The Terminal / YMMV

Accidental Aesop: People who work in arresting suspicious visitors or immigrants are in a useless job that causes more harm than good. Frank Dixon is committed to his job a bit too much, considering he manhandles Victor for the crime of helping a Russian man get medicine for his "goat". He doesn't believe in Sacred Hospitality, being perfectly willing to let Victor starve so as to have an excuse to arrest him and doesn't even give him proper sleeping chambers in the airport. There is also the fact that he hunts down a group of Chinese tourists on a mere suspicion that they are going to overstay their visa rather than go to Disney World. It gets to the point where at the end of the movie, all of his employees peacefully mutiny against him so that Victor can take advantage of his one-day visa to get that coveted signature in his father's memory, and finally fly home. Frank is eventually Shamed by a Mob and realizing he's pursuing a pointless vendetta.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Is Frank Dixon Drunk with Power or merely an Obstructive Bureaucrat? There is the fact that he says he is determined to find an excuse to arrest Victor and ship him off to a detention center, even trying to get him to innocently break the law. He sometimes engages in Evil Is Petty behavior with Victor, making up a new position so that the man can't get quarters from returning luggage carts to buy food, and manhandling him for helping defuse a situation with a scared Russian situation. There's even a point where Victor tries to make a peace offering by giving him a giant fish for his wall, and Dixon is an Ungrateful Bastard in response.
- Does Amelia really love Victor, or is she just reeling from a painful breakup, and projecting admirable qualities onto him because she's eager to love someone again? As a transplanted foreigner, Victor struggles with English for most of the movie, and can't always express his thoughts and feelings as articulately as he might want to; with that in mind, it's easy to imagine that Amelia just assumes what she wants to assume about him, and Victor isn't able to correct her. Also, it's implied she didn't get back together with the politician because she loved him. Instead, it's implied Amelia got back together with him so that she could deliver the one-day visa to Victor, in a case of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
Applicability: It's a movie about a battle of wills between an honest, hard-working man from a foreign country in the throes of political unrest, and the no-nonsense government employee who tries to keep him out of the United States in the name of "law and order". Even if Victor isn't exactly an immigrant (he just wants to get a famous jazz musician's autograph), and Frank Dixon isn't exactly a xenophobic politician (he's just an Obstructive Bureaucrat who runs an airport), there's a lot of social subtext that can be read into the story.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie is quite popular in Bulgaria, seeing as the "Karkozhian" Tom Hanks is speaking is actually Bulgarian and viewers are impressed with how well he does it, especially in comparison to other foreigners who have tried. It is known that Hanks' wife is of partly Bulgarian descent and taught him the language, but even with that he's doing better than a lot of other people with Bulgarian partners.
Harsher in Hindsight: Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the man who lived for 18 years in the Charles De Gaulle airport and inspired this film, died in 2022 and never made it out of France. The harsher part is that he had been allowed to get out of the airport (after being sent to a hospital) and lived in a hostel, but decided to go back to live in the terminal during what turned out to be his final days.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Considering the infamous Fandom Rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek, there's something undeniably sweet about watching Lieutenant Uhura and Cassian Andor get married. Long live the Star Alliance!
Hilarious in Hindsight: In a sort of reverse Casting Gag, the character of "Trekkie" Delores Torres is played by Zoe Saldaña who within a few years would be cast in the Star Trek franchise (as Uhura, not Yeoman Rand). And then, spinning on a few more years, Diego Luna - the actor so adorkably geeking about discovering the sci-fi nerdom of the girl of his dreams - would be cast as the male lead in Rogue One, the first "anthology film" other Mega Sci-Fi franchise, Star Wars (and being a shameless Star Wars Promoted Fanboy about it too). Plus, in 2014, Saldaña and Luna would once again play each other's love interest in The Book of Life.
Tear Jerker: Victor learning about the war from a news report. He can tell from the footage that something very bad is happening in his country, but since he doesn't speak English he can't get any context for the images, and desperately races around the airport trying to find a report he can understand.

YMMV / The Terminal

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