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Sean Collier: I think it's willful ignorance. We had disaster porn before 9/11, and we're not going to let real monument collapse ruin it for us. Which, yes, is sick, but so it goes.

Brett Beach: While it's an interesting question, I wonder if it even goes through the head of the average audience member (which I guess is the same as answering yes to the question). It's escapism, check your brain at the door, etc. etc. At the risk of sounding elitist and superior, I have no desire to see 2012. At this point in time, I am tired of the world ending. If I am being asked to settle in with dazzling special effects once again while being asked to cheer that a broken family gets reunited while five billion perish, I'll say thanks but no thanks. I'll take my violent action from The Long Kiss Goodnight and my end of the world sorrows from Michael Tolkin's disturbing tragedy The Rapture and call it good.

Michael Lynderey: I think there's enough distance, at least in some sense, and that's been true for a while - for better or worse. The Day After Tomorrow showed New York City frozen and much of the world destroyed, but it had no trouble pulling in $186 million five years ago - a number that 2012 probably won't even reach. The Sum of All Fears did pretty well in 2002, and that one had much of Baltimore demolished by a nuclear bomb. It seems that people - at least some people - get comfortable pretty quickly with seeing this stuff on screen again, even if after a while it starts bearing an unpleasant resemblance to real life. In general, the golden ages of disaster movies were the '70s and '90s, and it's hard to say if the lack of them this decade necessarily has to do with 9/11. They may just naturally skip a decade.

Kevin Chen: The question posed is the wrong one, since the disaster agents in 2012 are not men with an agenda, but an inconvenient alignment of natural forces. Unless I've inadvertently spoiled the movie for everyone by correctly anticipating that ancient Mayan terrorists have finally perfected their weather machine.

Jason Lee: I agree with Sean. In my opinion, one of the more memorable shots in this genre was when the White House got blown up in in Independence Day. The cinematic success of sequences like this isn't going to be negated by 9/11. It worked before, it worked this weekend and it will continue to work in the future...that is, until (as Les has pointed out) we all die.

George Rose: This is hardly the first monument-destroying movie since 9/11. Even the lame, but profitable, G.I. Joe took out the Eiffel Tower. What this success says is that people are interested in the predictions of what can occur in 2012 and want to know what's going to happen before its too late. Everyone has heard of these predictions, even if they don't believe in them. If they don't come true, great. If they do, I'm probably going to die in an earthquake or tidal wave before I even know what's happening. The movie showed all the global possibilities of what can occur, since most of us will probably miss the show due to sudden death. I think this falls closer to torture porn like Saw than monument porn. If anything, I was interested in the different ways to die and not necessarily on watching the White House get wiped out. It's not as if terrorists caused the Earth's crust to melt, either.

Max Braden: I wouldn't expect many people to draw a significant comparison between a natural disaster and a human assault. Hurricane Katrina and the Phuket tidal wave were more recent and probably more similar in feel, but the closest sense of doom and gloom is probably still the mood leftover from the financial crisis. We've got a lot of that in this season's movies. 2012: world apocalypse! The Road: post apocalypse! Avatar: Smurf apocalypse!

Tom Macy: I never felt that the destruction of symbolic edifices faded in public appeal. War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow didn't seem to suffer. The whole disaster movie craze, beginning with Twister and eventually being KOed by Michael Bay and Ben Affleck, just ran its course in the 90s, giving way to sweeping fantasy epics and superhero movies. Ronald Emmerich just never got the memo.

Les Winan: We're all going to die!!! AAAHHHH!

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