Skyscrapers are frequently featured infilms for their impressive appearance and potentsymbolism. They convey an impression of power – an old movie and TVcliché starts with the outside view of a skyscraper with avoice-over conversation, continuing inside the luxurious office of atycoon or crime boss.

Skyscrapers' tight security and isolation from the rest of the city makes them ideal for dramatic crisis and trap situations including hostage-taking, heists and fire. Skyscrapers and other large landmarks also feature prominently indisaster films, where they are destroyed as a show of the power of nature or invaders.

This is a list of actual skyscrapers that have a noticeable roleas themselves in films, sorted by chronological building order. (See also:list of skyscrapers.)

• Famously climbed by the giant ape King Kong in theeponymous movie (1933) and inits remake (2005).
• Destroyed by an alien ship inIndependence Day (1996).
• The Empire State Building is also seen inJames and the Giant Peach.
• The Empire State Building's observation deck features prominently inSleepless in Seattle.
• Stars inAndy Warhol'sEmpire, where it is seen in a continuous eight-hour-five-minute shot of the building at night.

• Portrayed inFurious 7, many action scenes are filmed here.

• Used prominently in the 1973 film version ofGodspell during the song "All For the Best."
• Climbed by King Kong in the 1976 remake ofKing Kong.
• Exploded and collapsed after being hit by a meteor fragment in the filmMeteor (1979).
• Used as a makeshiftrunway by Snake Plissken inEscape from New York (1981).
• TheNew York Mercantile Exchange trading floor in4 World Trade Center was the scene of the climax ofTrading Places (1983).
• Features in the opening and closing sequences ofOliver & Company (1988).
• The roof of the World Trade Center is featured inCrocodile Dundee (1986) during a photoshoot Sue Charlton is doing during Mick Dundee's New York visit.
• In the filmHome Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) Kevin McCallister stops at the building while sightseeing.
• Seen in various scenes ofDie Hard with a Vengeance (1995).
• Severely damaged by meteor shower inArmageddon (1998) and severely damaged by an ocean wave (from comet impact) inDeep Impact.
• Leaped onto from a failing helicopter inRead or Die (May 2001).
• The roof of the World Trade Center was also the original scene of the final climax in the filmMen in Black II (2002), but after theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks, the producers chose to reshoot the scene with an "ordinary" roof inNew York City.
• InSteven Spielberg'sMunich (2005), there is a scene in the last minutes of the film where two men are walking with the New York Cityskyline in the background. Because the scene takes place before the World Trade Center fell, a digital version of the World Trade Center was added to the New York skyline.
• In the 2006 filmWorld Trade Center, the World Trade Center is seen, but is animated (or created with pictures from the time before 9/11).
• The building was the setting of 2008'sAcademy Award-winning documentary,Man on Wire, about tightrope walkerPhilippe Petit's daring 1974 walk between the towers as well as inRobert Zemeckis' 2015 American 3D biographical drama filmThe Walk.
• At the end ofGangs of New York (2002), the towers are visible in the background of the scene showing time passing from the 19th century to the present.
• The towers play a significant role in the 2010 filmRemember Me.

• Lair of the winged serpent Quetzalcoatl inQ (1982).
• Prominently featured inThe Caveman's Valentine.
• Accidentally destroyed by U.S. military forces inGodzilla (1998).
• Destroyed by a meteorite inArmageddon (1998).
• Flown through by theSilver Surfer inFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).

• Featured in its original guise as the Pan Am Building in the opening scenes ofOnly When I Larf (1968), and the helipad is also used in the characters' escape.
• Destroyed first byGodzilla when it walked through the building leaving a massive gap in it in the filmGodzilla (1998).
• It was later destroyed inKnowing (2009) when a solar flare annihilates Earth.

• A distinctive Hollywood landmark, frequently destroyed in blockbuster films includingEarthquake,Independence Day, andThe Day After Tomorrow.
• In the filmHancock, the title character pierces the building's pinnacle with a car in the opening scene.

• Damaged by fire in 2001, the tower was later remodeled and converted intocondominiums.
• The Sunset Vine Tower was prominently featured in 1974'sEarthquake, earning it the affectionate moniker of "The Earthquake Tower". However, in the movie, it's depicted as being 30 stories tall, when it reality, it only has 20 floors.

• Taken over by terrorists in the FrenchDie HardparodyLa Tour Montparnasse Infernale (2001). The title is a spoof onThe Towering Inferno (see "Glass Tower" in next section).

• Featured inLara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003),The Dark Knight (2008),New Police Story (2004) andRush Hour 2 (2001).

• Setting of a spectacularheist in the filmEntrapment (1999).
• Used as a major setting in a Bollywood movieDon.
• InIndependence Day Resurgence, the towers are seen falling onto the London Tower Bridge by aliens, with a character commenting: "They like to get the landmarks".

• Principal setting of the paranormal events of the filmPoltergeist III (1988). In the film, the manager is Bruce Gardner (Tom Skerritt), Carol Anne's (Heather O'Rourke) uncle. The reverend Henry Kane (Nathan Davis) follows her to the skyscraper, where all his reign of terror starts again and terrorizes Carol Anne.

• While not yet featured in a major international film as of 2004, in local productions it is fast becoming anEiffel Tower-like cliché that the view from every Taipei apartment includes Taipei 101.

• Featured inMajor League,The Fortune Cookie (1966),Proximity,The Deer Hunter (1978),A Christmas Story (1983), andAntwone Fisher (2002).

• In the 2004 movieThe Oh in Ohio,Parker Posey's character has her office in the BP Tower. TheKey Tower,Terminal Tower andCleveland Browns Stadium can also be seen in the film.

• The first building destroyed by the alien ships in the filmIndependence Day (1996).
• Severely damaged inThe Day After Tomorrow by a tornado (2004).
• In2012 (2009) the city including the U.S. Bank Tower gets destroyed due to Magnitude 10+ earthquakes.

• Featured inGhost Rider (2007). The Ghost Rider is seen riding vertically up the tower to elude the authorities.

• Destroyed by the monsterZilla in the Japanese filmGodzilla: Final Wars.
• Also destroyed by meteors in the Hallmark filmSupernova, which was released in 2005.
• Featured as the Angel Grove Observatory in 1995'sMighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.

• Location of a part of the movieMission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. In the movie,Tom Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, climbs 11 stories up on the outside in order to access the building's server.
• InIndependence Day: Resurgence, the Burj Khalifa was seen where it - along with many other structures - is being thrown onto London by the aliens using their mother ship's anti-gravity pull.

• The Woolworth Building was one of the buildings near the mysterious explosion and the first structure to be destroyed by thecreature in the 2008 filmCloverfield. The main characters were among the dozens of people present when it collapsed.
• It also appears near the latter part of the 2007 Disney movieEnchanted where the main protagonists attending acostume ball at the building's summit meet the wicked queen of Andalasia and figure in a duel leading them outside to the roof of the building. The Neo-Gothic details of the Woolworth Building's spire (designed by Architect Cass Gilbert) are discernible despite the night-time duel scene between the dragon-morphed evil queen and the protagonists.
• In Baz Luhrmann'sfilm adaptation ofThe Great Gatsby (2013), Nick Carraway works in the building as a stock broker for Chase. In an opening scene, a spectacular tilt down from the top of the building is shown.

• Appears inFerris Bueller's Day Off (1986),I, Robot (2004) (in the year 2035 with new triangular antennas),The Dark Knight (2008),Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011),Man of Steel (2013),Divergent (2014),Jupiter Ascending (2015), andRampage (2018).

• Appears inG:MT - Greenwich Mean Time (1999) where it is referenced by its popular name, Canary Wharf.
• It frequently appears in28 Weeks Later (2007) where the tower and the Docklands area around it are one of the main settings for the post-apocalyptic horror-thriller.
• From the same year, it also featured inHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where Harry and some members of the Order of the Phoenix pass next to One Canada Square as they head to Grimmauld Place near the beginning of the movie on their broomsticks.
• InMission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) featuring One Canada Square as the building where the IMF is located. Various shots of One Canada Square was featured including shots of Ethan Hunt climbing on the outside of the building.

This is a list of named fictional skyscrapers that have a noticeable role in films (including notable science-fiction and fantasy), sorted by chronological filming order. In some cases, an actual building stands for the fictional one; in others, they are created using elaborateminiature models.

• Chief among thegothic skyscrapers of Fritz Lang'sMetropolis (1927). The cityscape ofMetropolis was inspired from Lang's trip toManhattan and was, in turn, an inspiration for several dystopian science-fiction films includingBlade Runner andDark City.

• This 100-story, Empire State Building-inspired tower is the center of a power struggle inSkyscraper Souls (1932), as ruthless banker David Dwight attempts to gain full control of the skyscraper.

• The creation of the uncompromising,objectivist architect Howard Roark, it features in the film adaptation ofAyn Rand'sThe Fountainhead (1949). The world's tallest, it is the culmination of Roark's ambition, "the will of man made visible."

• This 138-story office/residential tower, the new "tallest building in the world", is the setting ofThe Towering Inferno (1974).
• In the film, the guests in the building's Penthouse opening ceremony are trapped by a fire that breaks out due to faulty wiring.
• The "Peerless Building" is a structure depicted in the film as being the tower's closest, tallest neighbor.
• The idea of the "world's tallest" was featured in both novels on which the film was based, and was inspired, ironically, by New York'sWorld Trade Center which was completed the year before the movie's release.
• Filmed prior to the widespread use of Digital CGI, the Glass Tower was actually a series of half inch and inch scale models.
• The miniatures cost $1,110,000 and the tallest of these was 70 feet high and was guyed off in all four directions and filmed against a blue screen on the concrete floor of Sersen Lake at the Twentieth Century Fox Ranch in Malibu, California.
• Similarly, five floors of the building were built in full scale at the same facility for close up shooting of action scenes. The building's name was a combination of "The Glass House" fromThe Glass Inferno and "The World Tower" fromThe Tower.

• The immense truncated pyramid-shaped structure, flanked by inwardly-slanted towers, dominates the cityscape of Ridley Scott'sBlade Runner (1982).
• The futuristic city has been described as a place where the height of the World Trade Center had become the norm, filled with buildings hundreds of stories tall, with Tyrell's pyramid being six or seven times the height of the WTC and at least a hundred times more massive[1].
• Main protagonist Deckard himself lives on the 97th floor of a generic building.

• A 31-floor building taken over by terrorists in the classic action filmDie Hard (1988).
• The building is actually the 34-storyFox Plaza,20th Century Fox's Los Angeles headquarters.
• Most of the interior shots (excluding the lobby and roof) were shot on the Fox lot, located nearby.
• TheJapanese name of this and other fictional buildings (such as Nakamoto Tower in 1993'sRising Sun) provides an interesting window on the 1980s mindset that Japanese corporations would take over the world's economy and real estate, especially after the real-life acquisition ofRockefeller Center by aMitsubishi subsidiary (completed in 1989).
• In fact, there have been relatively few such takeovers, and few if any U.S. skyscrapers were ever actually named after Japanese corporations.

• A fictional futuristic hotel/casino inLas Vegas, Nevada from the 1996 filmMars Attacks!
• The hotel was destroyed by a UFO during a martian invasion.
• In reality the building was theLandmark Hotel and Casino which was imploded in 1995.

• One of the innumerable towers covering the fictional city-planet of Coruscant from theStar Wars universe, first seen on film in theSpecial Edition ofReturn of the Jedi (1997), then in the Star Wars prequels.
• On Coruscant, buildings are used as the foundations for new buildings that actually pierce the cloud layer.
• The fifty lower levels form a dangerous underworld where ordinary citizens never go.
• The city-planet was inspired byTrantor in Isaac Asimov'sFoundation saga.

• The corporate headquarters of the main villain Sanford Scolex (Doctor Claw) in the 1999 filmInspector Gadget. In reality, the building is thePPG Place inPittsburgh,Pennsylvania.

• A building used in the 2009 filmDistrict 9.

• InLand of the Dead, is by far the most notable landmark in the "City of the Living" and serves as a metaphor for the disconnection between wealthy and poor classes in society.

• The setting ofGremlins 2: The New Batch. Exterior shots of the building are actually101 Park Avenue in New York City.

• The titular tower of the 1996 filmSkyscraper.

• InThe Avengers. Prior to the events of the film,Tony Stark purchased theMetlife Building and deconstructed the upper two-thirds of the skyscraper.
• By the events of the film, construction of a new structure (built on top of the bottom third of the building) is nearly complete.
• During the Battle of New York, the building sustains minor damage.
• The skyscraper is subsequently repurposed asAvengers Tower, and appears inCaptain America: The Winter Soldier,Avengers: Age of Ultron, andDoctor Strange.

• InRoboCop. The building was portrayed by theDallas City Hall with the building's upper floors added in via special effects as the actual city hall building is only 7 stories tall.

• A fictional 448m, 108-story high twin tower complex inSeoul,South Korea, in the 2012 disaster filmThe Tower.
• As stated in the film, Tower A was calledRiverview, and Tower B was calledCityview.
• With over 5700 residents, it was South Korea's biggest residential complex.
• In the film, the owner of the complex decided to hold a Christmas party and had 10 helicopters circling above the building, despite the warnings of the owner's employees.
• On Christmas Eve, one of the helicopters crashed into Tower A. The crash also damaged the structure of the bridge connecting the twin tower, making the characters unable to escape to Tower B.

• A fictional 102-story building inNew York City in 2001 horror filmDown.
• As stated in film, the tower has 102-story and 73 elevators, so it basically a parodied version of Empire State Building.

• A 3,500 feet tall skyscraper from the 2018 movieSkyscraper.

• From the 1997 Japanese animated movieDetective Conan: The Time Bombed Skyscraper or Case Closed: The Time Bombed Skyscraper.

• Top 10 Skyscraper Movies fromarchitecture.about.com

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