drives).

So I can't bring myself to subscribe to Netflix because I'm not lacking for entertainment, just time.

However, if movie channels count, then I have to say Perfect Getaway (Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich), which I watched yesterday because I wanted to see how right I was in my guesses from seeing the trailer. About 85% right, as it turns out.

@ Jeffery
You had me at "Captain Tom Waits". Love the treatment. Make Kirk act like a hero instead of just having people claim that he has heroic potential. And the idea that "nouns can be weird, but verbs have to be sensible" is the greatest summary of good fantasy fiction I've ever seen. It sounds vaguely familiar. Did you get that from somewhere?

@ Kyle
I love Star Trek for what it is. But Star Trek, above all other franchises, cries out for a head-over-heart take on story-telling. It doesn't have to be hard sci-fi, but if you've ever read really good naval fiction like the Aubrey-Maturin books, you can probably appreciate that there is a real grandeur in characters that follow a military(-style) code. If the writer knows what he's doing it really enriches the story instead of confining it. In the Aubrey-Maturin stories, for example, I love the fact that Jack Aubrey has to command a few crummy ships before he gets a really good one. I really just want Kirk to have his "horrible old Leopard" days.

And in any fiction, a writer who loves his protagonists so much that he can't make things difficult for them is simply a bad writer. In Star Trek, everyone but Spock and Nero helps Kirk every time he's in the slightest trouble.

Theatrical cuts suck. They're the beta test of movies. From now on, I want only extended editions—especially of movies that suck anyway. The least they can do if they make a lousy movie is to make it good and long.

I've watched 1 & 2, and I'm fairly well hooked. I love that Tapping doesn't talk to herself. Altho I personally would be talking to myself like I was on cocaine and suffering from Tourette's, lone characters in movies tend to do too much narration.

Fictional character:
"Where am I? What is happening? I gotta get outa here. Maybe I can find a door."

Zarban:
"What the fuck?! Hey! Hey! Anybody?! ... Goddammit! Who the fuck is responsible for this?! You sons of bitches! This shit doesn't happen by accident!" Then I would go back and forth between loudly pleading for anyone to help and threatening to murder the first person I found.

Yep. Happens all the time. The trailer for Schindler's List, if I recall correctly, used "Yackety Sax".