When the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, the tragedy rippled through every corner of American life – including Hollywood. Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of Men in Black II, was on the Sony lot in Los Angeles when the attacks occurred. He learned that his daughter was in Chinatown and his parents lived in Washington Heights, and he realized the film’s planned finale could no longer stand.
Original ending erased
The sequel, shot in New York City during the summer of 2001, was set to conclude on the roof of one of the World Trade Center towers. In Sonnenfeld’s words, the towers were chosen because they “almost looked like a magnet,” and the climax would have featured agents Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones battling an alien villain while sending a space princess – played by Rosario Dawson – back to her planet.
After the attacks, the director says, “as soon as the first one fell, I knew” the scene was no longer an option. The production team scrapped the tower sequence, rewrote the script, and moved the final showdown to an unnamed rooftop. Sonnenfeld admits the new ending feels “terrible” because the crew “didn’t have our hearts in it.”
Wider impact on New York on screen
The removal of the towers was not limited to Men in Black II. In the months that followed, the iconic silhouettes vanished from a host of television shows and movies, including Friends, Sex and the City, Zoolander and even the first teaser trailer for Spider‑Man. Sonnenfeld estimates that eight to twelve shots were edited out of his film alone.
Historically, the towers had been a beloved visual shorthand for New York. They first appeared in the 1969 comedy The Putney Swope and later in classics like The French Connection and Robert Redford’s The Hot Rock. When completed in 1973, they quickly became a cinematic icon, “accomplishing so much with no words at all,” Sonnenfeld recalled. Their sudden loss forced storytellers to rethink how they portrayed the city.
Creative resilience
Despite the setback, Sonnenfeld and co‑producer Graham Place found a way forward. They kept many of the original storyboards, and the final rooftop scene, though less dramatic, still delivered the film’s climax. The director reflects that the experience was “a small sadness compared to the big sadness” of the national tragedy.
In the weeks after 9/11, the entire entertainment industry paused production, cancelled shoots, and grappled with how to honor the victims while continuing to tell stories. Sonnenfeld and his team even took a break at the Ivy, ordering gimlets late at night as they processed the day’s events.
Legacy of a changed skyline
Today, the absence of the towers in post‑9/11 media serves as a reminder of how a single event can reshape cultural expression. While New York’s skyline has been rebuilt, the memory of those removed frames remains a poignant footnote in film history.
Original reporting: El Paso News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
