Where's Bruce Willis when we need him?

Many of us haven't been able to turn away from live TV news coverage in recent days.
   As we saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, the fireball explosions and the tidal waves of smoke and wreckage, we of course knew the images were unique and the events unprecedented.
   But at the same time, it was all eerily familiar.
   As the Twin Towers collapsed, one after the other, I remembered a jarringly similar scene from 1996's "Independence Day," where an alien spaceship destroyed the Empire State Building. The blast and falling debris in the scene, similar to the real explosion, was felt for miles around and crippled New York City.
   As the unsettling news videotape of New Yorkers fleeing the smoke and rain of rubble played again and again, I thought back to the hundreds of black-and-white bodies squeezing through the narrow city streets in "Godzilla" and "King Kong."
   And as newscasters announced that President Bush was a definite target of the terrorists - even when he was aboard Air Force One - I thought of Harrison Ford's brave front in "Air Force One."
   At the movies
   This tragedy has proven that Hollywood can imitate - and even preview - world crises with horrifying accuracy.
   When Tuesday's pictures were first broadcast, some younger viewers actually thought they were watching an action movie. One elementary school teacher reported that her children shouted out "Cool!" when the airborne firebomb pictures first aired. Many friends said, even 24 hours after the attack, that "this just doesn't feel real." Someone else told me she was "still waiting for the ending credits to roll." You can't blame the under-30 viewers for being confused and numbed by the events. We're a politically sheltered generation, long protected by a muscular military and a financially strong economy. I've read about Pearl Harbor, and I helped cover the Oklahoma City bombing trial in Denver, but still I've never experienced a horror that rivals this evil act of hatred.
   I was a 13-year-old delivering newspapers during the Persian Gulf War. I remember the day war was declared, but aside from the newsprint left on my hands after my route, my hands weren't dirtied.
   Desensitized citizens
   But because Bruce Willis has always saved the day, we've been desensitized to the big blasts and the constant endangering of human life. Most summer blockbuster movies worth their weight in box office gold feature bombs and explosions prominently.
   Now those in Hollywood, thousands of miles away from New York, are feeling the reverberations of the terrorist attacks. Multiple movie studios have postponed release dates for films treading similar ground, and each TV network is carefully watching its programming because of Tuesday's tragedy.
   Fox canceled its Sunday airing of "Independence Day," and American Movie Classics postponed its broadcast of Monday's behind-the-scenes documentary "Backstory: The Towering Inferno." Programming with violent content across the board is being replaced with fluffy romantic comedies in hopes of uplifting America's spirits.
   But can "Mrs. Doubtfire" or "Hope Floats" help calm our doubts, raise our hopes and erase these images? Although those of us under 30 have seen the destruction of terrorists played out in motion pictures time and again, now is the time when we find out how devastating and grave these violent acts can truly be.
  
  

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