The Numbers of Survival
The film starts with numbers. Sixty-five million dollars to make it. One hundred sixty-three point five million to put it in theaters. Two hundred and sixty thousand square feet of rubble. Two thousand six hundred and six bodies. Eighteen and nineteen. Twenty survivors out of thousands of dead. Stone didn’t make a movie about the two thousand six hundred and four who didn’t walk out. He made a movie about the two who did. The odds of survival, compressed into a two-hour package. The film is a product of survival, not a story of survival.