Breaking Down Erik's Recreation of Air Force One's Infamous Crash Scene

VFX artist Erik from ErikDoesVFX recently took on the challenge of modernizing one of Hollywood's most notorious visual effects failures - the airplane crash sequence from 1997's "Air Force One." His breakdown offers some fascinating insights into the process and highlights just how far VFX technology has evolved in the last three decades.

The Original Problem

The ending of Air Force One features a plane crash that looks painfully dated - something that wouldn't even pass as a PS1 cutscene by today's standards. What makes this particularly jarring is that it was released contemporaneously with effects powerhouses like Jurassic Park and Titanic.

Erik identified three key issues with the original:

• Water simulations (which were computationally expensive and difficult in 1997)
• Awkward plane animation lacking physics-based motivation
• Flat, plasticky rendering quality

Approach: Full Recreation vs. Enhancement

Rather than simply enhancing the original shot with additional elements (like the Corridor Crew's approach to The Mummy Returns), Erik opted for a complete recreation - giving him full control over animation, water simulation, and rendering quality. The tradeoff? A significantly more resource-intensive process.

Animation Phase

Following proper animation workflow, he gathered reference footage from YouTube to understand how planes behave when crashing into water. Erik also utilized AI-generated reference images to guide his compositing.

Instead of traditional keyframe animation, he set up a physics simulation using a "ball pit" of spheres as a collision surface for the plane. This produced a more convincing animation with natural deformation and destruction. For the nose dive, Erik added upward velocity to the tail while slowing the nose, achieving a realistic flip motion.

Water Simulation Challenges

When the original Air Force One was made, fluid simulation for VFX hadn't even been invented yet (it debuted in 1998 for "Antz"). The original filmmakers likely used simple particle systems, explaining the misty appearance and static water level.

Erik used Houdini to create a proper water simulation with advanced parameters like:

• Surface tension
• Droplet threshold
• Verticity attributes
• Receding quality
• Substeps

After multiple iterations and fine-tuning, the complete high-quality water sim took a staggering 30 hours to compute. He then spent another day perfecting spray and foam simulations, which are crucial for selling the scale of the impact.

Rendering Hell

The rendering phase revealed the brutal computational cost of modern VFX. Each frame took about 50 minutes to render on Erik's aging machine. With 247 frames in the sequence, that's 205 hours (over a week) of continuous rendering time.

Compositing Magic

The raw renders weren't initially impressive, but compositing brought everything together:

• Sky replacement
• Color grading to match reference
• Adding a foggy background layer
• Applying lens effects (glow, dirt, flares)
• A subtle rainbow to enhance realism

Perspective on the Original

It's worth noting that Erik expressed genuine respect for the original VFX team. For 1997 technology, creating that shot at all was impressive. According to an article he referenced, the VFX team apparently ran out of time because the director was fixated on adjusting the brightness of an F-15's tail light in another shot - a situation that will feel painfully familiar to anyone who's worked in VFX.

The VFX Industry Reality Check

Erik included an interesting aside about the economics of VFX, noting that shots in major films like The Force Awakens average around $220,000 each - essentially "a Lamborghini for each shot." He also highlighted how even seemingly practical films like Oppenheimer rely heavily on digital compositing, despite marketing that emphasizes practical effects.

This project serves as both a technical showcase and a fascinating historical comparison, demonstrating just how dramatically VFX capabilities have evolved while simultaneously revealing the immense computational resources required for even a single high-quality sequence.