Up in the Air

Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star-crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

—Ryan Bingham

Up in the Air is a 2001 novel by Walter Kirn, which later became a 2009 film directed and co-written by Jason Reitman and starring George Clooney.

Ryan Bingham is a motivational speaker and Career Transition Counselor whose job takes him all over the country to lay off corporate workers. He has no concern for his "clients" whose careers he "transitions" into unemployment, and his primary ambition in life seem to be to become the seventh person ever to accumulate ten million frequent flier miles. Everything changes when two new women enter his life: Alex Goran, an attractive businesswoman living a life seemingly identical to his, and Natalie Keener, a freshly graduated new employee who introduces a new tool for employee axing: video conference calls. Ryan's boss agrees with Natalie that this is the way of the future: no more traveling counselors, no more plane tickets, no more time wasted traveling to and from and inside airports. For Ryan, who lives out of his carry on luggage and spends more than three hundred days of the year on the road, this represents a threat to his entire way of life.

But maybe his entire way of life was meant to change. His youngest sister is getting married. He's growing closer to Alex (on a romantic level) and to Natalie (on a more paternal level), and he begins to reevaluate his place in the world.

The novel is written as a conversation between Ryan and a seatmate -- the reader -- aboard a flight. His life on the road and his relationship with his family is covered in more depth, and the aspect of the character as a Career Transition Counselor is downplayed in favor of his status as a would-be novelist and a semi-successful business coach. The quest to reach a million frequent flier miles is more central in the novel than in The Film of the Book. The entire plot takes place over a few days, while his resignation letter is sitting on his boss' desk. He is also apparently being headhunted for a job with MythTech, a mysterious business operating out of Omaha, Nebraska.

Tropes used in Up in the Air include:

• Adaptation Distillation: The film and book diverge quite a bit, but both are well-received.
• Adaptation Expansion: The addition of Natalie.
• Berserk Button: In the book, don't touch Ryan's miles; really, really bad idea.
• Big Brother Instinct: In the book, there's nothing it seems Ryan wouldn't do for his little sister Julie, except give her some of his miles.
  • Present to a lesser extent in the film. In the movie, he does indeed give her his miles; a wedding gift of five hundred thousand frequent flyer miles each for her and her new husband -- enough for them to get a round-the-world ticket (they can't afford a honeymoon).
• Black Comedy: About layoffs.
• Body Double (Real Life version): Sorry, but that wasn't really Vera Farmiga; she had just given birth and was breastfeeding at the time and thought it wouldn't work.
• Break the Motivational Speaker: Played With Ryan's family breaks his motivational speaking career.
• California Doubling: In this case, St. Louis Doubling. The film takes place in over a dozen cities all over the US, but almost all the airport and airplane scenes were shot in St. Louis, and locations in St. Louis double for locations in several other cities, including Chicago.
  • The scenes set in Detroit, along with a few other scenes, were filmed in Detroit albeit in the wrong terminal. All of the Northwest signage on the walls was covered by posters for American although blurred out Northwest and Continental signs could still be seen at the gate podiums.
• Call Back: "That was a nice touch." "Thanks."
• Did Not Get the Girl: Ryan races to be with Alex, but he discovers that she has a family and a husband and has no interest in starting a life with him.
• Distaff Counterpart: Alex: "Think of me as yourself with a vagina". Also, and more subtly, it is implied that Ryan sees quite a lot of himself in Natalie, who is sort of an Alternate Past to Alex's Alternate Present.
• Driven to Suicide: Ryan says that that people he's firing say this a lot, but they never go through with it. When Natalie asks if he knows that because he checks the obituaries; Ryan stresses that she really shouldn't do that. One layoff victim actually does do it.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Ryan realizes just how unhappy he is in his life and that he has isolated himself from everyone around him. Natalie is forced to face the consequences of her actions, both in her job and personal life. Both become better people for it, even though their eventual fates remain unknown.
• Expy:
  • Sam Elliot's character is almost exactly the same as the one he played in The Big Lebowski.
  • Undoubtedly merely a coincidence, but Natalie is strikingly similar (if gender flipped) to Carter Duryea, Topher Grace's character in In Good Company.
• Happily Ever After: Natalie has successfully recovered from putting her dreams on hold "for a boy" and is now in pursuit of said dreams, her life touched positively by Ryan. Rather than be shattered by the realization that his ultimate goal was devoid of value, Ryan immediately begins to bring value by donating the round the world tickets to his sister and her new husband. He is on the path to reconnecting with his family AND has been vindicated professionally and has carte blanche to travel all he wants again. Essentially, he has retained all of his old power and perks while also regaining his capacity for normal human bonds. He literally has his cake and gets to eat it too. It is the happiest possible ending within the internal logic of the story.
• Hell Is That Noise: Natalie's crying.
• Incest Is Relative: Implied in the book; Ryan compares his relationship with his little sister Julie in their adolescence to a romance, which involved him sneaking her into the movies, and "climaxed" when she put her head on his shoulder during a love scene in said movie.
• Kuudere: Natalie is all business and ice. Or tries to be.
• May-December Romance: Subverted.

Natalie: No, I don't even think of him that way! He's old.

• Odd Friendship: Ryan and Natalie.
• One-Scene Wonder: J.K. Simmons does a great job as a disgruntled employee, and Sam Elliot is an excellent veteran airline pilot.
• Pet the Dog: Ryan has one in the scene with J.K. Simmons' character where he creates the best case scenario for the employee losing his job. As a result, it reasonably feels like Ryan is giving him a real shot to chase his dreams.
• Precision F-Strike: Bob to Natalie. Jason Reitman said he loves working with J.K. Simmons because he is one the best cursers in Hollywood.
• Product Placement: All over the place in the movie. American Airlines, Hertz, Travelpro, and Hilton Hotels feature prominently.
  • The scenes shot in Detroit used Northwest's^[1] terminal with all of the signage covered up less-than gracefully by American posters. However, the gate podiums clearly show Northwest and Continental, albeit blurred out.
• Race For Your Love: Subverted. He arrives, and she opens the door to reveal kids and a husband. Later, she confirms over the phone that he can't be more than a side affair to her.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Natalie to Ryan.

Natalie: The isolation, the traveling, is that supposed to be charming? It's a cocoon of self-banishment...You have set up a way of life that basically makes it impossible for you to make any kind of human connection. And now, this woman comes along and somehow runs the gauntlet of your ridiculous life choice and comes out on the other end smiling just so you can call her casual? I need to grow up? You're a twelve year old!

• Scenery Porn: The cameraman practically froze to death trying to get them, so you better like the slowly panning aerial shots of cloudlines and cityscapes.
• Shipper on Deck: Natalie for Ryan and Alex.
• Stylistic Suck: Natalie's attempts at firing people by video-conference. She stammers, can't control the conversation, can't handle it when people break down, and has no answer when people call her out on how weaselly it is to fire someone by phone. If the actor couldn't have done a much better job than that, she wouldn't have got the role. This is in-character for Natalie since she is simply a young, fresh-out-of-college woman, and it makes the role of a mentor figure necessary, but it leaves us wondering why on Earth she was hired in the first place.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Her time on the road means she has grown less callous and more attuned to the effects of redundancy. Also her age and demeanor work against her. She clearly isn't battle scarred herself and her cold rationality is unappealing to someone who has just been fired.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In the novel, Ryan is haunted by mysterious charges on his credit card and against his frequent flier miles, leading him to suspect identity theft. Though left ambiguous, it seems by the end of the novel that it's Ryan whose been making these charges after all.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Natalie has one of these.

1. ↑ now Delta's