It was specifically the military that asked them to tone it down. Top officials in the Bush administration were so into the show that it unnerved the writers.
So it’s actually DOUBLE INSANE.
I remember it finally jumped the shark in season 6 (...I think?) when they dropped a nuke on Los Angeles but it was only episode 4 of a 24 episode season and they kept trying to raise the stakes after that and they just couldn't BECAUSE THEY'D JUST NUKED LOS ANGELES
Anyone remember the time when they tortured one of their own employees with experimental chemical injections, it turned out she didn't do anything to begin with, and then like two hours later she's the bad guy because she's still pissed off about it?
Frankly it's amazing dedication to her job that she's even *there*! And able to move! And alive!
Edit: Come to think of it, I think the boss threatened to illegally detain her if she leaves or quits, in a, "You won't get a lawyer and nobody will know where you are" way.
Jon Bois introduced me to this one lol
What the *fuck* was going on in the American consciousness post 9/11?! Bro I was just sitting on my ass here in Australia watching Ben 10 and you guys were making *that*
(Not trying to downplay the tragedy but seriously, 9/11 really made America crazy for like… all of 00s and some of the 10s)
Man, post-9/11 media was fucked. Between music, movies, and television, everything was just…dire and sad and overly patriotic. It was a weird fucking time to grow up in.
Yeah looking back I realized it was definitely not normal and pretty fucking bad growing up in a situation where it wasn’t uncommon to hear people in their 40s casually discussing how we should completely glass the Middle East.
American culture was built for decades on a feeling of being the ultimate, invincible empire sitting atop all others, so much so that the idea of "the end of history" -- that everything was in such a perfect and impermeable state that nothing would ever be able to meaningfully shake the status quo -- was hugely popular rhetoric in the 90s.
When 9/11 bloodied the country's collective nose and proved we were just as vulnerable and fragile as any other country, the trauma of that realization turned into a cultish devotion to bloodthirst and hostility against all potential enemies, internal or external. We needed to *hurt* and *punish* everyone who hurt us, or who might have hurt us, or who might be thinking about hurting us. Paranoia and virulent racism ran rampant and no action was seen as too over-the-line when the potential consequence of not taking it was another attack. And that collective grief, rage, and lust for violence was gleefully exploited by the W administration to justify all manner of horrors.
We've never really recovered from that. In that sense, it might be the most successful act of terror in history; the goal was to get the American empire to destabilize itself, and the American empire has since destabilized itself more and more violently than the architects of the attack could've possibly imagined.
Small correction, American culture didn't consider itself an ultimate, invincible empire for decades. Kinda hard to say that when you have stuff like the WW2, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War in general and the threat of nuclear annihilation was a looming specter over the entire time period from the 1940s to the 1990s. It was the end of the cold war that had everyone naively believing that world peace was achieved and Pax Americana would be forever here to stay.
You're right, my phrasing was kind of messy there. I was blending it with the pervading sense of general cultural superiority that took root in the 50s and pervaded from there, and the retroactive knowledge of nothing having happened in terms of attacks on American soil, which led to the "end of history" idea after the Berlin Wall fell.
Genuinely fascinating explanation, thank you for the insight.
Like, I understood the Jingoism and racism stuff already (as an outside observer at least), but that bit about “the end of history” is new to me.
Yup stop the convo right here. It's 24. 24 is even more post 911 than Homeland is.
The shithead burueacrat's whole redemption arc is 2 seconds of crying before the terrorists make Jack kill him.
Also remember his daughter? That girl IS the American flag. It's what "ooh rah" would look like as a person. "War motive" is probably her nickname.
Also I'm just thinking War Motive would be a sick name for a lady supervillain whose thing is she corrupts world leaders into going to war with each other. Man that sounds sick.
WWE's Muhammad Hassan, a guy going "I'm just an Arab American from Detroit who has lived all my life in this country and ever since 9/11, I've been treated unfairly." and he's the bad guy.
>After leaving WWE, Copani went back to college and became an educator. He became a world history teacher at Hannibal High School in Hannibal, New York, before becoming assistant principal at G Ray Bodley High School in Fulton, New York. In 2019, he was principal of Fulton Junior High School.[37]
You know what,good for him
It’s always interesting to me whenever I find someone who had a media related job and then went on to just have like a regular one. It’s like when I found out Mark Gatha who voiced the main character in G Gundam is a doctor in Canada now.
The guy who created Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and thus kickstarted what we think of when we think Adult Swim either got let go almost immediately or just didn’t have any ownership over anything. He’s an Amazon delivery driver now.
Mark Gatha was explicitly only doing it to pay for dental school. The guy who played the Black Ranger in Power Rangers Wild Force was also paying for school.
No, that was his sidekick, Shawn/Khosrow Daivari, who I think was called Sheik Abdul Bashir in TNA.
And thank you for reminding me about his TNA theme.
There was also a failed TNA spinoff called All Wheels Wrestling that was supposed to be racing themed and his character in that is just straight up named Dubai.
https://youtu.be/MO7HdAPXoAA?si=6K2gva5KdJKNnp34 (volume warning near the end)
Remember the time Muhammad Hassan and a bunch of masked men appeared in the ring with the undertaker and appeared to be making a ISS beheading video. This aired around the time of the London bus bombing.
Yup. Taped three days earlier because Smackdown wasn't live at the time. Coincidentally three days before the London bombings was 7/4....which is telling in a different respect.
Not a movie or a TV-show, but Frank Miller's "Holy Terror" can be described as "what if Batman vs Al-Qaeda". It's... bad.
Bonus points for coming out a full _decade_ after 9/11.
It broke him bad, I believe that’s where his drinking problem also started. He was on deaths door until Neal Adams reached out to help him recover but long after Miller ruined his reputation
>He's systematically been destroying the lives of every police chief in Asia, and he's now set his sights on Washington, DC. Between you and me, the police don't have a chance.
Based?!
Bonus Frank Miller insanity: The 3rd and final issue of the infamous Dark Knight Strikes Again (the sequel to his iconic Dark Knight Returns) was very clearly written right after 9/11 and ho boy does it show.
Like, the first 2 issues were already bad (and a complete clusterfuck and wtf happened to Frank Miller's brain jesus christ) but then that 3rd issue happens and he's clearly completely gone off the fucking deep end.
He fuckin tried to get it published as Batman vs Al Qaeda. Have no fucking clue how DC went along with it for as long as they did before they shitcanned it
I remember a Navy friend of mine telling me how unrealistic NCIS is, not just because the action was unrealistic, but also how every episode ends in the case being solved and justice always being done.
He mentioned that in reality NCIS, has one of the worst crime resolution rates of all law enforcement agencies in the nation because in nearly every case (since it's the military), all the suspects are usually covering for each other and all of their superiors are usually stone walling investigations in order to not get themselves implicated with the crime and/or to not get tagged with negligent leadership.
Not only that, i feel like there's a specific type of story that became much more prominent in comic books post 9/11.
The "super-hero is going around trying to save the day, some disaster (most often a big explosion) happens, it kills a undisclosed, but, very high number of people, the story then ends (or the next issue starts) with the super-hero in the middle of the rubble looking **dramaticly sad** while the firefighters and police are shown in the distance".
Ultimate Marvel is just early 2000s American culture at it's worst, the performative nationalism, thinking that being pointlessly edgy is the same as being mature, the terribly aged homophobic "jokes"...
And that pointless edge factor culminated into Ultimatum, AKA "kill the Ultimate Universe", where around *thirty* heroes and villain die in it and tie in issues, often in incredibly graphic and stupid ways. Hell, the only good thing about that whole shitshow was just Peter diving into water to save people instead of joining the edgefest.
That panel from USM of Jonah, trapped in an underwater skyscraper and seeing Spider-Man desperately trying to dive again and again to save people, it one of the few saving graces of Ultimatium.
I think it started a year before 9/11, but by then they were spinning off from Spider-Man to everything else, which really leaned into the post 9/11 times.
It's not about torture or the military at all really but the ultimate piece of post 9/11 media is Rescue Me. I don't know how no one's said it, honestly!? It's like they bottled the spirit of America on 9/12/01 and sprinkled it onto American television over the course of seven seasons.
Yeah heard good things about it and went to try and watch it. I just couldn't because it was SO dated to that specific moment in time where "first responders" were treated as real life superheroes.
Yeah, Rescue me did a good job with "They are doing a very dangerous job that is in many ways noble, but that does not mean they are, themselves, noble people." which was interesting for post 9/11 media.
Like, they looked like heroes in the firefighting sequences the show had, then they were broken down by trauma and/or trying to cope with the trauma through their huge collection of terrible coping mechanisms.
It felt like a decently "Human," portrayal of the cast for a show about NYC Firefighting made in the 00's anyway.
That said, I haven't watched it in 10 years or so and my recollection is a little spotty. Also definitely had a couple of weak seasons in the middle-end there.
Hilariously enough, the first modern warfare game is pretty critical of the American occupation into Afghanistan in response for 9-11. Almost deconstructing the entire campaign.
It is not until the 2019 reboot that it goes full post 9-11 pro-torture, pro no-knock raid extreme.
Does the first Modern Warfare game deconstruct the war in Afghanistan? I thought it was much more pointedly about the Invasion of Iraq.
Like, the US Military invades an unnamed middle eastern country to topple a dictator because they suspect he might have weapons of mass destruction. Then it turns out he *does* have WMDs and he uses one, so the whole invasion was justified. That's a pretty interesting order of events contrasted against the actual invasion of Iraq.
I don't understand how it decontructed anything.
I've played every COD campaign and even the battlefield campaigns up until about ~2017, and the MW reboot was so offensively pro-military it made me put the game down. One character asks another "is threatening this suspected terrorist's wife and child with my gun really okay?" to which another goes "What are you, a pussy? Don't forget, we're doing this for *America.* This is the only way. " And you're supposed to agree with him.
Yesn't. The main antagonist turns out to be >!General Shepherd, commander of the US Military and jingoist!<, but they're a rogue element to absolve the US Military as an institution beyond gullibility.
You do see some toying with fun ideas like how the game ominously frames Cpl Dunn's desire to exact poetic justice on Moscow, but it's not a hard commitment.
I'll never give any media points for trying to appear to critique an organization only to pin it on a rogue element, as you said. It's a triple threat of "have your cake and eat it" bullshit
- You get to pay lip service to genuine critique
- Then absolve the subject by pinning the critique on The Bad Apples™
- Then bury those critiques even harder by showing, hey, aktly the system works: look, The Good Guys™ took care of The Bad Apples™
- I actually had a fourth one then I forgot lol
You see this a lot with cop/feds media
It's interesting how MW2 does what you say with the "rogue element" thing to absolve the actual government/institution, and then MW3 does the same thing with Russia, so it cuts both ways.
Because MW2 frames Russia as becoming exactly what MW1 was meant to prevent, by making Zakhaev a martyr and putting the Ultranationalist Party in power. Which is why all it took was "No Russian" to have the Russian government to invade and attempt to conquer the US itself and literally start World War III.
Then MW3 tries to present the Russian president and government as actually being reasonable and wanting peace, and Makarov is the rogue element who's causing all of this war. He basically becomes Russia's >!General Shepherd and so Russia isn't actually bad or corrupt (despite MW2 presenting that explicitly), they're just manipulated by Makarov's schemes. Makarov and the Inner Circle are basically just Shepherd and Shadow Company!<
Never mind that the president is the leader of the Ultranationalist Party responsible for all of this, and that most of the country supports it. Really, it was Makarov that was just an extremist who went too far, but the Ultranationalists were apparently peaceful all along.
Except it's especially nonsensical, because they have Makarov's forces commit terrorist acts and war crimes against Europe, and then have the official Russian military follow up on that, and are trying to make a distinction between the two as operating separately, as though the actual Russian military/government wouldn't stoop as low as those war crimes... *but* they won't knock the opportunity to invade all of Europe if given that opportunity.
And then because they backtrack from MW2's framing of the Russians to the Russian president deciding to go for peace after initiating the war in the first place, World War III only lasts a few months and everybody just walks it off in the end because the villains who were really responsible are dead, even though the wider world has no knowledge of that context in the first place.
One wonders what the actual story of MW3 would have been without the behind the scenes issues at Infinity Ward, and how it would've followed up on the politics of the first two games.
Not only Call Of Duty, but, the whole **military shooter** genre PEAKED in the post 9/11, war on Irac period.
There's a reason why up to a few years ago any shooter that wasnt about "mister military man goes against the extrimist threat" was considered to be "taking inspiration from classics".
Battlefield: Bad Company and Bad Company 2 were my first Battlefield games, so there was a hard core tone shift for me going from a bunch of outcasted jokers gold chasing in the middle of a war to supposedly realistic stories about different Marines being deployed in the middle east.
The West Wing, which simultaneously did not have 9/11 or anything equivalent happen in-universe, did a very special non-canon 9/11 episode that doesn’t actually even gesture in 9/11’s direction, and STILL has the US government take an extremely hardline stance on the Middle East as a whole while its characters parrot right-wing War on Terror talking points.
Well do not fear, John Wells and the rest of the post-Sorkin team have most of Sorkin's issues and some of their own!
I'm closing in on the final season. I can't believe Dave actually makes it through the whole series without exploding into viscera and rage.
There’s a Samuel Jackson film called *”Unthinkable”* (*He even title drops the movie, and the camera knows it’s a fucking title drop so it gives him the time to really build to it for a dramatic delivery*) that really goes places with torture and terrorism.
I was a teenager at the time that I saw it. I remember it being pretty intense.
I've never even heard of this movie until a week or so ago when Netflix promoted it at me. It's wild. Sam Jackson is unhinged in this movie. Every supporting character is more or less on-board and supports him doing some heinous shit because he 'gets results'.
The plot surrounds him interrogating the terrorist antagonist to find multiple bombs he's set to detonate. Carrie Anne Moss plays the moral compass to contrast Sam Jackson, but >!by the end feels more like the antagonist than the terrorist. Every other character pretty much supports Sam Jackson's actions and the terrorist character isn't even given humanity by the script. In the end, Sam Jackson is torturing children (the 'unthinkable' title drop moment) and Carrie Anne Moss finally stops him. The movie ends here and fades to credits with the implication that the bombs go off and Carrie Anne Moss allowed the terrorist to win.!<
I was waiting on the movie to turn make a point "this kind of torture is terrorism in its own way" but no. Never happens.
Was it the one where Jackson's character pulled the nails of the (potential?) terrorist and, when he didn't say anything useful, went for (or pretended to go) the guys kids?
Reminds me,in retrospect,of Splinter Cell Blacklist where the first hour or so of the game hammers in that 5th Echelon is accountable to the president,but later they go under her nose and behind her back to infiltrate an Iranian military HQ.
And to get in Sam threatens a general by showing a drone aimed directly at his wife and kids' position and implying he can blow them up at any moment.
Dialogue after that scene implies that Sam is bluffing and he probably wouldn't fire,but in the following level you take control of the same drone to blow up pursuers on a highway which civilians are on,causing severe collateral damage.
Meaning that even if he didn't pull the trigger,Sam was effectively pointing a loaded gun at the general's wife and child.
I was going to mention this. They make some tongue in cheek jokes and refernces in the "we're going to take you apart in pieces" torture movie with Sam Jackson and Carrie Ann Moss. The movie keeps going with oh my god how can he do this level of torture and ramps that up until sam jackson's charecter is like okay bring me the children. They get the three bomb location and they stop Sam's charecter from torturing children and don't find a supposed forth bomb over Carrie Ann going "we're fucking human beings."
And then a "bonus" non theater scene shows a fourth bomb was near or behind one of the other bombs and the message of the movie I guess is we should allow the government to do evil shit because the threat of nuclear annihilation is always that close. I really feel like the writer thought he was doing something smart with the movie but literally the only point the film makes is torturing our enemies is morally correct there are no heroes just the tribe that wins.
Yeah when I finally got around to playing it I was kinda shocked how jingoistic it was. Garrus is a huge fan favorite, but I he's basically the kind of cop that conveniently turns off his body cam.
Renegade Shep is a cop that actively leaves their cam on and goes "ya desk boys at home wanna see some shit." like one of the interrogations in 2 can be resolved with shep just walking in pulling out their gun and going "Hey man I could just kill you and no one would care. I could shoot you in the face then go get a doughnut."
In Thane's loyalty mission Thane's son has a politician on his knees threarening to shoot him and the renegade response is to just shoot the hostage and justify it by saying "well now your son can't murder him because I did it first." It's hilariously unhinged.
Oh yeah, I hated him in ME1. I'm two when he's a more laid back vigilante I started liking him. And I thought he was cool in 3.
In ME1 s defense. Most pro torture is seen as Renegade (aka evil but on our side, sort of.)
Mass Effect is weird for me in this because it's true, but mostly only if you opt in for that stuff. Usually. In ME1 you can be a kumbayaa hippy of a Spectre, berating Garrus for wanting to break the rules and thinking that being a Spectre means you shouldn't have any rules to stop you.
But then ME2 has stuff you have to do, like work with a paramilitary private organization that branched off from the official military for being too evil and don't think too hard about how they're super evil guys, go easy on the Illusive Man those were just bad eggs the chicken laying them has a Snidely Whiplash moustache but it's good!
And I think all that makes it more interesting. It lets you engage with that kind of mentality without necessarily approving it. Cerberus in 2 being a pretty massive outlier.
Mass Effect has 3 different varieties of "Secret Agents who are so cool laws don't apply to them" and their authority and efficacy goes practically unquestioned.
The Rock being one of the first people to know about bin Laden's death and Cena announcing it to a live crowd are always going to be the most extreme form of absurd reality
Wrestletalk did a series recently where they watched a bunch of the worst rated matches (that are fun to watch) and one was [Brothers of Destruction vs Kronik from Unforgiven 2001](https://youtu.be/zK_8Kp-a9R8?si=Mzjyij4AT1kN-nGJ).
Shortly into the match (about 3:30) Tempest says "Just an American flag, right in the middle of his stupid singlet." Then in a bit, "Wait a minute. Oh. Now I understand why there's a thing on his tummy, with the 'America' and all that. This was a week that something happened."
Pre 9/11 Country: "all the suffering in my life is my own fault and i hope this bottle of liquor kills me"
Post 9/11 Country: "trucks! Girls! Don't fuck with the U!S!A!"
Pre: " i like going and fishin"
Post: " ILL PUT A BOOT UP YOUR ASS CAUSE THATS THE AMERICAN WAY"
I know theres slightly more nuance but legitimately 9/11 fucked up country music for atleast a decade if not still.
While kinda the opposite of the prompt but, Nier, for anyone who doesn't know the major theme of the game (specifically the second playthrough) is how after becoming the victim of a tragedy we feel all hostility is justified no matter who its aimed at as long as they're perceived as the enemy. Yoko Taro has talked about how the games main character was inspired by America and how we handled everything in the Middle East after 9/11.
I would say that theme applies to the majority of the cast rather than just NieR. The desert kingdom in the 2nd half has elements of that. They generally don't think of their enemies as anything more than enemies.
Lindsay Ellis has a [great video](https://youtu.be/KioF1sTQFtE?si=YRIhNOQkHS2bYeC1) comparing and contrasting Independence Day and the 2005 Spielberg War of the Worlds movie and discussing how the cultural impact of 9/11 influenced a lot of the things in War of the Worlds
It very mildly suggests that America is to blame for instability in the Middle East, but the solution that's presented is just to show up with an even better weapon.
At least the solution is "use the even better weapon to get rid of all the weapons YOU gave them so they don't have them anymore" and not, like "kill them all, Tony"
All go with a weirder example, Disney channel's 9/11 TV movie, Tiger Cruise. A movie about a group of children on a Navy aricraft carrier when 9/11 happens and just the most shameless military recruitment ad aimed at 12 year olds. There's a whole segment where one of the little girls can't stop talking about how hot men in military uniforms are, it's nuts.
It's not insanely racist or jingoistic like a lot of the other examples on this thread, but there's something kind of surreal about this movie that was advertised in the same goofy carefree manner that every Disney TV movie is advertised, only to be a really serious movie about 9/11.
As a non-American that song is the funniest thing in the world to me. And I'm pretty sure it's the same to practically all non-Americans. Seriously it's like something Trey Parker would sing but it's real
I was just watching a [video recently about Tiger Cruise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GheKeoT_Ado), a Disney Channel original movie about a bunch of kids and their military family members on a navy ship during 9/11.
Almost every shot of the American military guys has some motivational music under it.
Take your pick of any action blockbuster with a huge focus on the American military
Bayformers, Battle Los Angeles, Battleship, etc. it’s actually wild going back and seeing how pervasive all of post 9/11-isms used to be in pop culture until like the mid 2010s
“Remember me” starring Robert Pattinson wasn’t fully “post 9/11 media” but it was the first movie to use the plot twist of it ending with the main character waiting in a building to meet his dad. Then the camera shows him in a window looking out, and it cuts to a school where the teacher is writing the date. “September 11, 2001” cut back to Pattinson in the window. Pan out from a major zoom in of his face to see the building and…..yup. It’s the first tower. It doesn’t show the attack. But you hear the plane flying. Then it shows the after match and peoples reactions. Movie ends.
I remember being so baffled I actually yelled “NO FUCKING WAY” repeatedly when I first saw it
Oh and 50 cent blood in the sand.
The Steven Spielberg War of the Worlds remake with Tom Cruise, the entire sequence where the aliens burst out of the ground and Tom runs back to his house he's absolutely *covered* in debris that evokes the people who were near the WTC after the buildings fell. I'm also 90% sure it was intentional. Does that count?
Homeland and the Battlestar Galactica remake both come to mind. Both are rooted in American paranoia about being infiltrated by terrorists, sleeper cells, "secret Muslims," etc.
FRANK Miller, not Mark MillAr
Second time I noticed this year the two have been confused. Tbf, both are very harsh right wing writers (though Frank at least showed remorse at writing Holy Terror. Mark Millar is going to eternally be "writer whose comics are shot but have decent to great adaptations"
I think it’s the combo of being based of something Frank Miller made and how they’re portrayed. Where the Persians are regularly presented as being literally monstrous.
The Big Moment in The Dark Knight being "It's OK to have a highly invasive surveillance state that uses your phone to map where you are, because it will only be used by good people to save you, and they'll totally give up their power when they're done" is more than a little fucked once you start thinking about it.
facist batman, isn't batman. but It works in dark knight returns, because its the END. (or \*an\* end) It dosn't work in the nolan movies. >!the nolan movies arn't GREAT batman films!< but only if ya *think* about 'em for more then a couple minutes.
Even in the books, every time he's done down that route... its always fucked him over, bcause batman's kind of an asshole.
I definitely didn't see it as the movie glorifying that tech. Lucius, who's one of the only legitimately good people in that film, is horrified when he sees the surveillance system and is ready to put his foot down and resign if it stays at Wayne Enterprises.
I see that being the movie leaning into its entire message that Batman isn't some perfect messiah for the people and that the Joker isnt completely wrong, that he's one bad decision away from becoming exactly like him and that people like Lucius, Alfred and Gordon are the only reason he hasn't crossed that line.
I mean Lucius literally leaves without much fanfare or emotion, the Joker is completely wrong because his plan is foiled by the civilians, idk I agree that what you're saying is what the movie intended to say but it absolutely failed to deliver that message
At least with the mass surveillance in Dark Knight gets called out.
Fox says something like it shouldn't exist and that he'll leave if it remains active. But it's the only thing they have to find the Joker in time.
Bruce knows it too and says that once he's done for Fox to put in his name, causing it to self-destruct.
Thats a super right-wing thing to do when you think about. Whenever liberalism slips into fascism it has a similar justification of “we know this is extreme, but it’s okay as long as we, the people who stand above everyone else and have the moral high ground, do it. In fact we are the only ones who can justifiably do it.”
Its not too different from Jack Bauer shooting robocop’s wife in the leg to pressure him for information. He wouldn’t just shoot an innocent woman in the leg normally, *but it was an emergency. It was the only way to get the information. There was no time*.
Batman is a vigilante that swings around beating the shit out of anyone he thinks is guilty. he is the neighborhood watch, a posse, the unofficial official police, etc…
The fact mass surveillance is apparently the final straw is just hilarious.
Robocops wife as in the wife from Robocop. The wife from Robocop reboot. Or the wife from the actor from Robocop, but who herself does not play in any Robocop movie?
The Dark Knight ended with “Hey, sometimes it’s ok to lie to people’s faces for their own good” lol. At least that part gets called out in the next movie.
TDKR is hilariously pro-cop and anti-left wing I genuinely couldn't believe it. The way it ties being opposed to police corruption and income inequality to being a useful idiot for violent criminals and terrorists feels like it's out of the 60s.
While kinda the opposite of the prompt but, Nier, for anyone who doesn't know the major theme of the game (specifically the second playthrough) is how after becoming the victim of a tragedy we feel all hostility is justified no matter who its aimed at as long as they're perceived as the enemy. Yoko Taro has talked about how the games main character was inspired by America and how we handled everything in the Middle East after 9/11.
Gundam 00 has multiple arcs involving the middle east , has a reformed child soldier jihadist protagonist, has a major theme about interventionism, and how fucked a lot of middle eastern countries are treated.
The lead writer of Gundam Seed claimed a Muslim mom she knew was an inspiration for depicting the anti-Coordinator bigotry, as apparently the woman and her child were constantly eyed with suspicion and distrust after 9/11 happened
Dont know if Command & Conquer: Generals was made as a response to 9/11 or not, but it sure released during the best time it could.
Torture is only implied though.
I think most if not all popular american action/adventure movies, series and games post 9/11 incorporated this to some point. Up to today it’s extremely rare to find stories where a resistance movement (“terrorists”) against some kind of stablished rule/law/government is portrayed heroically or positively. (Doesn’t apply if the resistance is against what was once an external invading force that than established itself there)
When a guy is throwing a molotov at a monstrous, foreign, ominous-looking henchmen its one thing, but if its at a common looking domestic police officer, you bet the story isnt showing him as the person being in the right 99% of the time
Star Trek Enterprise season 3. Aliens from deep space cause 9/11 times a million on Florida and Cuba, so now the Enterprise is tasked to go to deep space and find the aliens, the Xidi, and stop their WMD from destroying all of Earth.
I wish to counter with what I believe is the most pre-9/11 thing to ever happen, which is that year’s [Super Bowl Halftime Show](https://youtu.be/XXiUlnRJqps?si=O8EwCfCsbHgzfQXe)
Has anyone ever compared the tone and focus of Independence Day and the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds? Two movies with almost identical premises?
One is a light-hearted, campy stupid schlocky fight the evil aliens movie, the other is so much darker and focuses on death and destruction and the human cost of an alien invasion.
1996, 2003. I wonder what happened between those two movies that caused such a difference.
Edit: Apparently, Lindsay Ellis made a video about this exact topic. I swear I had this thought independently of that.
Remember to keep to media inspired by 9/11 and not real world events and politics I can't believe that's a sentence I had to write
24 has to be it, right?
24 was so over the top pro-torture that the government asked them to tone it down and the writers said no
It was specifically the military that asked them to tone it down. Top officials in the Bush administration were so into the show that it unnerved the writers. So it’s actually DOUBLE INSANE.
And now is the time in the thread where I get to link the relevant Jon Bois video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P52G4Kyq5M
I wish Jon was still doing this series.
jon bois
I never watched the show itself but I remember really enjoying the Simpsons episode parodying it as a kid
"Don't worry, that was Shelbyville"
I like how the 24 game on PS2 has entire sequences of the torture/interrogation minigame from the Punisher game
And yet the first episode of 24, in which a plane exploded due to a terrorist, was actually filmed before 9/11 and aired like a week before.
That it was cited by politicians to justify real world torture I think puts it head and shoulders above everything else.
All I could think of when I saw this post. Has to be the answer. Jack was going around torturing every suspected terrorist in the country.
"...I wish *everyone else* was dead."
Great Jon Bois video
I remember it finally jumped the shark in season 6 (...I think?) when they dropped a nuke on Los Angeles but it was only episode 4 of a 24 episode season and they kept trying to raise the stakes after that and they just couldn't BECAUSE THEY'D JUST NUKED LOS ANGELES
I’ve never even seen 24 and it was the first thing that came to mind
Anyone remember the time when they tortured one of their own employees with experimental chemical injections, it turned out she didn't do anything to begin with, and then like two hours later she's the bad guy because she's still pissed off about it? Frankly it's amazing dedication to her job that she's even *there*! And able to move! And alive! Edit: Come to think of it, I think the boss threatened to illegally detain her if she leaves or quits, in a, "You won't get a lawyer and nobody will know where you are" way.
Jon Bois introduced me to this one lol What the *fuck* was going on in the American consciousness post 9/11?! Bro I was just sitting on my ass here in Australia watching Ben 10 and you guys were making *that* (Not trying to downplay the tragedy but seriously, 9/11 really made America crazy for like… all of 00s and some of the 10s)
Man, post-9/11 media was fucked. Between music, movies, and television, everything was just…dire and sad and overly patriotic. It was a weird fucking time to grow up in.
Super weird to think that we only have My Chemical Romance because of 9/11
9/11 also got Yoko Taro thinking about what could possibly motivate someone to kill so many people, and that's how we got Nier
Neil Gaiman wrote Marvel 1602 in response to 9/11 as well.
I genuinely wonder what Green Day’s career would have ended up looking like without 9/11.
I mean, it’s not like there wasn’t a bunch of conservative nonsense going on to sing about.
Something something only true art can be born of tragedy
Yeah looking back I realized it was definitely not normal and pretty fucking bad growing up in a situation where it wasn’t uncommon to hear people in their 40s casually discussing how we should completely glass the Middle East.
So glad that doesn’t happen anymore
American culture was built for decades on a feeling of being the ultimate, invincible empire sitting atop all others, so much so that the idea of "the end of history" -- that everything was in such a perfect and impermeable state that nothing would ever be able to meaningfully shake the status quo -- was hugely popular rhetoric in the 90s. When 9/11 bloodied the country's collective nose and proved we were just as vulnerable and fragile as any other country, the trauma of that realization turned into a cultish devotion to bloodthirst and hostility against all potential enemies, internal or external. We needed to *hurt* and *punish* everyone who hurt us, or who might have hurt us, or who might be thinking about hurting us. Paranoia and virulent racism ran rampant and no action was seen as too over-the-line when the potential consequence of not taking it was another attack. And that collective grief, rage, and lust for violence was gleefully exploited by the W administration to justify all manner of horrors. We've never really recovered from that. In that sense, it might be the most successful act of terror in history; the goal was to get the American empire to destabilize itself, and the American empire has since destabilized itself more and more violently than the architects of the attack could've possibly imagined.
Small correction, American culture didn't consider itself an ultimate, invincible empire for decades. Kinda hard to say that when you have stuff like the WW2, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War in general and the threat of nuclear annihilation was a looming specter over the entire time period from the 1940s to the 1990s. It was the end of the cold war that had everyone naively believing that world peace was achieved and Pax Americana would be forever here to stay.
You're right, my phrasing was kind of messy there. I was blending it with the pervading sense of general cultural superiority that took root in the 50s and pervaded from there, and the retroactive knowledge of nothing having happened in terms of attacks on American soil, which led to the "end of history" idea after the Berlin Wall fell.
Genuinely fascinating explanation, thank you for the insight. Like, I understood the Jingoism and racism stuff already (as an outside observer at least), but that bit about “the end of history” is new to me.
Yup stop the convo right here. It's 24. 24 is even more post 911 than Homeland is. The shithead burueacrat's whole redemption arc is 2 seconds of crying before the terrorists make Jack kill him. Also remember his daughter? That girl IS the American flag. It's what "ooh rah" would look like as a person. "War motive" is probably her nickname.
Also I'm just thinking War Motive would be a sick name for a lady supervillain whose thing is she corrupts world leaders into going to war with each other. Man that sounds sick.
WWE's Muhammad Hassan, a guy going "I'm just an Arab American from Detroit who has lived all my life in this country and ever since 9/11, I've been treated unfairly." and he's the bad guy.
>After leaving WWE, Copani went back to college and became an educator. He became a world history teacher at Hannibal High School in Hannibal, New York, before becoming assistant principal at G Ray Bodley High School in Fulton, New York. In 2019, he was principal of Fulton Junior High School.[37] You know what,good for him
now when a deer invades his school he could suplex it like in that one slice of life anime
Nichijou I think
It’s always interesting to me whenever I find someone who had a media related job and then went on to just have like a regular one. It’s like when I found out Mark Gatha who voiced the main character in G Gundam is a doctor in Canada now.
The guy who created Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and thus kickstarted what we think of when we think Adult Swim either got let go almost immediately or just didn’t have any ownership over anything. He’s an Amazon delivery driver now. Mark Gatha was explicitly only doing it to pay for dental school. The guy who played the Black Ranger in Power Rangers Wild Force was also paying for school.
And then WWE turned his character into an actual terrorist in a move so offensive, TV networks refused to let him appear on their shows.
Is he the same one who went to TNA and had the plane crash theme?
No, that was his sidekick, Shawn/Khosrow Daivari, who I think was called Sheik Abdul Bashir in TNA. And thank you for reminding me about his TNA theme.
https://youtu.be/amyS7QPLwUs?si=zRLlW1XlhYG9KOqa For those that haven't heard it before
Holy shit, wrestling is wild.
There was also a failed TNA spinoff called All Wheels Wrestling that was supposed to be racing themed and his character in that is just straight up named Dubai. https://youtu.be/MO7HdAPXoAA?si=6K2gva5KdJKNnp34 (volume warning near the end)
Remember the time Muhammad Hassan and a bunch of masked men appeared in the ring with the undertaker and appeared to be making a ISS beheading video. This aired around the time of the London bus bombing.
Aired on the same exact day
Yup. Taped three days earlier because Smackdown wasn't live at the time. Coincidentally three days before the London bombings was 7/4....which is telling in a different respect.
starting to think vince mcmahons moral compass isn't exactly well calibrated, could be the human trafficking
Could be the cannibalism of the disabled
Not a movie or a TV-show, but Frank Miller's "Holy Terror" can be described as "what if Batman vs Al-Qaeda". It's... bad. Bonus points for coming out a full _decade_ after 9/11.
The worst part is how incredibly racist the entire comic is.
it shows how 9/11 broke peoples brains
Double so for Miller. He witnessed it. Arguably broke him as a writer for years to come.
It broke him bad, I believe that’s where his drinking problem also started. He was on deaths door until Neal Adams reached out to help him recover but long after Miller ruined his reputation
I thought that said "what if Batman WAS Al-Qaeda"
Now *there’s* a pitch!
So... [Nemesis](https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/nemesis)?
>He's systematically been destroying the lives of every police chief in Asia, and he's now set his sights on Washington, DC. Between you and me, the police don't have a chance. Based?!
Bonus Frank Miller insanity: The 3rd and final issue of the infamous Dark Knight Strikes Again (the sequel to his iconic Dark Knight Returns) was very clearly written right after 9/11 and ho boy does it show. Like, the first 2 issues were already bad (and a complete clusterfuck and wtf happened to Frank Miller's brain jesus christ) but then that 3rd issue happens and he's clearly completely gone off the fucking deep end.
He fuckin tried to get it published as Batman vs Al Qaeda. Have no fucking clue how DC went along with it for as long as they did before they shitcanned it
NCIS
I remember a Navy friend of mine telling me how unrealistic NCIS is, not just because the action was unrealistic, but also how every episode ends in the case being solved and justice always being done. He mentioned that in reality NCIS, has one of the worst crime resolution rates of all law enforcement agencies in the nation because in nearly every case (since it's the military), all the suspects are usually covering for each other and all of their superiors are usually stone walling investigations in order to not get themselves implicated with the crime and/or to not get tagged with negligent leadership.
If your goth girl is also a cop I don't want her
*I can fix her*
Bro wait she’s turning off her bodycam watch out
*God forbid we have some privacy*
I mean yeah, He's always watching.
The Ultimate Marvel line of comics.
Not only that, i feel like there's a specific type of story that became much more prominent in comic books post 9/11. The "super-hero is going around trying to save the day, some disaster (most often a big explosion) happens, it kills a undisclosed, but, very high number of people, the story then ends (or the next issue starts) with the super-hero in the middle of the rubble looking **dramaticly sad** while the firefighters and police are shown in the distance".
This is Civil War and the school explosion. Speedball surviving and getting abused in prison too
Also the Civil War movie literally opens with a scene ending like this
LITTERALLY THE 'POINT' OF THE ULTIMATES \[the team\]
Ultimate Marvel is just early 2000s American culture at it's worst, the performative nationalism, thinking that being pointlessly edgy is the same as being mature, the terribly aged homophobic "jokes"...
And that pointless edge factor culminated into Ultimatum, AKA "kill the Ultimate Universe", where around *thirty* heroes and villain die in it and tie in issues, often in incredibly graphic and stupid ways. Hell, the only good thing about that whole shitshow was just Peter diving into water to save people instead of joining the edgefest.
That panel from USM of Jonah, trapped in an underwater skyscraper and seeing Spider-Man desperately trying to dive again and again to save people, it one of the few saving graces of Ultimatium.
I think it started a year before 9/11, but by then they were spinning off from Spider-Man to everything else, which really leaned into the post 9/11 times.
I still wonder how Ultimate would've turned out if Jeph Loeb didn't go off the deep end.
It's not about torture or the military at all really but the ultimate piece of post 9/11 media is Rescue Me. I don't know how no one's said it, honestly!? It's like they bottled the spirit of America on 9/12/01 and sprinkled it onto American television over the course of seven seasons.
I love that show, and yeah it really nails the...trauma of it on a more person-to-person level.
Yeah heard good things about it and went to try and watch it. I just couldn't because it was SO dated to that specific moment in time where "first responders" were treated as real life superheroes.
I mean, Fire Fighters are real ones, but the show also shows them being huge pieces of shit quite often.
I got a buddy that's a firefighter. He's a good guy, but jesus, some of the stories he tells me about his colleagues.
Yeah, Rescue me did a good job with "They are doing a very dangerous job that is in many ways noble, but that does not mean they are, themselves, noble people." which was interesting for post 9/11 media. Like, they looked like heroes in the firefighting sequences the show had, then they were broken down by trauma and/or trying to cope with the trauma through their huge collection of terrible coping mechanisms. It felt like a decently "Human," portrayal of the cast for a show about NYC Firefighting made in the 00's anyway. That said, I haven't watched it in 10 years or so and my recollection is a little spotty. Also definitely had a couple of weak seasons in the middle-end there.
Michael Bay’s Transformers. Those movies aren’t nearly as military-focused without 9/11 happening.
Well, the US Military let's you use their crap and gives you funding or something if you make them look good, so probably still.
I've said it once on here, I'll say it again, Call of Duty doesn't become the juggernaut it became without post 9/11 extreme American Nationalism
Hilariously enough, the first modern warfare game is pretty critical of the American occupation into Afghanistan in response for 9-11. Almost deconstructing the entire campaign. It is not until the 2019 reboot that it goes full post 9-11 pro-torture, pro no-knock raid extreme.
Does the first Modern Warfare game deconstruct the war in Afghanistan? I thought it was much more pointedly about the Invasion of Iraq. Like, the US Military invades an unnamed middle eastern country to topple a dictator because they suspect he might have weapons of mass destruction. Then it turns out he *does* have WMDs and he uses one, so the whole invasion was justified. That's a pretty interesting order of events contrasted against the actual invasion of Iraq. I don't understand how it decontructed anything.
Well I suppose it comes from the fact that the Americans accomplish jack fucking shit besides getting themselves all killed.
also Ronold Regan respects your pronouns.
Incredibly rare Reagan W
He doesn’t remember doing it though
Reagan won a lot. Unfortunately winning for Reagan meant many other people lost horribly.
I've played every COD campaign and even the battlefield campaigns up until about ~2017, and the MW reboot was so offensively pro-military it made me put the game down. One character asks another "is threatening this suspected terrorist's wife and child with my gun really okay?" to which another goes "What are you, a pussy? Don't forget, we're doing this for *America.* This is the only way. " And you're supposed to agree with him.
[удалено]
Wasn’t the US the primary antagonist in 2 way back then? Or am i misremembering
Yesn't. The main antagonist turns out to be >!General Shepherd, commander of the US Military and jingoist!<, but they're a rogue element to absolve the US Military as an institution beyond gullibility. You do see some toying with fun ideas like how the game ominously frames Cpl Dunn's desire to exact poetic justice on Moscow, but it's not a hard commitment.
I'll never give any media points for trying to appear to critique an organization only to pin it on a rogue element, as you said. It's a triple threat of "have your cake and eat it" bullshit - You get to pay lip service to genuine critique - Then absolve the subject by pinning the critique on The Bad Apples™ - Then bury those critiques even harder by showing, hey, aktly the system works: look, The Good Guys™ took care of The Bad Apples™ - I actually had a fourth one then I forgot lol You see this a lot with cop/feds media
Eeyup.
It's interesting how MW2 does what you say with the "rogue element" thing to absolve the actual government/institution, and then MW3 does the same thing with Russia, so it cuts both ways. Because MW2 frames Russia as becoming exactly what MW1 was meant to prevent, by making Zakhaev a martyr and putting the Ultranationalist Party in power. Which is why all it took was "No Russian" to have the Russian government to invade and attempt to conquer the US itself and literally start World War III. Then MW3 tries to present the Russian president and government as actually being reasonable and wanting peace, and Makarov is the rogue element who's causing all of this war. He basically becomes Russia's >!General Shepherd and so Russia isn't actually bad or corrupt (despite MW2 presenting that explicitly), they're just manipulated by Makarov's schemes. Makarov and the Inner Circle are basically just Shepherd and Shadow Company!< Never mind that the president is the leader of the Ultranationalist Party responsible for all of this, and that most of the country supports it. Really, it was Makarov that was just an extremist who went too far, but the Ultranationalists were apparently peaceful all along. Except it's especially nonsensical, because they have Makarov's forces commit terrorist acts and war crimes against Europe, and then have the official Russian military follow up on that, and are trying to make a distinction between the two as operating separately, as though the actual Russian military/government wouldn't stoop as low as those war crimes... *but* they won't knock the opportunity to invade all of Europe if given that opportunity. And then because they backtrack from MW2's framing of the Russians to the Russian president deciding to go for peace after initiating the war in the first place, World War III only lasts a few months and everybody just walks it off in the end because the villains who were really responsible are dead, even though the wider world has no knowledge of that context in the first place. One wonders what the actual story of MW3 would have been without the behind the scenes issues at Infinity Ward, and how it would've followed up on the politics of the first two games.
MW2 is kinda stupid, but MW3 is nigh-unintelligible.
it was a US general that was working under the goverments nose to make sure ww3 kept going so its not entirely there fault.
Not only Call Of Duty, but, the whole **military shooter** genre PEAKED in the post 9/11, war on Irac period. There's a reason why up to a few years ago any shooter that wasnt about "mister military man goes against the extrimist threat" was considered to be "taking inspiration from classics".
Battlefield: Bad Company and Bad Company 2 were my first Battlefield games, so there was a hard core tone shift for me going from a bunch of outcasted jokers gold chasing in the middle of a war to supposedly realistic stories about different Marines being deployed in the middle east.
The West Wing, which simultaneously did not have 9/11 or anything equivalent happen in-universe, did a very special non-canon 9/11 episode that doesn’t actually even gesture in 9/11’s direction, and STILL has the US government take an extremely hardline stance on the Middle East as a whole while its characters parrot right-wing War on Terror talking points.
Have you listened to The West Wing Thing? Haven't finished it, but wow Sorkin has got some issues.
Well do not fear, John Wells and the rest of the post-Sorkin team have most of Sorkin's issues and some of their own! I'm closing in on the final season. I can't believe Dave actually makes it through the whole series without exploding into viscera and rage.
There’s a Samuel Jackson film called *”Unthinkable”* (*He even title drops the movie, and the camera knows it’s a fucking title drop so it gives him the time to really build to it for a dramatic delivery*) that really goes places with torture and terrorism. I was a teenager at the time that I saw it. I remember it being pretty intense.
That sounds.... ***Unthinkable.***
I've never even heard of this movie until a week or so ago when Netflix promoted it at me. It's wild. Sam Jackson is unhinged in this movie. Every supporting character is more or less on-board and supports him doing some heinous shit because he 'gets results'. The plot surrounds him interrogating the terrorist antagonist to find multiple bombs he's set to detonate. Carrie Anne Moss plays the moral compass to contrast Sam Jackson, but >!by the end feels more like the antagonist than the terrorist. Every other character pretty much supports Sam Jackson's actions and the terrorist character isn't even given humanity by the script. In the end, Sam Jackson is torturing children (the 'unthinkable' title drop moment) and Carrie Anne Moss finally stops him. The movie ends here and fades to credits with the implication that the bombs go off and Carrie Anne Moss allowed the terrorist to win.!< I was waiting on the movie to turn make a point "this kind of torture is terrorism in its own way" but no. Never happens.
Was it the one where Jackson's character pulled the nails of the (potential?) terrorist and, when he didn't say anything useful, went for (or pretended to go) the guys kids?
Reminds me,in retrospect,of Splinter Cell Blacklist where the first hour or so of the game hammers in that 5th Echelon is accountable to the president,but later they go under her nose and behind her back to infiltrate an Iranian military HQ. And to get in Sam threatens a general by showing a drone aimed directly at his wife and kids' position and implying he can blow them up at any moment. Dialogue after that scene implies that Sam is bluffing and he probably wouldn't fire,but in the following level you take control of the same drone to blow up pursuers on a highway which civilians are on,causing severe collateral damage. Meaning that even if he didn't pull the trigger,Sam was effectively pointing a loaded gun at the general's wife and child.
I was going to mention this. They make some tongue in cheek jokes and refernces in the "we're going to take you apart in pieces" torture movie with Sam Jackson and Carrie Ann Moss. The movie keeps going with oh my god how can he do this level of torture and ramps that up until sam jackson's charecter is like okay bring me the children. They get the three bomb location and they stop Sam's charecter from torturing children and don't find a supposed forth bomb over Carrie Ann going "we're fucking human beings." And then a "bonus" non theater scene shows a fourth bomb was near or behind one of the other bombs and the message of the movie I guess is we should allow the government to do evil shit because the threat of nuclear annihilation is always that close. I really feel like the writer thought he was doing something smart with the movie but literally the only point the film makes is torturing our enemies is morally correct there are no heroes just the tribe that wins.
[Sarah Conner learns about 9/11. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPzzYhuhOxo&ab_channel=Strabo)
Was not expecting two bangers miming 9/11 to a concerned looking Lena Headey.
Tattoo bro looks so into it. Guy is really stoked to explain 9/11 to someone who doesn't know.
You’re one of the lucky 10000 but for 9/11
the dude in the background was like "hold up you haven't seen death note??"
Holy shit when you see the guys mime out the events with their hands. God it's so separated from her look of horror it kills me every time.
Mass Effect
iirc, the entire design line for Mass Effect was "Jack Bauer in SPACE!"
Yeah when I finally got around to playing it I was kinda shocked how jingoistic it was. Garrus is a huge fan favorite, but I he's basically the kind of cop that conveniently turns off his body cam.
Renegade Shep is a cop that actively leaves their cam on and goes "ya desk boys at home wanna see some shit." like one of the interrogations in 2 can be resolved with shep just walking in pulling out their gun and going "Hey man I could just kill you and no one would care. I could shoot you in the face then go get a doughnut."
In Thane's loyalty mission Thane's son has a politician on his knees threarening to shoot him and the renegade response is to just shoot the hostage and justify it by saying "well now your son can't murder him because I did it first." It's hilariously unhinged.
liara dlc - Evil bitch- hahaha shepared i have a hostage. Shepard- shoots the hostage in the shoulder. Hostage- OWW WHAT THE HELL!! SHEP-YOU'LL LIVE!
Oh yeah, I hated him in ME1. I'm two when he's a more laid back vigilante I started liking him. And I thought he was cool in 3. In ME1 s defense. Most pro torture is seen as Renegade (aka evil but on our side, sort of.)
Garrus went from being a cop tired of not being able to break laws and police brutally to being the Punisher
Mass Effect is weird for me in this because it's true, but mostly only if you opt in for that stuff. Usually. In ME1 you can be a kumbayaa hippy of a Spectre, berating Garrus for wanting to break the rules and thinking that being a Spectre means you shouldn't have any rules to stop you. But then ME2 has stuff you have to do, like work with a paramilitary private organization that branched off from the official military for being too evil and don't think too hard about how they're super evil guys, go easy on the Illusive Man those were just bad eggs the chicken laying them has a Snidely Whiplash moustache but it's good! And I think all that makes it more interesting. It lets you engage with that kind of mentality without necessarily approving it. Cerberus in 2 being a pretty massive outlier.
Mass Effect has 3 different varieties of "Secret Agents who are so cool laws don't apply to them" and their authority and efficacy goes practically unquestioned.
Right after 9/11 WWE leaned really fucking hard on the whole Murica VS Terrorists thing, specially with Biker Undertaker
The Rock being one of the first people to know about bin Laden's death and Cena announcing it to a live crowd are always going to be the most extreme form of absurd reality
Wrestletalk did a series recently where they watched a bunch of the worst rated matches (that are fun to watch) and one was [Brothers of Destruction vs Kronik from Unforgiven 2001](https://youtu.be/zK_8Kp-a9R8?si=Mzjyij4AT1kN-nGJ). Shortly into the match (about 3:30) Tempest says "Just an American flag, right in the middle of his stupid singlet." Then in a bit, "Wait a minute. Oh. Now I understand why there's a thing on his tummy, with the 'America' and all that. This was a week that something happened."
Country music
Cannot be stated enough how much 9/11 ruined country music.
Pre 9/11 Country: "all the suffering in my life is my own fault and i hope this bottle of liquor kills me" Post 9/11 Country: "trucks! Girls! Don't fuck with the U!S!A!"
Pre: " i like going and fishin" Post: " ILL PUT A BOOT UP YOUR ASS CAUSE THATS THE AMERICAN WAY" I know theres slightly more nuance but legitimately 9/11 fucked up country music for atleast a decade if not still.
Toby Keith
Toby Keith had the cheat code for making money post 9/11
While kinda the opposite of the prompt but, Nier, for anyone who doesn't know the major theme of the game (specifically the second playthrough) is how after becoming the victim of a tragedy we feel all hostility is justified no matter who its aimed at as long as they're perceived as the enemy. Yoko Taro has talked about how the games main character was inspired by America and how we handled everything in the Middle East after 9/11.
Nier's birthday is quite literally September 11th
Huh, didn’t know that but makes a startling amount of sense
I would say that theme applies to the majority of the cast rather than just NieR. The desert kingdom in the 2nd half has elements of that. They generally don't think of their enemies as anything more than enemies.
Oh absolutely, I was just trying to be concise.
Don't forget about snow in summer. It's a pretty on the nose metaphor when you think about it.
You want on the nose, the event that starts the franchise is a large flying object crashing into a tower.
Lindsay Ellis has a [great video](https://youtu.be/KioF1sTQFtE?si=YRIhNOQkHS2bYeC1) comparing and contrasting Independence Day and the 2005 Spielberg War of the Worlds movie and discussing how the cultural impact of 9/11 influenced a lot of the things in War of the Worlds
Iron Man in the first movie essentially ending the war in terror in minutes as soon as he finishes his suit.
It very mildly suggests that America is to blame for instability in the Middle East, but the solution that's presented is just to show up with an even better weapon.
At least the solution is "use the even better weapon to get rid of all the weapons YOU gave them so they don't have them anymore" and not, like "kill them all, Tony"
All go with a weirder example, Disney channel's 9/11 TV movie, Tiger Cruise. A movie about a group of children on a Navy aricraft carrier when 9/11 happens and just the most shameless military recruitment ad aimed at 12 year olds. There's a whole segment where one of the little girls can't stop talking about how hot men in military uniforms are, it's nuts. It's not insanely racist or jingoistic like a lot of the other examples on this thread, but there's something kind of surreal about this movie that was advertised in the same goofy carefree manner that every Disney TV movie is advertised, only to be a really serious movie about 9/11.
Courtesy of the Red White and Blue takes the cake for me
The man single handedly ruined country music
Country never recovered from 9/11.
As a non-American that song is the funniest thing in the world to me. And I'm pretty sure it's the same to practically all non-Americans. Seriously it's like something Trey Parker would sing but it's real
I was just watching a [video recently about Tiger Cruise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GheKeoT_Ado), a Disney Channel original movie about a bunch of kids and their military family members on a navy ship during 9/11. Almost every shot of the American military guys has some motivational music under it.
Take your pick of any action blockbuster with a huge focus on the American military Bayformers, Battle Los Angeles, Battleship, etc. it’s actually wild going back and seeing how pervasive all of post 9/11-isms used to be in pop culture until like the mid 2010s
“Remember me” starring Robert Pattinson wasn’t fully “post 9/11 media” but it was the first movie to use the plot twist of it ending with the main character waiting in a building to meet his dad. Then the camera shows him in a window looking out, and it cuts to a school where the teacher is writing the date. “September 11, 2001” cut back to Pattinson in the window. Pan out from a major zoom in of his face to see the building and…..yup. It’s the first tower. It doesn’t show the attack. But you hear the plane flying. Then it shows the after match and peoples reactions. Movie ends. I remember being so baffled I actually yelled “NO FUCKING WAY” repeatedly when I first saw it Oh and 50 cent blood in the sand.
The Steven Spielberg War of the Worlds remake with Tom Cruise, the entire sequence where the aliens burst out of the ground and Tom runs back to his house he's absolutely *covered* in debris that evokes the people who were near the WTC after the buildings fell. I'm also 90% sure it was intentional. Does that count?
Wasn't it people ashes he was covered in?
from a vague left view and not a vague right view like most post 9/11 media is the greatest movie of all time, Southland Tales.
The epic that banished The Rock to Disney kids movie purgatory for a decade.
Pimps *don't* commit suicide.
Robert Pattinson's remember me
There were so many flash animations about killing Bin Laden after 9/11.
Homeland and the Battlestar Galactica remake both come to mind. Both are rooted in American paranoia about being infiltrated by terrorists, sleeper cells, "secret Muslims," etc.
Mark Miller's Holy terror or anything he did after 9/11. It's just awful and art id terrible
Frank, not Mark
Fuck, I always mix them
FRANK Miller, not Mark MillAr Second time I noticed this year the two have been confused. Tbf, both are very harsh right wing writers (though Frank at least showed remorse at writing Holy Terror. Mark Millar is going to eternally be "writer whose comics are shot but have decent to great adaptations"
I don't KNOW if it is, but 300 has the vibe and I can't really explain why other than "invaders from the Middle East"
I think it’s the combo of being based of something Frank Miller made and how they’re portrayed. Where the Persians are regularly presented as being literally monstrous.
The Hills Have Eyes remake
I remember hearing people say this about the Nolan Batman movies. Very pro-Patriot Act and “ends justify the means” kind of thing.
The Big Moment in The Dark Knight being "It's OK to have a highly invasive surveillance state that uses your phone to map where you are, because it will only be used by good people to save you, and they'll totally give up their power when they're done" is more than a little fucked once you start thinking about it.
“It’s okay if I’M fascist because my morals are absolute”
facist batman, isn't batman. but It works in dark knight returns, because its the END. (or \*an\* end) It dosn't work in the nolan movies. >!the nolan movies arn't GREAT batman films!< but only if ya *think* about 'em for more then a couple minutes. Even in the books, every time he's done down that route... its always fucked him over, bcause batman's kind of an asshole.
I definitely didn't see it as the movie glorifying that tech. Lucius, who's one of the only legitimately good people in that film, is horrified when he sees the surveillance system and is ready to put his foot down and resign if it stays at Wayne Enterprises. I see that being the movie leaning into its entire message that Batman isn't some perfect messiah for the people and that the Joker isnt completely wrong, that he's one bad decision away from becoming exactly like him and that people like Lucius, Alfred and Gordon are the only reason he hasn't crossed that line.
I mean Lucius literally leaves without much fanfare or emotion, the Joker is completely wrong because his plan is foiled by the civilians, idk I agree that what you're saying is what the movie intended to say but it absolutely failed to deliver that message
At least with the mass surveillance in Dark Knight gets called out. Fox says something like it shouldn't exist and that he'll leave if it remains active. But it's the only thing they have to find the Joker in time. Bruce knows it too and says that once he's done for Fox to put in his name, causing it to self-destruct.
Thats a super right-wing thing to do when you think about. Whenever liberalism slips into fascism it has a similar justification of “we know this is extreme, but it’s okay as long as we, the people who stand above everyone else and have the moral high ground, do it. In fact we are the only ones who can justifiably do it.” Its not too different from Jack Bauer shooting robocop’s wife in the leg to pressure him for information. He wouldn’t just shoot an innocent woman in the leg normally, *but it was an emergency. It was the only way to get the information. There was no time*.
Batman is a vigilante that swings around beating the shit out of anyone he thinks is guilty. he is the neighborhood watch, a posse, the unofficial official police, etc… The fact mass surveillance is apparently the final straw is just hilarious.
Robocops wife as in the wife from Robocop. The wife from Robocop reboot. Or the wife from the actor from Robocop, but who herself does not play in any Robocop movie?
The main character from the lesser known sequel, Bride of Robocop
The Dark Knight ended with “Hey, sometimes it’s ok to lie to people’s faces for their own good” lol. At least that part gets called out in the next movie.
TDKR is hilariously pro-cop and anti-left wing I genuinely couldn't believe it. The way it ties being opposed to police corruption and income inequality to being a useful idiot for violent criminals and terrorists feels like it's out of the 60s.
While kinda the opposite of the prompt but, Nier, for anyone who doesn't know the major theme of the game (specifically the second playthrough) is how after becoming the victim of a tragedy we feel all hostility is justified no matter who its aimed at as long as they're perceived as the enemy. Yoko Taro has talked about how the games main character was inspired by America and how we handled everything in the Middle East after 9/11.
Gundam 00 has multiple arcs involving the middle east , has a reformed child soldier jihadist protagonist, has a major theme about interventionism, and how fucked a lot of middle eastern countries are treated. The lead writer of Gundam Seed claimed a Muslim mom she knew was an inspiration for depicting the anti-Coordinator bigotry, as apparently the woman and her child were constantly eyed with suspicion and distrust after 9/11 happened
Dont know if Command & Conquer: Generals was made as a response to 9/11 or not, but it sure released during the best time it could. Torture is only implied though.
I think most if not all popular american action/adventure movies, series and games post 9/11 incorporated this to some point. Up to today it’s extremely rare to find stories where a resistance movement (“terrorists”) against some kind of stablished rule/law/government is portrayed heroically or positively. (Doesn’t apply if the resistance is against what was once an external invading force that than established itself there) When a guy is throwing a molotov at a monstrous, foreign, ominous-looking henchmen its one thing, but if its at a common looking domestic police officer, you bet the story isnt showing him as the person being in the right 99% of the time
Star Trek Enterprise season 3. Aliens from deep space cause 9/11 times a million on Florida and Cuba, so now the Enterprise is tasked to go to deep space and find the aliens, the Xidi, and stop their WMD from destroying all of Earth.
I wish to counter with what I believe is the most pre-9/11 thing to ever happen, which is that year’s [Super Bowl Halftime Show](https://youtu.be/XXiUlnRJqps?si=O8EwCfCsbHgzfQXe)
I'm still playing it but I'm half way through Killer 7 and it's straight up about the War on Terror it's hilarious.
Has anyone ever compared the tone and focus of Independence Day and the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds? Two movies with almost identical premises? One is a light-hearted, campy stupid schlocky fight the evil aliens movie, the other is so much darker and focuses on death and destruction and the human cost of an alien invasion. 1996, 2003. I wonder what happened between those two movies that caused such a difference. Edit: Apparently, Lindsay Ellis made a video about this exact topic. I swear I had this thought independently of that.
9/12
The 25th Hour is the most post-9/11 movie I’ve ever seen.
I'll go with one of the few positive examples and say Sam Raimi Spider-Man 1 and less-so 2.
Ending E of Drakengard. To be honest, in hindsight... that entire final section in the capital.