What a Difference 3 Months Makes

On Sept. 10, posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger dotted the landscape. Bathed in a heroic yellow-orange glow, he stared out over freeways in Los Angeles, and presided over Times Square in New York. The poster hawked the film “Collateral Damage,” and the tag line was, “What would you do if you lost everything?” To drive home the point that this was a story ripped from the news, a faint impression of newspaper articles was visible in the background, proclaiming such headlines as “Veteran Firefighter Wife and Child Killed in Bomb Blast.”

One day later, as the World Trade Center’s twin towers burned, that headline was a little too newsworthy for comfort.

In the wake of Sept. 11, major studios immediately postponed a number of high-profile films with topics the moguls deemed inappropriate for a grieving nation. Among them were “Big Trouble,” a comedy that featured a nuclear device on an airplane; “Bad Company,” a comedy in which Chris Rock gets dragooned into the CIA; and “Collateral Damage,” an action film about a veteran firefighter whose family is blown up by Colombian terrorists and who heads south of the border to seek revenge.

The postponement of “Collateral Damage” drew the lion’s share of attention, partly for the title, which was probably one of the first times many Americans had heard the lingo for the accidental killing of civilians during war. Moreover, it was a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who for almost two decades was a totem of American might and the embodiment of the fluidity of the American system in which even a bodybuilder from Austria could become a star.

The postponement of the film by Warner Bros. was just another sign of the gulf between the empowerment fantasies perpetuated by Hollywood and the nervous realities of a post-Sept. 11 world.

Three months later, after U.S. troops have vanquished the Taliban (and caused a certain amount of collateral damage themselves), America is deemed ready for Arnold again. “Collateral Damage” is scheduled to premiere in February, and the rest of the postponed films will dribble out over the spring and summer.

“It was the right decision to move the movie,” said Schwarzenegger, from his Los Angeles home where he’s recuperating from a motorcycle accident in which he broke six ribs.

“The interest for the movie is really great now, and there’s great anticipation for it. When we tested the movie in November, there was more want-to-see than when we tested it earlier. The numbers definitely went up.”

Although not a frame of the film has been changed, the marketing campaign has been readjusted to present Schwarzenegger in a more familiarly decisive light and to clarify the nature of the threat. The new commercial highlights more strongly the identity of the lead male terrorist. “They tried to find similarities to what the bad guys were in the Middle East and this Colombian character,” explained director Andy Davis.

While the initial poster posited Schwarzenegger as a man grappling uncertainly with death, the new poster presents the same mug shot of the star, but the headlines have been replaced by a small photo of a helicopter performing a daring maneuver, presumably a rescue. The tag line now trumpets the reassuring Schwarzenegger trope of trampling enemies: “Nothing is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.”

For an action film, “Collateral Damage” has been buffeted unusually by political winds and Hollywood’s changing perception of what is commercial.

Producer David Foster recalled the genesis of the project: He and the original screenwriter, Ronald Roose, were watching a “Nightline” report on the relatives of the victims who died when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988:

“We were watching the relatives and we kept saying, ‘How would you respond?’ That’s what started it. It’s not about the terrorist, but an ordinary person. How do you live the rest of your life?”

When Davis signed on, he immediately decided to junk the initial villain: a Mideast terrorist. “I felt that was a worn-out theme. We had seen it so often, and it was almost stereotypic,” he said. “And there had been several films related to that type of environment with Arnold.” Indeed, he battled Middle East terrorists in 1994’s “True Lies.”

Moreover, Davis suggested moving the locale to Colombia, another country beset with terrorists, but one he knew well from having worked as a cameraman there in the 1970s on a remake of “Oliver,” called “Paco.”

After discussions with Harrison Ford, who passed, and Robert De Niro, whom the studio deemed insignificantly commercial to carry the film, Schwarzenegger landed the part. In the beginning, there was much concern that his character’s profession--firefighter --wasn’t heroic enough. “The producer said, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to make Arnold a fireman? Do we set him up enough as a macho hero?’” says Schwarzenegger, pointing up the irony. “Then we see after the incident on the 11th, where firemen become the ultimate heroes.

“I always liked the idea of him being a fireman. My wife [Maria Shriver] became intrigued with the script because it was a fireman. It was my wife who kept chasing the script until it was offered to me.”

Subtly acknowledging the fact that even Schwarzenegger’s muscles are getting older, the filmmakers stress that “Collateral Damage” is a departure for the star because it depicts him less as a superman vanquishing foes with one carefully placed “Hasta la vista,” than as an ordinary man whose greatest asset is his intelligence. It also fits into the image of more everyday heroes--men and women just doing their jobs--that characterize our post-Sept. 11 world.

“It’s more realistic,” Schwarzenegger says. “We are not establishing me as the guy in the first act of the movie who you see fighting in Vietnam, who’s an expert with weapons and grenades. That would have been the obvious way to start the movie, where you set up the whole thing like I’m a fighting machine and nothing’s going to get in my way. The way it’s written, it makes you much more vulnerable.

“The guy’s a firefighter who’s a hero, but that does not mean he’s a skilled warrior. It becomes a vulnerable guy who gets into a guerrilla camp, who gets into deep, deep trouble, caught up between the CIA, the FBI, drug wars and death squads. No one knows who is responsible for anything.”

For Davis, it was also important not to portray the villains in a simplistic light. “I was concerned about making cliches--that the terrorists would be cartoons, and not showing dynamics on both sides of the story. The interesting part for me is that the terrorists in this movie became terrorists because they lost a child. The theme of violence begetting violence was a good message.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the filmmakers and studio were immediately concerned that the now-suddenly topical film would seem exploitative. “I think there was an immediate reaction--’Oh God, if we released the film now, does it look like we’re taking advantage of these tragic events?’” Davis said. “[The studio] also felt they couldn’t advertise it on the air because the images were so close to the materials we had. The theater owners were also concerned about promoting the film.”

Hollywood went into a kind of paralysis, as an entire industry waited to see how events would unfold and how the box office would perform. The studios re-evaluated dozens of films in various stages of development, deeming such topics as nuclear terrorists, world apocalypse and dastardly deeds by members of the U.S. intelligence community (a stock villain with the demise of the Cold War) insensitive to the new national mood.

Shots of the World Trade Center were digitally removed from a score of films in production, as if the merest glimpse of its gleaming frames would be too much for audiences. Far away from the media, the moguls and would-be moguls holed up to discuss in far less politically correct terms, what now did America want?

Who knew the thriller’s fate hung on the success of such a slight example of the genre as “Don’t Say a Word”? To the shock of many, it opened well just two weeks after Sept. 11. The “Collateral Damage” team was further heartened several weeks later when the gritty “Training Day” did well, a clear indicator that audiences had an appetite for stronger fare.

“Then they saw the [video] rentals for action films were way up. People were interested in visiting this world, not running away from it,” said Davis, a beneficiary of this boom as the director of such action films as “The Fugitive” and “Under Siege.”

Just to make sure, when Warner Bros. retested “Collateral Damage” in November, it asked members of the test audience whether they would be able to stomach the film in today’s climate.

According to Davis, audience members thought it was “appropriate” that the studio had postponed the movie. But, sounding relieved, he added, “they wanted to see it now.”

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Rachel Abramowitz is a Times staff writer.