American society and American filmmaking take a hit September 11, 2001Before that infamous day, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had been an iconic landmark on the New York City skyline, used as a setting shot dozens of times.
Views of these gleaming skyscrapers used to be the staple of nearly every movie or TV show shot in the Big Apple. They have appeared in several major Hollywood productions, including Ghostbusters, Lonely 2, Trading Places and the third Die Hard movie starring Bruce Willis.
There are also various documentaries about towers, such as 2008’s “The Man on the Wire” Among them, Philip Pettit illegally crossed the high-speed rail and danced between buildings for more than an hour.
After a pair of hijacked 747s, that memorable skyline image suddenly changed.
Attitudes of the American people have refocused on how to properly honor the dead, including citizens trapped in towers and first responders doing all the last-ditch efforts to save as many of those souls as possible.
Over the next few years, the entertainment media began to find ways to integrate and accommodate this living historical element. CBS police program ‘CSI: New York’ turns into a skid; Detective Mike Taylor (Gary Sinise) character loses his wife in attack.
The 2006 issues of “World Trade Center” and “United 93” described the incidents of the first responder crew and what happened to the flight that crashed at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, airport, respectively.
But if you go back to 2002, a stylized superhero movie directed by then-indie horror director Sam Raimi took a different tack when Spider-Man (2002) started promoting and teasing its release in early 2001 .
One promotional trailer Shows Spider-Man capturing a rogue helicopter full of bank robbers in a huge web spanning between the Twin Towers. The scene was removed from the final cut out of concern that it might be tasteless to the victim’s family.
But Marvel and Spider-Man do provide an appropriate way of mourning those tragic events twenty-one years ago.
The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 2. Issue 36 was the first comic book published after the disaster. Dubbed “The Black Issue” for its solid black cover, it features a story with little dialogue as readers see the event through the eyes of the titular hero.
In a nutshell – it’s thought provoking.
Spider-Man helps clear debris and pull people to the safety of Ground Zero. As the narrative puts it, he mourns the loss of “the innocent and the innocent.” He muses about Captain America and the parallels with Captain America’s World War II experience.
But he also marveled at New York’s resilience as a community and the American people, while admonishing and condemning the actions of the “madmen” who committed it, recognizing that even villains like Magneto and Doctor Doom would not Ruthless enough to do this kind of destruction.
Over the past two decades, there have been many films and television tributes to the tower. Some do this to refer to a bygone era before the attack, others to describe what happened at the time.
Regardless of the source, it’s clear that 9/11 has forever had a vital impact on the heart of this media art form.
