Remembering 9/11

Twenty-Five years later, Hollywood is giving 9/11 the silent treatment, and it’s making us less safe

An historian argues that the absence of serious 9/11 films created a cultural vacuum filled by conspiracy theorists

By Asaf Romirowsky Fox News

Published September 8, 2026 7:00am EDT

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I am a historian, but you don’t need a PhD to realize that Americans and Brits learn most of what we know about the world from the movies.

When most people think about World War II, for example, we think about the first few minutes of Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, or this summer, we are discovering the critical role of the chief Allied meteorologist, Captain James Stagg, through the new film, Pressure. We learned all about Vietnam from Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and Platoon. And Glory did more to make the Civil War feel accessible and immediate than even the best histories on that seminal conflict.

Which is why it’s not only dispiriting but, frankly, deeply concerning that even now, a quarter of a century later, we’ve had so few movies about the attacks of September 11, 2001.

9/11 IS BECOMING HISTORY. MY GENERATION MUST MAKE SURE AMERICA NEVER FORGETS

The final beam to be cut down at the World Trade Center is driven away on a truck shrouded in black as New York and New Jersey Port Authority Police salute during a ceremony to mark the end of the recovery effort on the site in New York, May 30, 2002. The beam was the ceremonial last load to be taken from the site. The World Trade Centers collapsed when attacked by hijacked airplanes September 11, 2001. REUTERS/Mike Segar MS (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

True, Oliver Stone gave us World Trade Center, and Paul Greengrass United 93, both celebrations of ordinary Americans making extraordinary sacrifices on that fateful day. But other than these two dramas........

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