For starters, the movie captures the surreal feeling many have re: our corrupted timeline. The characters’ original timeline continues on without them and they fall further behind the present until the langoliers find them. With increasing alarm, we’ve watched our timeline fall further and further from the expected path of slow but steady progress, to the point that the darkest chapter of modern history has caught up to us.

The restrained physics of temporal-decay around the airport gives much of the movie its aesthetic of liminal stasis. Arguably this is not unlike the husk of our former democratic government in slowing the march of progress to a crawl, focusing on conservation of status quo politics. Even now, the government timidly awaits its assimilation by the fascist demagogues, who promise to carve it up and feed it to an endless, insatiable hunger that is eating the planet. (Yeah global elites are the langoliers in this comparison.)

Fascists and their supporters are cowards by definition. Fear and division made them, it is what drives them, and it’s how they drive others. Spreading it is required to maintain their power. So it should come as no surprise that they are most vulnerable to courage and unity. Indeed, wherever these remain, they can only cede ground and lose power.