Posted by D_Aubrey at h24-76-140-102.vs.shawcable.net on September 11, 2001 at 17:58:51:
This post contains spoilers for the novel "The Running Man," by Richard Bachman (AKA Stephen King), on which the movie was very extremely loosely based.
It is relevant to today's issue, and I'm not being a troll. But I know that not many have read the book (which is included in the collection "The Bachman Books" by Stephen King), and the ending was something I would not have wanted to have spoiled for me, so I'm giving you this warning now, in case you might ever want to read the story.
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I read the book a couple of years ago, and I really liked it. But now, it's sort of hitting home that it ends with a tragedy identical to today's. If you haven't read the book, it takes place in a future where poor people take part in TV game shows to earn food for their families. It's about one man who's fit enough to play the game where trained bounty hunters track you down and try to kill you, and if you can survive a month, you win. But at the end, the guy steals an airplane and crashes it into the network headquarters, where the bad guys are. It seems like a heroic sacrifice to end a form of tyranny, but as we have learned today, a lot of bad stuff happens when planes crash into skyscrapers. It's something to think about, that all this stuff has strong consequences.
I'll be watching Independence Day differently from now on.