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| “ | I'm going to give this whole son-of-a-bitching country something to remember me by! If they can do it to me, why shouldn't I be able to do it to them? | „ |
| ~ Lander explaining his motive for committing a suicide bombing |
Michael Lander is the main antagonist of the 1975 novel Black Sunday and its 1977 film adaptation. He is a disgruntled Vietnam veteran who is recruited into a plot by Palestinian terrorists to fly the Goodyear Blimp into a football stadium during the Super Bowl in order to commit suicide and take thousands of people with him.
He is portrayed by Bruce Dern, who also portrayed Sanford Smithers in The Hateful Eight, Dr. Roger Girard in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, Tom Buchanan in the 1974 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Link Static in Small Soldiers, John Gillon in Diggstown and Asa "Long Hair" Watts in The Cowboys.
Early life[]
Lander was a highly decorated pilot and a captain in the U.S. Navy who served in the Vietnam War. He was captured by the Viet Cong and held in a POW camp for six years, during which his captors subjected him to brutal physical and psychological torture. Eventually, he broke under the pressure and agreed to be filmed denouncing the U.S. government and urging American soldiers to lay down their arms against the North Vietnamese army, in return for being released.
When he returned to the U.S., he was branded a traitor and court-martialed. His wife, who had been cheating on him, divorced him and took full custody of their children, forbidding him to see them again. Full of rage and with nothing to live for, he began fantasizing about killing himself and taking as many people with him as possible. He found a job as a pilot for the Goodyear Blimp, and spent every day at work dreaming about crashing the blimp into the stadiums he flew over during football games.
He got the chance to fulfill his suicidal fantasies when he was approached by Dahlia Iyad, a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who recruited him to use the blimp to attack the Miami Orange Bowl Stadium during the Super Bowl. They became lovers and conspirators, with Lander using the supplies Iyad brought him from Black September's leaders to craft a weapon of mass destruction made of plastic explosive and steel fletchettes. He would attach the weapon to the blimp's gondola and detonate it over the stadium, killing himself, Iyad, and thousands of people, including the President of the United States.
In Black Sunday[]
By the time Iyad brings him the first sample of plastic explosive, Lander has become incredibly paranoid in his impatience to die, and threatens to kill her with a rifle until she proves to him that she is not plotting against him. Once she calms him down, however, they make love, and he excitedly begins work on the project.
At Iyad's insistence, Lander goes to a Veteran's Affairs hospital to meet with a counselor, to whom he vents his rage over the bad hand he has been dealt. He and Iyad then take the rest of the plastic explosive, disguised as a shipment of statuettes of the Virgin Mary, from the freighter ship delivering it, having bribed the ship's captain, Tekiaki Ogawa. When the Coast Guard intercepts them, Lander skillfully evades them, getting away with the explosives. The next day, he infiltrates the harbor in disguise to plant a bomb that kills Ogawa and wounds Mossad Agent David Kabakov, who is investigating Black September.
Lander and Iyad test the weapon on an isolated country farmhouse, riddling it with tiny, perfectly symmetrical holes, and killing the farmer who owns the land. Lander is thrilled by the weapon's "absolute goddamn brilliance", and marvels that it will kill at least 80,000 people when they use it at the Super Bowl. He and Iyad then set the farmhouse on fire and escape.
The day before the Super Bowl, Lander's boss puts another pilot, Farley, in charge of the Super Bowl flight, apparently ruining the plan. Lander tries to persuade Iyad to postpone the attack until the next Super Bowl, but she angrily refuses and berates him for his failure. He bursts into tears as he laments his lost chance for revenge, but Iyad convinces him to go with her to Miami, where they will hijack the blimp and set off the weapon.
On the day of the Super Bowl, Iyad kills Farley, and Lander talks his way into piloting the blimp by claiming that Farley has called in sick. He smuggles the bomb onto the blimp, and takes off as the game begins, while Iyad drives to the stadium. He lowers the blimp toward the stadium, causing one of the engines to catch fire. This gives him an excuse to take it back to its hangar, where he plans to set off the weapon, which Iyad has smuggled into the stadium in a sailboat. He and Iyad kill the television crew who had arrived to film the blimp, attach the weapon to the blimp's gondola, and prepare to take off. He then tells Iyad to detonate the bomb manually by lighting its fuse should he be killed or the bomb itself damaged.
Kabakov, who has figured out Lander and Iyad's plan and pursued them to the stadium, exchanges gunfire with them, but they manage to get away. He commandeers a police helicopter and opens fire on the blimp's cabin, killing Iyad and mortally wounding Lander, who crashes the blimp into the stadium. Lander lights the fuse, but Kabaokov, who has rappelled onto the blimp from the police helicopter, manages to steer it away from the stadium using a skyhook and climbs back onto the helicopter seconds before the bomb detonates over the sea, killing Lander and foiling the bombing.