United 93 - The Movie

[skeith]

Does anyone know if the pilot and copilot were killed? If not, there was at least a chance of survival if the hijackers could be overpowered.

No Chris you are not being too simplistic, it's just that you know very little about the facts.

and that, in the words of Jim A., is pathetic.

It is uncontested that the pilot and copilot were murdered in the first few minutes of the hijack and the passengers and flight attendants were aware that the pilots had been killed..

And yes Chris there are phone conversations with passengers where they indicated that they were going to revolt against the hijack -not sure what you mean by the immediate situation.

Edited May 2, 2006 by skeith

[skeith]

crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch

Not sure what this means as I am not up on cybertalk.

these people on those planes were friends, neighbors, relatives of close friends.

sorry if you are bored.

You're not sure what it means, but your paranoia can be trusted, eh? It must have been posted simply to annoy you, after all...

So why don't you just tell me what it means then, and then I don't have to speculate.

I don't speak in code here.

[7/4]

I don't speak in code here.

Try reading my previous post.

[Dan Gould]

That's a good point, Alexander. We will, of course never know what any of the passengers were thinking. The phone conversations (and only 3 or 4 passengers had them, as I understand it) were mostly about saying goodbye and letting people on the ground know that a hijacking had occurred and the chances of survival were slim. Is there any recorded phone conversation that indicates a need/desire to circumvent disaster, other than the immediate one?

It seems reasonable to assume that, given the tension aboard and the high prospect of the aircraft not making it safely to the ground, people had very real, immediate problems to deal and did not give much thought to saving someone on the ground. Remember, too, that we are probably only talking about a few people--there has been no indication (that I know of) that all 40 passengers were told of the WTC attacks. The human instinct is to save one's own skin, whether it be for the sake of loved ones or just an urge to live.

I also agree that we cannot assume that everyone aboard had the same thoughts, the same motivation for at least attempting survival--of course they didn't. Does anyone know if the pilot and copilot were killed? If not, there was at least a chance of survival if the hijackers could be overpowered. And, if they were killed, did the passengers in the cabin know? In other words, I don't think we can say that they must have had a patriotic motive, because none knew how to operate a large aircraft and, ergo, there was no hope of landing the plane. As I read some of the above posts, that is the basis for one of the "heroes" conjectures.

From the 9/11 Commission Report:

During at least five of the passengers' phone calls, information was shared about the attacks that had occurred earlier that morning at the World Trade Center. Five calls described the intent of passengers and surviving crew members to revolt against the hijackers. According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane. They decided, and acted.84

At least FIVE of the passengers phone calls resulted in info about the WTC attacks.

Furthermore, 40 passengers were herded into the back of the plane, where these phone calls took place, and where a plan was devised. So how do you get from that to your conjecture that something less than 100% of the passengers knew about the earlier attacks???

Also from the 9/11 Report:

Jarrah's objective was to crash his airliner into symbols of the American Republic, the Capitol or the White House. He was defeated by the alerted, unarmed passengers of United 93.

Sounds like heroes to me.

As far as the question about whether or not the pilots were alive dead. There is this in the Report:

Callers reported that a passenger had been stabbed and that two people were lying on the floor of the cabin, injured or dead-possibly the captain and first officer. One caller reported that a flight attendant had been killed.81

[Dan Gould]

To get back to the issue of this film, it is apparent that the film maker chose to extrapolate from knowledge that there were licensed private pilots and perhaps a former ATC on board into an assumption that the passengers hoped to fly the plane safely after overpowering the terrorists.

There is nothing in the Commission's report that supports this, but I'd suggest that because of the power of film, this will soon be part of the assumed "facts" of what happened to Flight 93.

[GregN]

What a horrible time, what a horrible event. Many people died. Many continue to die.

The question for me is:

can I watch this movie? I fell into a very serious depression after 9/11. I wondered if having kids was only a selfish thing to do in this incredibly fucked up world. I looked at my baby boy and my 4 year old daughter and I cried for their future. I felt as though I failed them. I didn't play music. I didn't listen to music. I didn't sleep. I felt increasingly helpless. I took to reading philosophy, theology, and classic literature. I thought about trying to reenlist. I saw the smoke over DC from 90 minutes away as I lived in Charlottesville VA. Many people from my county worked in D.C. We were scared. At the time, I worried about my family who live near Flint and Dearborn MI. The two most dense, per captia, populations of Arab Americans and Arabs anywhere in the US.

I believe, all but the most jaded and reclusive, suffered greatly from these horrific events. I don't know if I care to rekindle the pain just yet. It still smolders.

[Jim Alfredson]

well it was not made clear to me why the conversation was pathetic, unless your point is that since we don't know what happened up there, it is a useless argument.

Precisely. Nobody who was there survived. To argue back and forth whether these poor souls are heroes or not, seems completely pointless and ugly to me. I did not intend it to be a personal attack on anyone in this thread, just a general statement of the conversation.

And with that, I'll bow out.

[Jazzmoose]

There is nothing in the Commission's report that supports this, but I'd suggest that because of the power of film, this will soon be part of the assumed "facts" of what happened to Flight 93.

Exactly. And that's another reason why it's too soon. An interpretation of past events in a movie is one thing, but something this fresh, combined with the power of film on the human brain and memory, is going to do exactly that: replace facts with interpretation.

[skeith]

There is nothing in the Commission's report that supports this, but I'd suggest that because of the power of film, this will soon be part of the assumed "facts" of what happened to Flight 93.

Exactly. And that's another reason why it's too soon. An interpretation of past events in a movie is one thing, but something this fresh, combined with the power of film on the human brain and memory, is going to do exactly that: replace facts with interpretation.

I might agree except that waiting more time doesn't necessarily mean we are going to get a more factual presentation.

Look at the american Western films of the 40s,50s, 60s, these films are about events that occurred many years before but they are hardly fair to native americans.

Having seen United 93 I found it to be a remarkably balanced film that relies heavily on facts (I would conjecture that very little is made up) without over glamourizing the passengers or demonizing the hijackers.

And the message I got from the film, which I guess is different from Dan's view, was that although there was indeed a pilot on board (he had only previously flown 4 seaters) the passengers actually did not have much hope they could pull it off.

[Jazzmoose]

I agree totally; I didn't mean that we would see a more factual presentation in time, only that a movie released now while the events are fresh would be confused with reality in the minds of many. We'll never see a factual presentation of what went on in that plane, because everyone who knows the facts intimately is dead, and died without leaving a record of what happened. For dramatic purposes, a film has to "fill in the blanks", and those blanks will always be an interpretation that reflects the bias of the interpretor at least as much as it reflects the reality of the event.

Edited May 2, 2006 by Jazzmoose

[Chuck Nessa]

Did I just read a Moose waffle?

[connoisseur series500]

crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch

I get it now!

edited to point out that I made the post before reading 7/4's explanation. I arrived at the same conclusion and burst into laughter!

Edited May 2, 2006 by connoisseur series500

[connoisseur series500]

In fact, I was....

suck,suck,suck,suck,suck,

sucking on pieces of candy while reading the thread from the beginning to the present.

[Jazzmoose]

Did I just read a Moose waffle?

Do NOT make me hungry!

[kinuta]

Anyhow how many of you have seen the film and what did you think of it as a film?

I don't want to make any comments at all regarding the various posts but there seems to be little comment on the film itself !

In my very humble opinion I thought it was an intense and superbly made piece of filmmaking that took my breath away.

[sal]

In my very humble opinion I thought it was an intense and superbly made piece of filmmaking that took my breath away.

What he said.