Joe Seluchi had boarded with a bomb in a briefcase, intent on committing suicide to provide an insurance payout for his wife. Ted manages to wrestle the bomb from Joe, uses it to blow up ROK, and sets course for the Moon as originally intended. The computer's destruction results in collateral damage to the shuttle; the flight is not yet out of danger. En route to the Moon, flight control shifts to a lunar base under the command of Commander Buck Murdock. Contemptuous of Ted because of Macho Grande, he nonetheless agrees to help and they manage to land the craft safely on the Moon. Ted and Elaine fall back in love and are married at the end. After the wedding, Joe looks into the cockpit and asks for his briefcase back. A post-credit message – "Coming from Paramount Pictures: Airplane III" – inspires Murdock to remark, "That's exactly what they'll be expecting us to do!" Cast Production Most of the first film’s cast agreed to return for the film while Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker were involved in the early stages of development. However, Abrahams and the Zuckers decided to make the television series Police Squad! instead, and publicly distanced themselves from the sequel during its marketing. Filming began June 2, 1982, in Los Angeles and lasted eight weeks, with double the budget of the first film. Reception On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 42% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100 based on nine critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Variety remarked, "It can't be said that Airplane II is no better or worse than its predecessor. It is far worse, but might seem funnier had there been no original". Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, saying it "never really seems to know whether it's about a spaceship. It's all sight gags, one-liners, puns, funny signs and scatological cross-references". Airplane II opened in the United States the same weekend as The Toy and 48 Hrs. and finished second for the weekend behind The Toy with a gross of $5,329,208 from 1,150 screens. Grosses dropped 45% the following week and the film went on to earn only $27.2 million in the United States and Canada, compared to the original's