The Cinematic Record of the World Trade Center

In his new movie Munich, Steven Spielberg shows two Israeli Mossad characters talking with the World Trade Center in the background. I haven't seen the movie, but I'll take the word of Philadelphia Jewish Exponent editor Jonathan Tobin, who wrote,

"Spielberg even uses an image of a still-standing World Trade Center to punctuate a scene in which Avner rejects Israel to lead us to falsely think 9/11 might have been avoided had America also abandoned the Jewish state.

With Oliver Stone and others preparing 9-11 movies, I've become curious about the cinematic treatment of the WTC. Spielberg takes a forboding approach while Stone deals head-on with the day itself. My interest comes from a different angle: how did the WTC figure into earlier movies, and can those films be seen without a shudder? Is the WTC simply there, part of the background, or in some Spielbergian sense do the towers add another layer of meaning and dread that viewers understand only in retrospect? One thorough list of WTC film references can be found here. I wonder how movies set in New York -- both before and after that day -- will deal with the attack. One way or another, the towers will be there, if only by their absence.

The thoughts came to me after, by sheerest accident, I flipped TV channels and found 1983's Trading Places, with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd. The scene showed the two characters striding across the WTC plaza on their way to a business appointment. Akroyd turns to Murphy and says,

"Nothing can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you're about to witness."

My stomach lurched at the line. It was just one of those things, something humorous dipped in blood by time's passage. If readers can suggest others, I'll add them and give you full credit for the tip.