YMMV / Con Air

• Alternative Character Interpretation: "Sally-Can't-Dance", trans woman or just a very Camp Gay cross-dresser?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The "Black Guerrilla Families" are a very real group (though they're more akin to a street gang than a terrorist organization), who are infamously responsible for the murder of Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton.
• Awesome Music: A lush orchestra conducted by Mark Mancina, accompanied by synthesizer sounds and Trevor Rabin's soaring guitar lines is bound to make any viewer feel powerful.
• Broken Base: The theme song "How Do I Live" has the dubious distinction of being nominated for both an Oscar and a Razzie.
• Catharsis Factor: The scene where Cameron Poe beats the begeezus out of Johnny-23 for trying to rape Guard Bishop practically yells at the audience to cheer each time he rams the bastard's head into the Jailbird's steel bulkhead.
• Cliché Storm: This is best described as Die Hard in a plane, which felt old-fashioned even for the time after films like Passenger 57 already came out. On the bright side, the movie is not taking itself too seriously.
• Complete Monster: "Johnny 23", real name John Baca, is the slimiest, vilest member of the cons that Cyrus "the Virus" Grissom breaks out to take over the Jailbird. A Serial Rapist who takes his name from the number of victims he's attained, Johnny boasts "they'd call me Johnny 600" if they knew the true depth of his depravity, and proves he's pure evil by twice attempting to rape the one female guard on the plane. Even his fellow murderers give Johnny 23 a wide berth, with Cyrus proclaiming he'll kill Johnny should he attempt anything perverse toward the plane's only policewoman Guard Bishop.
• Ending Fatigue: Some viewers find the fire truck chase and admittedly silly death of Cyrus to be a significant downgrade when compared to the Vegas Strip airplane crash that occurred just before it.
• Fair for Its Day: Assuming one reads Sally-Can't-Dance as a transgender woman, the film is shockingly kind to her for a 1990s action flick. Despite the character being played for laughs, she's one of the few prisoners to survive the film, and all the characters seem more or less accepting of her gender identity, even with the sea of Politically Incorrect Villains present. Poe even slaps her rather than punch, because he wouldn't hit a woman with a closed fist.
• He's Just Hiding: Many fans believe that Swamp Thing survives being knocked through the window of the firetruck during the final chase.
  • A deleted scene confirms he survived.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A movie titled Con Air that features two characters named Sally. The latter is a well-known beauty supply chain known for carrying blow dryers and other items under the brand name of the former.
  • Cyrus calls Garland Greene a "national treasure".
• Love to Hate: The movie essentially runs on this trope, with the bulk of the main cast made up of veteran character actors playing over-the-top nasty killers whose charisma and sheer evil make them a joy to watch.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom is a charismatic, ruthless psychopath who organizes the scheme to seize control of a flight full of convicts, then puts together the plan to exchange prisoners at Carson City and escape with his partner, a powerful drug lord, so he can flee to South America with his compatriots. Cyrus constantly displays a sardonic, dry wit and black humor even in stressful situations, before organizing a nearly-successful ambush on the National Guard and killing his drug lord partner when the man attempts to betray the convicts. Soon catching on to a traitor in their midst, Cyrus even survives the crash of the plane and nearly pulls off an escape to get revenge. A compelling villain who retains a few moral standards such as his hatred of rapists, Cyrus constantly plays the government for fools and comes perilously close to a free and clear escape.
• Memetic Mutation: The movie is rather memetic just for existing and being a really cheesy movie.
  • "Put the bunneh back in the box!"
    • "Why couldn't you put the bunneh back in the box?"
  • ...HOW DO I LIVE WITHOUT YOU?...
  • "Make a move and the bunny gets it!"
  • "Gag and bag this Nazi muffin!"
  • "...if any of you so much as passes gas in my direction and offends my delicate nasal passages, your testicles WILL become my personal property..."
• Narm: Poe and Bedlam's fight in the cargohold, the very limited space requiring them to perform some very awkward fight moves made worse by the sudden loud soundtrack trying its hardest to make it feel badass.
  • Also, Nic Cage's ridiculous Southern accent.
• Narm Charm: The entire movie relies on a plot that requires all but three people to be idiots, Cage has one of the most awkward southern accents in any film ever, and most of the violence and destruction in the movie is exaggerated to a near-comical degree. But to most people, that's what gives the movie its charm.
• One-Scene Wonder: The old convict who decides to Opt Out of the hijacking and be transferred off at Carson City disguised as one of the dead prisoners is fairly memorable.
• Retroactive Recognition: Pinball is played by none other than Dave Chappelle.
• Rooting for the Empire: While the bad guys - Cyrus especially - are dangerous criminals, there's a moment or two where the audience can't help but cheer for the bad guys. Specifically when they set up a spirited (and humorous) defense of the airfield and when it turns out their financial backer Cindino was going to double-cross them. It helps that even among the cons they despise the likes of rapist Johnny 23, and fear the likes of Garland who by the movie's end seems to have willingly given up the evil lifestyle.
• The Scrappy: Good luck finding anyone who doesn't want the head of the biased, Artistic License – Law-invoking judge responsible for Poe's blatantly unfair sentence on a platter.
• Signature Scene: While this is an action movie, the most memorable scene is Garland Greene having a tea party and nice talk with a little girl.
• So Bad, It's Good: It's as dumb as the day is long, but everyone's performances (especially John Malkovich and Nicolas Cage) and the way that this is a stupid action movie from seasoned experts in making stupid action movies gives it a certain charm. Nicolas Cage's accent is particularly bad-good ("bunneh"). There is something to be said that Cage gives what is arguably the least hammy performance in this movie.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Pinball's corpse is very obviously a dummy. That said, the shot of it falling from the plane is oddly elegant.
  • It's very brief, but as the prisoner plane takes off from Lerner Field, the Jailbird nose art is reversed. Apparently they filmed the other side of the plane, and flipped the film.
• Superlative Dubbing: The Mexican Spanish dub (including VERY popular VA's like Salvador Delgado as Poe, Benjamín Rivera as Baby-O, the late Jesús Barrero as Vince and Humberto Solórzano as Cyrus) is a textbook example of how a very good dub can turn a very cheesy movie into something worth watching, since most of the voice cast are well known veterans in voice acting there.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Sally Bishop is the sole female prison guard on the plane, and could have been given some character development being a woman doing what is traditionally seen as a man's job, or even aiding Poe on his plan. Instead, her presence is relegated to being a Damsel in Distress and target of Serial Rapist Johnny 23.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Most of the actors actually turn in performances that make the film fun enough to watch. Of particular note is Steve Buscemi, who gets a strangely-poignant scene where he meets a little girl in an airfield and laments to her that he's "sick" and that there's "no cure" for what he has.
• Values Resonance: Sally-Can't-Dance, who is either a transwoman or camp gay man, is not mocked for their gender identity but treated as an equal by a group of Ax-Crazy hardened criminals, a sentiment that is refreshing even two decades later, where LGBT Americans, especially transwomen, still face many forms of social exclusion and discrimination.
• Vindicated by History: Or at least among a small circle. Several people only watched the film due to it being a fundamental part of the plot in Homestuck.
• Watch It for the Meme: Again, more or less courtesy of its use in Homestuck.
  • In Mexico, it's basically watch it for the dub.

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