[QUOTE=tdn]
I’m baffled by the people saying they don’t want to watch a movie if it’s based on a true story. Surely some true stories fall into the “You can’t make this stuff up” category.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll watch stuff based on true stories. This, however, is not one of those.
Not one I’ll watch, not “not a true story”.
This is a movie based on a true story that I won’t watch, but there are other movies based on true stories I will.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
Well then, spare me the “spare me this ‘important’ stuff” stuff.
You can’t dismiss the criterion of “importance” when you use it in your decision making process also.
If you’re going to scoff at the notion that movies should be seen for reasons outside their content, at least realize that you’re NOT seeing movies for reasons outside their content.
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I’m just rather tired of being told that “<Insert movie title here> is an important movie. You must go see it”. After Brokeback, Passion, Farenheit, I still feel much the same way. I’m not particulary interested. I’m not going to see it because it’s deemed to be “important”. I’m going to see it(or not) because I’m interested in seeing it.
I’m afraid I won’t be seeing it in the theater. Maybe on DVD.
I own the Naudet brothers’ film 9/11 and think it is the best piece of documentary filmaking I’ve seen in ages, and not just because of the live-action scenes of terrible destruction and horror.
In my experience, when a film claims to be “based on a true story,” “inspired by actual events,” etc, it hardly ever is. It is the nature of the medium to take certain liberties, which is fine with me. I just don’t see those films as giving me any real insight into the events they portray.
I’d like to see it, because it is such a compelling true story. I’d like to understand what happened better, and it sounds like the movie is respectful of the victims and families in the reviews. Also, there are no blockbuster Stars, which is quite admirable, unlike the usual chum tossed off the Hollywood sensational success trawler.
And, like Trunk, I’d like to see it in a theatre, surrounded by other people, and be moved (to tears, I’m sure) in understanding what happened on that flight. As we all were moved and emotionally pulled together by the events of September 11, and as the passengers on United Flight 93 pulled together as strangers to heroically avert potential disaster, I’d like to see the movie as part of a larger group of people. I can’t quite think of the appropriate words, but there is a certain quality in a group experience that makes the understanding more meaningful.
I can’t find the right words here. If anyone can help further the thought, much appreciated.
Another “no” vote, for the reasons able stated by Mennochio.
I feel plenty connected to this event, thanks. If I ever need a reminder of the emotional impact, maybe I’ll give the movie a look. That hasn’t happened yet and I doubt it ever will. I read the papers then, saw the constant TV coverage, read the 9/11 commission report, heard the transcripts from the calls, saw the interviews with grief-ravaged surviving kin. I know who Christine Hanson was; I know what 343 means; I know where Shanksville is. I don’t need to pay $8 to be reminded of any of that; it’s in my head already.
I’ll see it, but most likely on DVD rather than in the theater (I don’t go to movie theaters very frequently in any case, so this is no slap in the face to United 93).
Although I respect the position of those who feel that it’s “too soon” to make such a movie, I don’t feel that way at all myself. The official reports have come out, and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get to know much more about Flight 93 than we do now; the one piece of information that probably is known by someone still living but not by the general public is the planned target. [As an aside, I’ve never thought much of the theory that the target was the White House, which would IMHO be very difficult to hit with a high-speed jet, whereas the US Capitol would have been a much more straightforward target to aim for].
As far as whether or not it’s emotionally too soon, that is of course up to the individual viewer. Don’t forget, though, that Mrs Miniver (1942) was released less than two years after the beginning of (and only about one year after the end of) the Blitz, which was a terror campaign of greater duration and loss of life than September 11, 2001. IMHO, Paul Greengrass isn’t making the movie “too soon”, although it may be “too soon” for many people to want to view it, as evidenced by this thread.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
Another “no” vote, for the reasons able stated by Mennochio.
[/QUOTE]
Jodi! Man, here I am reading this thread and trying to compose a meaningful response to the OP, and then … wow, Jodi’s back on the Dope! Talk about a silver lining.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I’ve been very impressed by everything I’ve heard about this movie, in reviews and from people who have seen it. I agree it’s an important film. It’s just not important to me. (“It” being the film, not the event.) I’m not going to see it, although I understand why some people very much want to see it.
For me personally, it’s just too awful. I don’t feel that I’m lacking any information on this topic. In some ways it seems that I could not be more saddened by the fate of the passengers, profoundly impressed by their courage, sympathetic to their families, harrowed by the actions of the terrorists, grateful to the folks on the ground who did their best to deal witih the situation, or overwhelmed by the events that followed than I already am.
However, I’m proved wrong quite often. Most recently, when I turned on the news and heard the 911 tapes from the WTC that were released. I was annoyed by the Rolling Stone review that scolds Americans for not wanting to see this movie. (“Are American audiences always to be coddled by fantasy?”) I saw some of the events unfold with my own eyes, and I WISH it was all a terrible fantasy that didn’t really happen. I am in no danger of forgetting or sugarcoating any aspect of that day.
[QUOTE=Lute Skywatcher]
The point is getting teens & pre-teens (11 - 17 year olds) to understand the significance of that day. Is this really so hard to understand?
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I’m not sure it would help, at least for younger children. For example:
I was 7 when the Berlin Wall fell. The earliest I can really remember anything related to it was when I was looking at the national flags in a 1988 almanac and Dad mentioned that, of course, East Germany no longer existed, but I didn’t really understand why. 16 years late, I can intellectually understand why it was up, why it came down, and why it was a big deal, but it doesn’t resonate with any significance.
I was 8 when the US went into Iraq. Again, I didn’t understand why until years later. With current events I find it hard to care much about Desert Storm these days.
I was 9 when the Soviet Union officially no longer existed. See above about the Berlin Wall.
I was 10 when a truck bomb exploded in the parking garage of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Again, I don’t remember really feeling anything, and now, who thinks of the World Trade Center and first thinks of February 26, 1993, anyway?
I was 11 when the Battle of Mogadishu happened and when Clinton pulled the troops out. I didn’t even really know of it until it was mentioned after 9/11 as part of the “evidence” that the US was “weak in the face of an enemy.” I did see Black Hawk Down in theatres.
I was 12 when the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City was bombed. This one resonated more than 1993 did, partially because I was older and partially because the building was blown to hell. Similarly, I was 11 when Waco happened and didn’t know enough about it to follow the chain of logic that led McVeigh to blow up a building in Oklahoma.
Is my idea coming across yet? All these things happened in just a few years when I was a child, and most of them I didn’t know or couldn’t really understand. It’s now a decade or more later and even now the significance doesn’t really resonate for any of these. Because although I was alive for them, I wasn’t able to understand. And name all the movies you want about historical events, all the great (and even not so great) movies of history about history. Some I will have seen. Some I will have not. Many will be about events that occurred before in the last 40 years before I was born, be it World War II or the Holocaust or the Cold War or Vietnam. Some more will be about the world after late August of 1982. And even after seeing them, I don’t understand in my gut, in the deepest parts of my understanding, what the events described truly mean or meant. And honestly, I don’t think anyone who was in that range of ages 4 years ago will understand “the significance of that day,” as you put it. So I’m not sure that taking the kids along will really do anything for them.
To me, there’s emotion and there’s understanding. I responded to Black Hawk Down with emotion, same as I did with Schindler’s List, Full Metal Jacket, or even Grave of the Fireflies and other WWII movies. But all the emotion never really helped me to understand what the Battle of Mogadishu or the Holocaust or Vietnam or World War II meant to those living and old enough to truly understand.
But I was 19 on 9/11. 19 and I had just started college, with classes having been going for about two weeks. I watched, with many of you, as the second tower was hit live on TV and everything that happened afterwards. Trust me, this time I understood it. And that is why I have no intention of seeing United 93. It could be the greatest movie ever made (and it could be) on the subject, but I have no intention of seeing it. Maybe years later on DVD when I have children of my own, but then I will expect them to get it no more than I did at the age of 10 or so, standing at the grave of JFK and looking at the eternal flame. To me, a monument to a man dead 20 years before I was born. To my mother (who chided me for being too loud in Arlington) it was a memorial to a President assassinated when she was 12 and I guess that had a larger effect on her at that age than Oklahoma City did on me. (I can’t say anything about a movie like Thirteen Days as I’ve never seen it and I don’t know if my parents have either.)
I guess this was a very long post to pretty much say, “No, I’m not going to see it”, isn’t it?