Avery K. Tingle, The Gamer Author

7500 is a good, minimalist thriller. Almost the entire film takes place in a single location. The direction and editing are taut and well-executed. You are beset with a sense of helplessness and claustrophobia within the first fifteen minutes. This is not an action film. No one has a unique set of skills. Someone will not rampage through the cabin and save everyone from the big bad. 7500 presents a more plausible version of what might happen if a hijacking was attempted in mid-flight. “7500” is the actual distress code pilots use for an attempted hijacking. And the movie, while dark, humorless and harrowing, flies right by.

For all it’s high marks, I knew what I was in for the moment one of the big bad’s charged the cockpit screaming ALLAHU-ACKBAR.

*Cue Eye Roll* I’m not Muslim, but I am a brown-skinned person living in America so I have to ask. In 2020, we’re still painting Muslims as the bad guy?

Muslims became popular as villains after 9/11, but that was nineteen years ago. An entire generation has come up since then, and they don’t have any memory of September 11th because they hadn’t been born yet. No matter your political allegiances, you gotta admit; we live in divisive times. Do we need more media depicting brown people as villains, for whatever reason?

It would be much better to see a diverse cast taking on a white supremacy group  because the Klan is a modern-day threat. Most people will agree on that. Strong media has an incredible ability to influence masses. We need to move beyond painting one religious group as extremists and antagonists. 

Give us Christian extremists, we all ‘love’ them.

Give us the people who persecute people based on skin color. Give us resurgent Nazis; Indiana Jones is still popular in memes because we all agree on punching nazis.

7500 is a great movie (don’t watch it while depressed) that misses the mark on one very key aspect. It’s still worth your time, but we need to move beyond the brown-people-as-bad-guys mentality.

Thanks for reading.

Have you seen this movie? What’d you think? Comment below (Please keep it clean and respectful of others) and let us know what you thought!