This film was made so long ago I’m not sure the version with
Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swazye isn’t the remake! Let’s do a partial list here;
Mr. Chris Hemsworth has shot & had released Thor, The Avengers and Snow
White & The Huntsman since filming ended on Red Dawn. Josh Hutcherson hadn’t
that long returned from his Journey To The Centre of The Earth, let alone the
Mysterious Island; forget The Kids are All Right, or The Hunger Games. But of
course that means the film now has a couple of A-List stars in its cast, as opposed
to some up and coming talent. Even fellow ‘MGM financial hell’ movie The Cabin in
the Woods has been released (earlier this year). During the downtime of MGM
getting its life sorted out there has been the infamous ethnic changing of the
film’s antagonist. Originally it was mean to be China now (let’s face it even
less likely) North Korea.
I don’t know how to address the legion of problems that
surround those aspects of this film. I mean, first and foremost, Red Dawn
(which was not the best of films in the first place) at least had the advantage
of being a film made in the midst of the cold war with it's WWIII at any minute fears; and a different kind of paranoia
about various states being influenced / controlled by either the Soviet Union /
Communist in general or America / Capitalists in general. Setting up a
laughable, but not given the aforementioned paranoia / fears, entirely inconceivable premise, in which pretty
much every country in the world , bar the Good ol U.S of A is either wiped out
or taken over by a Soviet Union alliance thing (I’m barely exaggerating here
people) the ‘Classic’ Red Dawn had a decent set of bad guys o play with. (Well
when you consider that selling your film to people who weren’t from North
America wasn’t the highest priority back then). But now, well the paranoia isn’t
even in the same Galaxy as the Cold War days, even if you transfer it from East
VS West (The Soviet union is no more after all) to ‘Th e War on Terror’. So
they decided to make China the bad guys this time. Let’s not get into the fact
that things are very, Very different in that dynamic, China is the fastest
growing international market for Hollywood movies right now and is effectively
the number 2 ‘Blockbuster’ market in the world, behind North America. So
casting them as the bloodthirsty bad guys invading the U.S.A (Why for the love
of Rambo, why?) is not a good marketing move. So what to do eh? Well
fortunately it isn’t only the politics of our planet that have changed since
1984. Computers have come on a bundle and now the magic of CGI has been able to
touch up a jet here, a tank there, maybe a face or two there(?) and SHAZAM! The
Chinese evil bastards are now North Korean Evil Bastards. Now I’m sure the set
of circumstances that leads to North Korea deciding to invade America AND
succeeding, to some point, are going to be a wonder to behold.
Red re-Dawn…
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