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I think I'd like more fiction than fact in any future World Trade Center stories.
This may sound cold, but the great stories of the day generally involve people who died. Most of those stories would have to be at least somewhat imagined.
Even in United 93, which featured such realism that a great many roles were self-played, events aboard the flight with no survivors had to - of necessity - make some educated guesses and fictionalize away.
In World Trade Center, we followed characters who survived precisely because they had not yet gotten in on the action. It's only because those Port Authority cops were still in the concourse between the towers and not at even the starting point of their planned rescue foray that they survived.
I think the stories of rescuers who really ventured up into the towers would be more compelling.
Perhaps it would be too garish or ToweringInfernolike, but there are also some pretty dramatic stories to be told of people trapped higher than the airplane crashes, of the people who managed to escape down the few passable stairways, and the horrible irony of people making it all the way down to the lobby only to be crushed by the crumbling buildings. And, yes, I'll even go so far as to claim storyworthy drama of situations like having to choose between burning to death or plumetting a hundred stories ... or being on a flight that's commandeered into a skyscraper.
Yes, I have no shame. These things should be portrayed in movies about September 11 ... with characters we somewhat get to know who are put in these most surrealistically deadly situations that actually happened. And more of the terrorists should be characters. And fictionalize some of the planning.
It doesn't all have to be true and based on actual accounts and all that. No one lived to tell the truth of the best 9/11 stories - - - someeone's gonna have to make them up
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And frankly, if a happy Hollywood ending is necessary and actual survivor's tales must be told .... there's two that would make for better films than the two told in Stone's movie.
How about the amazing survival story of Pasquale Buzzelli? An engineer for the Port Authority, he had reached either the 22nd or 13th floor of the North Tower when the building started coming down. He free-fell with the building and then lost consciousness. When he awoke 3 hours later, he was laying on top of the rubble of the tower looking up at the sky. He only suffered a concussion, a broken foot, and minor cuts.
Also on the less dull scale is the story of Stanley Praimnaith, whose office was on the 81st floor of the South Tower. When the North Tower was hit, he was at his desk. He didn't know that the other tower was hit when he was told to evacuate the building, which he did with his co-workers. At the front desk, they were told by the security guard that it is safe and they can return to their offices. Almost as soon as he was back in his office, a friend called from Chicago to see if he was watching the news. She told him that he had to get out of the building.
"Everything's fine," he recalled telling her, just before he looked up to see the huge gray form of the American Airlines plane heading directly toward the building — less than 100 yards away!
He dove under his desk just as the wing of the plane crashed through his window and exploded. He was able to crawl out of the hell on the 81st floor and down the one available stairwell to safety without any serious injuries.
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Perhaps it's not fair to compare World Trade Center with other 9/11 movies or with other Oliver Stone films or with other World Trade Center tales. But I think such comparisons are natural ... I am making them ... and I think Stone's movie comes up stort on all counts.
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