A movie adaptation of that flight titled “United 93” is due to hit theaters on April 28th, yet the trailer itself has already stirred up considerable controversy among movie-goers since its debut last month.
The four words that were remembered the most in the weeks after 9/11 were “We will never forget.” But that theme was quickly drowned out with shouts of “Too soon!” at Hollywood’s Grauman Chinese theater, according to an April 10, 2006 Newsweek article.
The article goes on to say that in Manhattan’s AMC Loews theater, a manager went so far as to pull the trailer after receiving multiple complaints from customers.
The theater manager reported that one of the customers was shedding tears.
“She was saying we shouldn’t have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong…I do not think people are ready for this,” the theater manager said.
United Flight 93’s journey ended tragically crashing in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The story of that flight is, however, an inspirational one about how a handful of adults, amid all the evil that had transpired that morning, chose to band together and fight back, win, or lose.
Seeing the film is not going to be by any means entertaining. I will cringe the moment I see the terrorists burst into the cockpit killing the pilots. That is the whole point in what movies do. They are made to stir up our emotions. Maybe getting audiences angry about what happened that fateful day is just what this country needs.Times have changed in the five years since the attacks as well as our attitudes about 9/11, and it is not for the better. Other than those who lost loved ones that day, the rest of us have practically forgotten about what happened on that sunny Tuesday morning. Our patriotism, or lack thereof, when it comes to displaying our American pride and support for our armed forces has fallen back to what it was before 9/11.
On the first anniversary of the attacks, several churches held a memorial mass. The reason they stopped doing them as the years went by is because the rest of the country has moved on.
On 9/11, a sleeping giant was awakened in the hearts of Americans. Our asses got kicked that day by an enemy who had been warning us for years the day was coming when he and his twisted band of soulless murderers would bring their Holy War - “jihad” to American shores. We did not listen when the World Trade Center was attacked the first time in 1993. We didn’t listen when Osama bin Laden’s henchmen attacked the Kohbar Towers in Dhahran in 1996 and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000.
By the time emergency workers were finished carrying that final piece of steel from the World Trade Center, marking the end of clean-up at Ground Zero, we went right back into snooze mode. Like computers that have been left idle for ten minutes with no one to come back and shut them off.
Today, slipping across the border with a radioactive weapon is no more difficult than getting through airport gates with a sharp object.
Back when I was in high school, I used to laugh whenever I saw the film “Red Dawn” (1984), which showed the United States being attacked by foreign countries. Back then, the movie made no sense and had no basis in reality; now it is all too real. Today, the situation portrayed in that movie has certainly lost all traces of its humor.
If 9/11 failed to prove just how unprepared we are for a serious disaster, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina ought to have finally driven it home.
If nothing else, perhaps “United 93”, and any movies that come after it, will prove to audiences why five years later, American troops are still fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Debate me all you want. America’s involvement in Iraq is a war on terror.
Here is hoping such somber dramas will remind us that unless this country learns from its past mistakes, another 9/11 will happen again.
It is not a question of if– it is when.
©4/19/06
