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Posted

The Official Trailer for World Trade Center

 

Discuss.

 

Personally, I think considering his track record, letting Stone do a film about 9/11 is as stupid as letting Michael Bay do Pearl Harbor. Stone has never been one to handle historical events with care and respect. But after seeing the trailer, I have to change my mind...in some respects. I still think the movie is a terrible idea but now I see it won't be terrible because Stone's done something political and edgy and disrespectful, it'll be terrible because it looks like Stone has made a cookie-cutter "story of courage and survival" that will be heavy on the patriotism and sap and light on responsibility and truth. Are we really ready for the Hollywood version of 9/11, with movie stars playing cops and ILM wizards blowing up the buildings, with artificial lighting and cinematography and moments of sadness milked with slow motion?

 

Seriously, discuss.

 

On a side note, it has a gorgeous poster, but the original title "September" was eons better than "World Trade Center".

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Posted

I heard they made Stone focus on the World Trade Centre so he couldn't reveal the truth about the Pentagon.

 

Well I actually just made it up, but I'm sure it's true anyway.

Posted

I'll respond, without the joking around.

 

Seriously, I think this is a mistake. First off, and I know Flight 93 opended up to rave reviews and was for the most part accepted and critiqued in favor of, I think this is a disaster on so many levels.

 

First off let's start with Stone, himself.

 

I would rather watch the grass grow than another one of his humdrum films, to be totally honest. He's is soooooooooo boring. I predict that after a long drug out 65 minutes of boring character development and dry facts setting up the "meat" of the film, we will be left bewildered.

 

Bewildered to ask oneself why you spent 8 bucks to see this film. I thought his Fourth of July film is a good example of the point I'm trying to make. It was so dry. I don't like Stone as a filmaker, myself. His films are also filled with "false controversies"- a figment if you will of his own "hypothesis" of the truth, to which too many people walk away from the film believing.

 

Secondly, this wound is just to fresh. Sure we experianced this in 2001, and now 5 years later, we have 2 films and a 3rd I heard being made for Television. This is just "too new". We are still combating the foes overseas in the middle east responsible for this. I mean, I just think that we as Amercians, even though it's healthy to re-experiance and discuss tradgedy, need more time to heal IMO.

 

I think that if this was like a WWII picture where it happended some many years ago, sure fine, after all the facts have been collected and analyzed.... do a realistic factual picture.

 

I mean we still really don't know what really Really happended. Do we?

 

This is just a couple of thoughts I have on this so far. I'm sure some will disagree.

Posted

The tv film you're talking about is probably Flight 93, basically the television version of United 93. It's on dvd already and I've heard it's actually rather good, but I've never seen it myself. And actually, there's been at least one previous 9/11 movie (this one off the top of my head, a dramatic film starring the guy who played Dubya in That's My Bush).

 

I personally think a 9/11 can be done now, and done well. And from what I've heard, United 93 did it right by simply showing the reality and the intensity of the day without any hokey fluff or hollywood tricks. The day all by itself was dramatic enough, by adding these swooping camera angles and Craig Armstrong music and effin' Nic Cage, it just makes the whole disaster seem...well...trite.

Posted

Yeah... Nick Cage... I'm interested to see who turned down parts and the like.

 

911-flag.jpg

 

Here's a good post from a blog I read about 93

 

I took a late and long lunch today to see United 93 and I’m still recovering. It’s a well-made film, but its power comes from tapping into nearly five years worth of emotions and memories. I don’t know that it could possibly have the same kind of emotional impact if the viewer hadn’t lived through September 11; it would just seem too unlikely, too unreal. But for someone who was watching a live video feed as the second plane hit the World Trade Center--who spent most of a day following the news and wondering what else the terrorists had planned--it drills right back to that moment. When the footage of that second plane rolled across the screen, the same shaking fury that I had felt that morning settled into me. It was followed by the memories of watching the towers collapse and waves of debris and dust rolling through city streets; the wall of hastily scrawled notes and pictures from families searching for loved ones; and Father Mychal Judge’s body being carried from the wreckage.

 

The movie doesn’t come across in any way as exploitation and while it doesn’t work to demonize the terrorists, it doesn’t sanitize them or make them into sympathetic figures, either. It just comes across as a retelling of events without any sense of melodrama. I don’t think we should all live out the rest of our lives mired in depression because of the events of that one day, but for anyone who has managed to distance themselves too completely from 9/11, United 93 should act as a reminder of the day that shook us from our collective complacency.

 

The people on flight 93 were just folks. They were just people like the rest of us who were going about their lives in the same quiet way that the majority of people live out their days. Watching the actors--symbolically burned into my mind as the faces of the passengers--tearfully telling their families goodbye was devastating. To an extent, like most emotionally charged movies, I’m sure that United 93 acts somewhat as a mirror to whatever viewers bring into the theaters. For me, it served as a tremendously emotional reminder of why I have supported ongoing military actions in the Middle East; I’m sure that others will find something else in there. What no one will find is something that pushes, prods, or preaches.

 

Which is its greatest triumph. The event is too important to trivialize or treat with anything other than respect; the passengers that gave their lives in the slender hope of saving themselves and the almost certain hope of averting another potentially more deadly terrorist strike are far too real to be seen as caricatures. Oliver Stone directing a movie about anything to do with the World Trade Center attacks is sickening. His lack of subtlety, his need to preach, and his cock-eyed tendency to see conspiracies promise a movie that will be offensive; United 93, walks an entirely different, and far more impressive, path: it remembers the day with an emotional impact and clarity without having to provide a sermon or easy Hollywood-style answers.

 

To praise the movie or the actors or the visuals too much seems to be wrong for some reason. It seems to shortchange the reality of the people who lived and died in New York, in the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Allow me this, though: it’s a simple movie that may not translate well to the next generation; but for the rest of us, United 93 is an amazing emotional and artistic accomplishment. Sadly it has to come to remind us of something we’d much rather be able to forget and something that we wish had never happened.

 

Food for thought.

  • 2 months later...
Posted

I just saw this movie, and I must say, it was amazing.

 

I am very impressed with Oliver Stone: it was not what I was expecting.

 

In fact: it was very apolitical. It stuck to the story of the two heroes and the events of that day. It is very, very emotional and the cinematography is unbelievably well done.

 

I highly recommend this movie to everyone.

Posted

I don't know, this sounds like a trick. Last time Joel claimed a movie portrayed the events of September 11th with being political was with the Right Wing propagandrama film, Flight 91.

 

I bet that while trapped in the rubble, Nick Cage finds a hijacker that survived, and they begin to fight, and the hijacker says "I will not fail my master, Saddam Hussein, who just needs a little more time to develop his nuclear weapons program." And Cage says, "Not in my town buddy!" and then punches him out with his superior American physique. And the movie closes with "Remember kids, support the War in Iraq, or the terrorists win!"

 

The only airplane terrorism film I need this summer involves Snakes.

Posted

(snicker)

 

Personally, I just have no interest in seeing this. I don't need to see a movie about the What of 9/11. I've seen the documentaries, I've watched and read the interviews, and like just about everyone else in existence, I was glued to my TV watching it all happen in real-time. I don't need sweeping camera moves, special effects, or a heart-wrenching but optimistic string-filled score to remind me. I know the What, what I want to see is the Why. When a filmmaker has the balls (like the balls Oliver Stone used to have) to make a film about why 9/11 happened, and a studio has the balls to release it, then I'll be interested in watching it.

Posted
I don't know, this sounds like a trick. Last time Joel claimed a movie portrayed the events of September 11th with being political was with the Right Wing propagandrama film, Flight 91.

Bullshit. i told you there were parts of the film you may not have liked. Like the part where the people revolt against the terrorists instead of meekly letting them kill them all.

Personally, I just have no interest in seeing this. I don't need to see a movie about the What of 9/11. I've seen the documentaries, I've watched and read the interviews, and like just about everyone else in existence, I was glued to my TV watching it all happen in real-time. I don't need sweeping camera moves, special effects, or a heart-wrenching but optimistic string-filled score to remind me. I know the What, what I want to see is the Why. When a filmmaker has the balls (like the balls Oliver Stone used to have) to make a film about why 9/11 happened, and a studio has the balls to release it, then I'll be interested in watching it.

lol in other words, you want the crack pot conspiracy theories and the anti-Bush rhetoric.

 

Well, so much for a movie about actual events.

 

Either way, it's a good movie.

Posted
Bullshit. i told you there were parts of the film you may not have liked. Like the part where the people revolt against the terrorists instead of meekly letting them kill them all.

If the passengers had just asked the hijackers to talk about their feelings, everything would have been OK!

lol in other words, you want the crack pot conspiracy theories and the anti-Bush rhetoric.

Hey hey hey, don't go painting my friend DJ with your looney-left brush. He is a intellignet reasonable man. I'm teh one who needs his anti-Bush rhetoric like Robert Downy Jr needs his Blow. If you'll read he said we would see a movie about why 9/11 happened if it were made and released. If he was a looney-leftist like me, he'd say Fahrenheit 9/11 was that film.

 

PS Snakes on a Plane!

Posted

Thankyou, Jax.

 

No I don't want crackpot conspiracies or anti-Bush rhetoric, I want a movie that explores the complexities of how and why the attacks happened. I'm tired of five years of simplistic "us vs. them, good vs. evil" attitudes. This is one of the most complicated situations our country has ever faced and we've narrowed our vision of it down to, I think, dangerously simple extremes. I think that if this country isn't willing to look at and understand the complexities and the causes of terrorism, then we're in for some very very rough decades ahead of us.

 

So yes, I want to see a movie that explores why it happened. I want a movie that goes into why those men were compelled to blow themselves up to hurt us so bad. I want a movie that discusses what we might have done to make ourselves targets. I want a movie that delves into the state of our world and how we've gotten to the point where the inevitability of this kind of attack is a way of life (off the top of my head, I'd say it was a combination of Middle Eastern countries keeping their populations compliant by encouraging a fundamentalist culture, and our own American cultural, military and economic expansion into other countries, but that's just me). I want a movie that is to 9/11 what Traffic was to the drug trade, or what Conspiracy was to the Holocaust. I want a movie that will play to our intelligence and not our emotions. When they make that movie, I'll pay to see it.

Posted
I want a movie that is to 9/11 what Traffic was to the drug trade, or what Conspiracy was to the Holocaust. I want a movie that will play to our intelligence and not our emotions. When they make that movie, I'll pay to see it.

Word. And when that movie does come out, you and I can watch it together. We'll even be able to get in cheap with our senior citizen's discount. Though, with inflation, those tickets will be $600.00 instead of the regular admission of $850.00, and as crotchity old men, we'll reminise about how in our day, movies cost just ten dollars to watch, and the rascally hollum youngesters that overhear us will laugh. Oh how they will laugh.

Posted

Im with Deej on this one for the fact that I already know 'what' happened. I want to see 'why' and get more dirt on that angle. I remember September 11 like it was yesterday, in fact, I remember it better than yesterday. I was in Speech class, and I was told about it ont he breezeway leaving class. I remember everything I did that day. I even remember that when Peter Jennings signed off, they played an actual hand held tape recording from a tourist and you heard all the cussing and everything on live television for the sake of realism.

 

I will end up seeing it probably, just to see how well Stone kept to the factual line as opposed to the over dramatic, yet how much more over dramatic can one get with an even like 911? I want to see it, Im sure its very good for what it is... but again, the why interests me more than reliving recent history that I remember all too well.

 

And September was a much better title.

Posted

I too am with DJ, tho i agree were quite far off of such a movie comin to fruition.

 

However, i am glad to hear this was more tasteful than it coulda been, and i must admit im morbidly curious to see if Cage brought somethin to FDNY portrayl that, say, Travolta didnt, though i would like to see the ending Jax wrote, And September woulda been a fine title, though as an avid 9-11 conspiracist, i think we all know itd me more accurate if it was called "October", since that's when it actually happend.

 

ps Snakes on a Plane!

Posted
i must admit im morbidly curious to see if Cage brought somethin to FDNY portrayl that, say, Travolta didnt, though i would like to see the ending Jax wrote,

Cage is protraying a NYPD officer, not FDNY. Also, my ending is probably int eh movie, but played on the alternating frames so it is subliminally projected.

 

PS Motherfuckin snakes on a motherfuckin plane!

Posted
Caage is wearing a fire helmet in one of the preview scenes, I think that is where the confusion is.

 

yeah, that's what i was going on.

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