Much like
Spider-Man,
Vanilla Sky arrived in theaters shortly after the events of 9/11. It was one of those movies so strongly set in New York that the city became a character itself. The movie starts off with arguably its most famous scene, where Tom Cruise runs through a deserted Times Square as part of a dream sequence, and it concluded with the above scene, where he and the rest of the cast meet for the final time in another dream. Invoking the almost surrealistic tones of Monet, they are standing in the clouds atop an impossibly tall building with a view of several NYC landmarks including the Twin Towers. While several people felt the towers should not have been included in the final cut of the film, director Cameron Crowe had a different take:
“That’s what we filmed. It was filmed about a year before the tragic incident that removed them. And I didn’t want to remove them again.”
