POSSIBLE SPOILERS
A few times they referred to this plane that had crashed around the same time as the shootings, plus there was the scene where they were watching airplanes fly in to the airport near Maconel's house. Was that just a red-herring, or did I miss something and the planes had some plot and/or symbolic significance?
Yeah, anybody did get that? There was also a scene where he dreamed that a plane wheel fell off and hit a house (or wasn't it a dream?)...
shareAs the fish says, "well, there goes our 15 minutes..."
The plane tire does two things. First, it gives us an excuse as to why he is soon able to get on with his life. Something has distracted the news media and he's old news now. Second, in one of the next scenes, there's a mention on the television that the plane tire may have been a result of sabotage. The indication is that some worker somewhere else has done something similar. We're made to wonder just how many people are close to snapping.
Hey, I know this is a few months late, but if you're reading this hoya, thanks! I'd never thought of those angles, but they make sense.
And thanks for sharing my perplexedness, Mr. War!
*spoilers*
The plane tire also makes him thought that he has some psychic abilities.
At some point of the movie he told the company psychiatrist (as an excuse) that he is able to predict things happening thats why he bought the gun to the office. He also use his psychic ability excuse in an attempt to frame the janitor (who fixed his doll but refused to return it) as the "next one" who will eventually snap and shoot up the office again.
...a little fantastic, and fleeting, and out of reach.
I thought there might be a tie in to his past. The news commentary on the shooting talks about how it had just been discovered that "Coleman" had lost his family 5 years earlier, but they dismissed the fact as having been too long ago. (And he also tell the neighbor that he has lived in his current house for 5 years.)
I had an idea that perhaps the plane tire was meant to suggest a random accident that might have taken the life of McConnel's (the "real" Coleman's) family. They go back to that theme of living under the "falling tire" zone when they show the two of them drinking win out on the balcony watching planes land. Not coincidence that her house would be right on the runway approach.
Frankly I didn't care for it. I thought it was a little to borrowed from Donnie Darko. They could have just made the plane crash from a faulty tire, or thought of a dozen other "random" falling projectile deaths. And, by the ending, they still had not connected the dots. It was like when they made the final cut they said, "Airplane tires, what airplane tires?"