Trailerology: Flight 93
Submitted by jim on Wed, 02/01/2006 - 06:07
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It doesn't show anything, but the trailer for Flight 93 still gives me the chills. 9/11 movies have tremendous potential to be crass, but Paul Greengrass is the best possible director for a project like this, so I have some hope. More at the NY Times.
The definition of a hero from the dictionary is "A person noted for feats of courage."
The definition of courage is "the quality of mind that enables one to face danger wihy self-possession, confidence, and resolution."
I feel that in the end the passengers did rise up and act courageously. At first, they did not know what happened. With us knowing all the information about 911, we can say that the passengers should have done this or that. But, when people are not sure of what is going on and did not have all the information, they did what they were told to do. In the past when planes were hijacked, they were landed and then people were released when the demands were met. This was the first time that commercial airliners were used as weapons in suicide missions. They had no knowledge of the other planes. They finally pieced what was going on from information they got from phone calls to loved ones. That is when they made the plan. It would havebeen easier to sit back and let others die, but they did not.
It is easy to judge that they looked stupid on the plane in the first half of the movie. But, how would you have reacted? When you are under that stressful of a situation, you don't know how you are going to react. It is easy to cast judgement while sitting at your computer.
I thought that the movie wa well done with the information that we have. We really don't know all that happened, but it was pieced together from the information that we did have.
I also could connect to how the families would feel. A few of the passengers families were shown. Two of them have infants. I have an infant daughter and it would be devastating to lose my husband and that my daughter would never know her daddy. It woud be hard.
It would not be on the Top 1000 movies of all time. But, it was as accurate as possible. They did not fictionalize the story to make it a more action packed, blockbuster movie. They just simply told the story.
I just want to say I in no way pretend that I know for certain I would not have acted just as stupidly as a hostage, I just know I don't want to see it in a movie... thats the problem with movies based on real events, filmmakers stop making films and start showing stupid shit I don't want to see.
If you don't want to see it in a movie can't you just not watch it?
of course... but that takes the fun out of criticizing them... you could say that about anyone who says anything bad about any movie... I watched part of it to see if it was any good, it wasn't, and therefore I most likely will never see the theatrical release of the same name... it's the name of the game.
well I watched half of the A&E tv version... and it sucked, and normally I would guess the theatrical work would be much better, but surprisingly it didn't suck because it was poorly made or acted, simply because the story is uninteresting and the people on the plane act like idiots for 9/10's of the movie, and when 9/10s of a movie is annoying it's hard to like it... I have to guess even greengrass's will suck.
Still, it's nice to know that your natural optimism and wide-eyed naïveté allowed you to keep watching so that you got the chance to enjoy the last 10% of the movie. I must say that I wouldn't have had your magnanimity and probably would have given up much earlier.
i did only watch the second half, and I assumed the first half was much like most of the second... and I didn't say I enjoyed the last 10%, but the people on the plane weren't quite as annoying then... obviously.
Then I admire your ability to extrapolate and endure. I also nominate you in perpetuity to lead the charge when the mutiny starts and the revolution comes.
I, on the other hand, will make sure that they tell your story.
To me, the story is anything but uninteresting (from what we can piece together of it from those few phone conversations and the plane crashing into a field). I would probably fault the filmmakers for making the people aboard seem like idiots, because the account I've heard (again, as pieced together) make the passengers sound human, at turns terrified and heroic, but not stupid.
I guess I just have a problem with the way hostages of any sort act in movies(and probably in real life)... they hardly ever do what they are told without flipping out or getting themselves killed... also I don't quite see what is so heroic about having no other choice and basically going through with a suicide mission because they believed it was the right thing to do... now if it were chuck norris and he could safely land the plane at the end, it would have been a watchable(even if still bad) movie(forgive me for sounding like an idiot).
The decision to die sooner rather than later—even if it's a matter of minutes or hours—to try and make a difference, is heroic in my book. I also know from much less (incomparably less, really) extreme circumstances that it's a rare person who can overcome the "somebody should do something" group dynamic/diffusion of social responsibility and act. I like to think I'd act similarly, but harbor doubts. Who knows, until you are under the gun? The chances of me acting similarly have gone up since 9/11 rewrote the rules of how to behave on a hijacked plane, but at the time everyone was still operating under the old "cooperate" rules, and to change that mindset as new information comes in (that the towers had been hit), and under such stress, has got to be incredibly, incredibly hard. That's the way it seems to me, anyway.
Oh, I can't contest the diffuculty... I'm sure it was very hard to take action, even when knowing you're going to die sooner or later anyway, and i'm not sure I could make that choice either... I'm just not sure it's heroic, maybe I'm too selective when it comes to using that term but in my mind the person has to be sacrificing something more than an hour of life spent being terrorized and near death as it is... not the decision to act would be easy, it's just not entirely much of a gamble. And certainly there was much less loss because of them, but to me the loss is irrelevent and the sacrifice is essential... for instance I would use the term heroic to describe the pizza delivery man who got in a fistfight with two armed muggers, got shot in the leg but sent the muggers off with nothing and still delivered the pizza... the potential loss was just a pizza and some tips, but the man gambled his own life, something none of the people aboard the plane did, did the hijackees have a tougher choice, certainly, but were they more heroic, I don't think so... all in hindsight of course, things might have been different onboard but i doubt it(no disrespect meant to them of course).
As for myself, I try to follow the general rule that preventing a jumbo jet from crashing in Washington DC is more heroic than delivering a pizza. That's just the way I roll.
Did it have extra cheese or something?
hey I just look at heroism differently... for me it's not what you prevent or make happen, it's what you personally stand to lose... that is a ridiculous generalization you made by the way... maybe saying the pizza delivery man was more couragous is a better way to put it(although i do believe the act was more heroic)... by definition the more an act makes sense the less couragous it is... and it makes a whole lot more sense and less courage(as hard a choice as it may be) to foil terrorists in a sure death situation than it does to stand up to 2 armed muggers in order to deliver a pizza... courage, most definitely goes to the pizza guy... heroism, a matter of opinion(aka i'm probably wrong)
Let me apologize. Evidently I'm funnier to myself than I am to others. That keeps happening. So: I am sorry.
I don't think that "you're probably wrong." I think you're definitely right. I'm just not sure that I understand how you measure heroes and heroism. That's what I'm trying to understand... and I'm not sure that I'd disagree with you when/if I do.
As for me, I think that heroes do heroic deeds. You can certainly be heroic delivering pizzas. ("Extra cheese." I'm sorry, that line still makes me giggle.) But I think that part of being a hero is doing larger than life things. Standing up to muggers qualifies, in fact it was one of the things that Mark Bingham did in his life before getting on that plane. He may have been more courageous against the muggers but leading a charge against terrorists, dying in a plane crash and saving countless lives in a nation's capitol are acts worthy of a hero.
I might have a simplistic super-hero view of the world. Superman might be terrified of heights. It might take all of his courage to do the "Up... Up!.. and AWAY!" thing. But (I think) he gets the label of "hero" because he's constantly saving the Earth, looking through walls and bouncing bullets off his chest. It would seem that all of those things make more sense than overcoming a fear of flying... but what do you expect from someone who wears his underwear over his tights. And a cape... yeesh. We should be thankful that super-heroes don't all fly around wearing cravats.
Holy homosexual subtext, Batman! Coming out... now that is heroic.
"Extra cheese." hee hee hee... Sorry.
no it was funny... I laughed... it just made me look like a fool(and rightly so)... so I had to point out it was a generalization... no hard feelings.
and that super-hero example makes sense... because I often have the same indifference about the fictional feats of superheroes for the same reason.
Some might find all these extra cheese jokes grating.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs (okay, I'm leaving now...)
Yes, jim, it chilled me to the bone.
I can't wait to see how the film will be, though I'm not exactly big on Greengrass.
I wonder how he'll treat Mark Bingham.