Most significantly, the movie took the routine investigation done by the NTSB and twisted it into somewhat of a witch hunt. Like most biographical dramas, Sully took some creative liberties.

The movie is also sure to paint Sully in a heroic and positive light (casting America’s Dad, Tom Hanks, was immediately a step in the right direction), but the unfortunate flip side of this is that if a movie has a hero, it needs a villain, too. He went to therapy to help with his trauma, and now advocates for getting professional help after traumatic experiences. This is quickly revealed to be a nightmare that Sully has after the real accident, but we immediately know that he’s struggling greatly with the endless “what-ifs.” Sullenberger has revealed that he, unsurprisingly, had trouble sleeping and focusing after the events of Flight 1549, and lost thirteen pounds due to the stress. The movie opens in the cockpit, with Sully piloting a crashing flight that winds up exploding in the side of a building. The conversation between Sully and Skiles ( Aaron Eckhart) after the engines failed was also recreated almost verbatim.īeyond the crash itself, one of the major themes that Sully handles particularly well is Sully’s experience with trauma after the accident. Sully disclosed during the following trial that he regretted that he didn’t have time to better communicate the situation to the flight attendants, and chose the words “brace for impact” because if passengers were meddling with life jackets rather than bracing themselves at the time of landing, there was a greater risk of injury. Similarly, Sully’s only announcement over the PA system, “Brace for impact,” was, in real life, all that he relayed to the passengers and cabin crew before the water landing.

Sully takes obvious care to be true to the events of the accident, from the blinding flash of geese that fills the windscreen, to the cut on flight attendant Doreen’s ( Molly Hagan) leg, to Sully checking every row of the flight to ensure that no passengers were left on board.

Tom bird writing