Twin Towers - Mazes and Monsters (1982) Discussion

Does it freak you out when ancient Rome is in a film? You know Rome was burned down, right?

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you know i hate it when people act this way about the twin towers or other disasters. i heard that price is right had to edit thier old shows because they had mentioned a prize of a trip to new orleans and it upset some of the people from there after the katrina hurricane. are we supposed to just wipe it out of all movies, tv and other media because it is not there anymore. it is just crazy.

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[–] xander-cane 18 years ago

I completely agree. I can maybe understand if it is a movie that involved the twin towers being destroyed that would freak out a lot of people, but why should it be an issue if they are in the background of a film that takes place when the towers were still standing.

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[–] Apolyon 18 years ago

"does it bother you when you see pictures of ancient Rome"

I think you miss the point. You, I or the original poster were not there when Rome burned. All of us remember 911. Maybe the original poster was close to the disaster in a personal way. I also don't think he was advocating removing images of the towers from anything. They were just simply stating an eerie reminder. Much the same as most people would feel seeing some old footage of someone they knew who died tragically.

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[–] ckmoore 18 years ago

I was thinking the exact same thing while reading through these... well said, Apolyon.

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[–] craig-brown-1 17 years ago

With respect, your logic suggests that we shouldn't show movies about WW2, Cambodia's civil war, Vietnam or Korean war, Apartheid in Sth Africa, Modern Sudan, IRA bombings in London, well... you get the idea.

Ignoring the past doesn't make the future better.

I read recently about how the demonisation of Nazis is affecting the way we perceive them - that they were so evil that the little evil acts people practice today don't really add up to much. I think this is similar to ignoring or wishing the past hadn't happenned.

Twisting and changing or ignoring the past makes our lives easier today, but there will be a price to pay tomorrow.

(Anyway, while I am here let me give an unrelated plug for the Australian indie film KENNY.)

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[–] geekwad 16 years ago

What the hell. Buddy JUST SAID in the message you replied to, and correctly, that no one was advocating any such thing. And then you say, "Twisting and changing or ignoring the past makes our lives easier today, but there will be a price to pay tomorrow." What the hell??

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] done_holding_back 11 years ago

I also don't think he was advocating removing images of the towers from anything. They were just simply stating an eerie reminder.

With respect, your logic suggests that we shouldn't show movies about WW2, Cambodia's civil war, Vietnam or Korean war, Apartheid in Sth Africa, Modern Sudan, IRA bombings in London, well... you get the idea.

wut

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[–] omega2064 17 years ago

I dislike the current "politically correct" urge Hollywood has shown to erase the Twin towers from existence. Im surprised they didnt try to exorcise it from Mazes and Monsters too. Should we erase all mention of Pearl Harbor? Hiroshima? or any number of other such events just because it might "upset" a few people. People should be upset that Hollywood and the powers-that-be decided to spit on the graves of all the people who died there by erasing them from existence as if they were a bad taste in the mouth.

Sad.

Omega: Remember, Remember, The Eleventh of September...

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[–] the_twf 17 years ago

Shut up about the towers. I am sick TO DEATH of hearing about the $%^&ing twin towers. It's been five years, GET OVER IT ALREADY.

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[–] 17 years ago

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[–] verde08 17 years ago

stupid movie

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[–] ramsrule2000 15 years ago

A friend of mine was killed on 9-11 when the North Tower was hit.

Should I tell his family to "Get over it already"

Or perhaps you would like to?

He was 36 years old and was married just 3 months before and left behind a pregnant wife.

His son is Autistic.

There are 3,000 other stories similar to his, including some of his co-workers who were forced to jump to their deaths.

Imagine having to make that decision and the thoughts that go thru your mind before you are forced to jump and the thoughts going thru your head while you are falling.

I guess their families should just "Get over it already" as well.

Let me guess - you're one of those people who get all upset when you hear about a suspected terrorist being waterboarded.

Azzhole.

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[–] 15 years ago

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[–] hamloaf 17 years ago

Wait I thought the Twin Towers Bardu was in search of were of Tolkeinian origin? Am I missing something here? Wouldn't that be retroactive continuity?

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[–] Death_to_Pan_and_Scan 17 years ago

With all the conspiracy theories related to the destruction of the Twin Towers, I'm waiting for a new one to start circulating:
That Osama and Co. saw this movie and were so worried that Tom Hanks would use his Hollywood clout to get a sequel made to this crappy movie that they decided to destroy its most famous filming location to prevent a sequel from ever being made.
If course the gov't hides this from us because they're afraid that this would finally give us one thing that we agree on with OBL: the hatred of this movie.

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[–] imapoa 17 years ago

Here's some of my reply from another thread...

Actually I just saw the movie on DVD for the first time, about 1/2 hour ago. It's a good one. I was puzzled; the DVD was dirt-cheap at both stores where I've seen it. Why? My hunch is the Twin Towers scenes...many Americans would be devastated to see them as they were, Standing Tall, in 1982!

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[–] Death_to_Pan_and_Scan 17 years ago

Why was the dvd so cheap? Because the movie sucks. I didn't remember how bad it was til I saw it again this year for the first time since my childhood. This is really not much more than anti-RPG gaming propaganda, badly written and acted. It only gets noticed by those looking for more Tom Hanks movies or those who vaguely remember some D&D related tv movie from childhood, but forgot that it was awful (myself included). If you research the film and its novel origins even the slightest bit, you'll realize how much the story of the young man this was vaguely based on was a convenient over-simplification/delusion by police and media which was pounced upon by anti-D&D religious zealots and turned into a big urban myth.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters_%28novel%29):

"The novel is based in large part on the largely apocryphal "steam tunnel incidents" of the late 1970s. These urban myths developed during the infancy of role playing games, generally purporting that university students playing a live action version of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) or similar game disappeared into the utility tunnels of the school and became lost, and in some cases died of hyperthermia or other causes.

In particular, Jaffe based the novel on newspaper reports concerning the disappearance of a Michigan State University student named James Dallas Egbert. This student did in fact go into the steam tunnels of his school, but for the purpose of committing suicide, not to play D&D. When Egbert's attempt on his life failed, he hid at various friends' houses for several weeks, and the private investigator hired by Egbert's parents to find him speculated in the press that perhaps Egbert had been playing D&D when he disappeared into the steam tunnels. Thus, although Egbert's situation had nothing to do with the game, it was widely reported in the press that D&D was the cause of his disappearance and rumored death..."

As for people not being able to see the image of the Twin Towers in any film or tv from the past, SNL did a skit regarding the old King Kong 70s remake and its use of the towers as a location. If we were to go around removing any reference of the towers ever having existed from every piece of pop culture, we'd be like the government in Orwell's 1984 and its daily rewriting of history. Of course if you were gullible enough to fall in with the LoA/The Secret cult, you'd probably think that it wasn't terrorists who caused the incident, but the negative thoughts of all the victims that brought the tragedy upon themselves (which is an obvious load of bull and dishonors their deaths).

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[–] Xarathos 17 years ago

YEah, but we weren't in Ancient Rome.

I saw this on television and at first thought it was Big. He wears similiar clothes and everything. Then I see him kill a guy he sees as a dragon or something.

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[–] anthony_0358 16 years ago

This movie was made in 1982 which was a great year for me
I graduated high school and had some other great things happen for me too!
I had heard of it but I had never actually seen it

But, in late September 2001 I was up early for work
Just about 3 weeks after 9-11

I put on the TV and I was changing the channel when I saw Tom Hanks and his friends running through the Trade Center
I recognized it right away

I knew exactly where Tom was in that scene at the end,
The outdoor observation deck of the South Tower

I had stood there a few times in my life, most recently in 1995

It was just chilling to see that scene only a few weeks after September 11th

But, that is just part of life
You can see the World Trade Center in so many films

It seemed like a fun movie though!

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[–] sosantney 16 years ago

First off the comment made "It's been 5 years get over it already" obviously your an ignorant moron. Good Luck getting over something that is FAR FROM OVER. I hope your middle class since your probably not anymore from the War created by 9/11. Also, he never said that he couldn't watch a movie about Ancient Rome, he said it freaked him out. I live in NJ and I know people who families were killed in 9/11, so to compare Ancient Rome to a current event is just stupid.

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[–] kdk7 16 years ago

the op didn't say it should be taken out, just that it gave him the creeps. whenever i see the world trade center in a movie or tv show, 9/11 does cross my mind for a second, and its a weird feeling, but it's not a huge deal. more so than seeing ancient rome obviously, but still not that big a deal.

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[–] v0llrath 16 years ago

right because anything that happens to AMERIKA that undermines their power and authority over the world can /never/ be forgotten right? as if it was a personal attack on all of you ("well ah don't understand the social, religious, or eekonomic reasons why they attacked but gard-dangit nobody attacks 'merika it just ain't right"). in a country where less than half the people vote, where less than half can even name another world leader for god's sake. so yes. please. do. get over it!!

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[–] nakedcitizens1 15 years ago

Thank you, i am an american and i believe people need to get over it too.

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[–] lukeshand 15 years ago

Liar. Everyone can name Queen Elizabeth II.

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[–] libraleyne 14 years ago

I, for one, LIKE seeing the towers as they were. As for the movie, too much of anything can make a person snap. I thought Mazes and Monsters was very sad but it was okay.

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[–] PterryFan 10 years ago

I don't think that people get the point about the o.p. .

I in no way condemn the use of the Twin Towers in the movie , but it WAS creepy, seeing it as a living building .

Its like seeing a ghost .
That doesn't mean that you hate ghosts , just that seeing it gave you an eerie feeling .

So get off of your High Horses , and stop overthinking the comment .

It said what it meant to say .

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[–] sheeleyb 14 years ago

Seeing Tom Hanks in any movie after the "Castaway" and "Joe Vs. The Volcano" disasters is very sobering to me. I hope they retroactively remove Tom Hanks from all of the other movies he's appeared in.

______________________________________
God bless America and the 'Ignore this User' link.
1-22-13

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[–] DeepRest 13 years ago

Only on the internet could a stupid old movie starring Tom Hanks spark a heated debate over the Twin Towers.

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[–] Xeokym 12 years ago

People who say "get over it already," I don't care HOW many years later it is, obviously were not close enough to the incidents that happened on 9-11 to have cared all that much in the first place. Just because someone talks about 9-11 five or ten years after the fact doesn't mean they're "not over it," like they live every day as if it had happened the day before. If a vet talks about the Viet Nam war in present day, remembering some things that affected him greatly, do you just yell "get over it already!" in his face because the war ended over 35 years ago?

I had an internet "friend" in 2001 who lived in California when the 9-11 attacks happened, and she very unsympathetically said, "they didn't happen anywhere near me, what do I care? They have no affect on my life whatsoever." Needless to say I didn't talk to her anymore after that comment. You don't have to actually feel strong emotions when something catastrophic happens that doesn't seemingly directly affect you, but have some effing respect.

As far as the twin towers appearing in movies thing...movie makers removed the images of the towers from movies that were just recently made because showing the towers in a movie that just came out, after the towers were no longer there, was in bad taste. I think one of the Spiderman movies was made prior to 9-11, but the movie didn't come out until after the attacks, so they digitally removed the image of the towers from the film. That makes sense; it was still emotionally sensitive to a LOT of people.

However, movies made well before 2001 that have the Twin Towers in them...why on earth would they remove those images? Deal with the reality - they are not there anymore. That's how they used to look. If it's "creepy" then that's fine, be OK with the creepy feeling. People are so used to censorship & other people removing "scary" images of reality for them that when sheltered Americans see actual tragedy of real life, they're so shocked by it they can't deal with it. Yet other people in other countries see & deal with much worse on a daily basis! I say, don't look away. Be aware, know what is going on in the world & learn to accept reality. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's also giving up your rights, your control. You should never want someone else to tell you what you can & can't see or read about!

¸«¤º°»«ëÕ|{¥(V)°º¤»¸
I can't understand your crazy moon language.

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[–] jaynobody 11 years ago

I've been watching a ton of 80s movies lately, the towers are in a lot of background scenes, anything that tall is going to be. I always feel a bit weird seeing them in old movies to be honest. Its a weird nostalgia or something, thats the way things used to be, a better time IMO. I am waiting for someone to make a movie set in pre 2001 that digitally inserts the towers into shots for accuray.

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