digotw said:
Tom Goldman said:
the ruined remains of New York.
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Yet again.. does anone have a count of just how many times this fucking place has been destroyed in movies over the past two decades?
It's been going on for longer than two decades I believe. >
I think it largely comes down to New York City being the most important city in the world. The USA is a service and trade based power, and most of the globe's finances go through Wall Street (whether people like it or not, and various attempts to change this have so far failed). It also has one of the most impressive natural harbours in the world, and while there are cities that see more sea traffic, oddly most of that Sea Traffic still winds up going there as either a start point or a destination.
People will doubtlessly try and argue this, but in this case this isn't even me trying to exude intentional American Arrogance. At least for the moment (and for the last few decades) losing New York would do unparalleled damage to the entire globe, even the Eastern World. The amount of information and administration that goes through there alone would cause that. The US is the world's information hub, and New York is perhaps the biggest nerve center. Many other cities like LA, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, etc... would have global shockwaves if they were leveled, but New York City is in a league of it's own.
The point being that if your doing a movie and want to show a really bad thing for the world, New York City being leveled (or having been leveled) is something anyone will understand. It has intantly recognizable meaning, as well as perhaps the world's most recognized city landmarks and skyline.
If you were to say show a movie of Hong Kong in ruins to some guy in Central America for example he's unlikely to recognize the city just on site even if some of it's bigger landmarks were shown, nor is he likely to get the same kind of understanding from the metaphor. With New York you don't even nessicarly need to tell someone specifically where it is, it's that recognizable. Take that same arguement and make the guy from Central America a guy from Europe, Asia, or anywhere else. New York is probably the world's most recognizable city overall. I suppose Paris (if you show the Eiffel Tower) and London (if you show Big Ben or Buckingham Palace) are probably close as well, but while large and important (with massive numbers of people) neither are quite as central to the world as a whole as New York City (though that might change if the trade war goes in the right directions and Wall Street collapses to be replaced by the European Common Market for example, but even so that will take decades to sink into the popular global consciousness).
New York is pretty much the "go to" location for anything big, and a lot of people make fun of it for that reason as well since the jokes almost write themselves.
