Why's it always gotta be about 9/11? The obvious progenitors to this flick are the Japanese monster movies like Godzilla; nobody knocks them for callously using the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to dramatic effect.

Sometimes a monster movie is just a monster movie, Ms. Zacharek.

You missed my follow-up. If you were there, you may be still traumatized, and nobody would deny you the horror of your experiences.

It's folks like me, at "the intersection of Old Rt 66" (yada) who have little reason to keep carrying on about it. I.e., the vast majority of Americans.

We don't have any compelling reason to avoid seeing a scary movie, or voting for the latest right-wing totalitarian, out of fear of re-living that experience, because we never lived it. Regardless of all the bloviating that was done about "9-11"™ for more than a full year thereafter, and to this very day.

Many would rather this film not exist. If so, you could storm theaters and burn every print, or just, you know, don't give it your dollars.

Images from 9/11 have already been used with "taste and discretion," as Ms. Zacharek suggests. "World Trade Center" covered its $63 million budget, barely. "Flight 93" made about $30-$40 million.

"War of the Worlds" did $600 million worldwide.

Maybe people can swallow in fictional, over-the-top, roller-coaster ride forms what they can't face in reality? Maybe this is one reason for monster stories, to deal with embedded fears, to make them larger than life, then blaze them down with tanks and guns?

Roller-coasters, at their best, are scary.

"If so, you could storm theaters and burn every print, or just, you know, don't give it your dollars."

Except, of course, no one suggested for a moment that anyone should ban the film or destroy the prints. Nobody has even suggested anything as tame as a boycott. Some people have just expressed their personal aversion to the premise of the film - mostly New Yorkers who see the poster of the decapitated State of Liberty while they're standing on the subway platform and are revolted by it. Honestly, I have no interest in seeing any of the 9/11 movies - tasteful or not. It's just that this one seems particularly crass and exploitative.

Maybe some people are up for this particular roller coaster ride. Personally I'd rather ride the Cyclone and at least enjoy myself before I throw up.

I simply don't buy the premise that any imagery of terror and destruction in New York must display a sensitivity to 9/11 because said imagery will inevitably evoke comparisons. Movies cannot and should not tiptoe around ANY subject - no art should. It ceases to be art and becomes only politicized/sanitized commentary. Commentary can be art, I suppose - but this was a fictional movie, not a documentary, and no matter how much Zacharek or anyone else tries to force the movie to be about 9/11, it ain't necessarily so.

The entire point of horror is that it's about what really scares you, which is different for everyone. For SZ, apparently the setting of this movie makes it impossible for her to not think about what really scares her, which, apparently, is the profaning of 9/11. For many others, this Godzilla-reminagined-in-the-digital age is about other things - fear of eco reprisal, fear of leaving the familiar (only to confront that there is as much to fear from the familiar as the strange), etc.

I accept that horror movies aren't for everyone. But to leap to the conclusion that this movie, because it is set in NY, must be judged as some sort of metaphorical re-enactment of 9/11 is ridiculous.

Is Stephanie Zacharek Rudy Giuliani's pen name? He likes to dress up as a woman, maybe he writes as one also?

I'll admit, I was semi-recently a little bit ticked off about a movie exploiting real tragedy to make a buck, but hey, that was Pearl Harbor, and I guess I was the only one who gave a damn.

No matter how much handwringing you do, in 50 years, they're going to make a crappy romantic love triangle movie about 9/11 with Ben Affleck III. With modern medical science, you'll live to see it.

First catharsis, then commercialization. It's the American Way.

On a side note, I wish everyone wasn't so busy clawing for their own sanctimonious high groung over 9/11, and crying about how *their* suffering is so significant. I wish my fellow Americans would show just a little bit of backbone.

If they had just a little spine, the Bush-Cheneys of the world would have a harder time wiping their asses with the constitution.

PS Spielberg's War of the Worlds SUCKED.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do feel for victims of natural, or unnatural, disasters around the world. Do you? In fact, some of the big ones drive me to tears, and I'm not being facetious. Basic human decency, the quality of mercy, does not stop in one's own backyard (at least not in mine).

And Zandru, you're right, I didn't see your second post, but I still must disagree. Have you stopped feeling for those left dead, homeless or bereft by Hurricane Katrina? After all, it happened two-and-a-half years ago, to people a long ways away that we don't know. How about the cyclone in Bangladesh last November? Three thousand gone, a quarter of a million homeless, but it's no one I know. The Asian tsunami of 2004? Old news. Why doesn't everyone just get over it?

9/11, or any one of a number of horrors, may not have happened to you personally. But the thread that runs through all of these examples and countless other catastrophes, including terrorist attacks, is that they strike randomly, without warning. They can happen to any one of us, at any time - even you. When it does, we learn very quickly the meaning of charity and mercy, and the real measure of our fellow man - those who open themselves to the suffering of others, and those who say "get over it".

You're right, I shouldn't comment on things I know nothing about.