Red Dawn and Red Dawn

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Since the Red Dawn remake is on the verge of being unleashed upon the world like so much Commie propaganda, I figure it might be a good idea to examine the awfulness that was the original, or doing a joint episode where both are dissected for comedic effect. I have not seen the remake, obviously, but I'm pretty confident from the trailer that it's going to be not-so-good. North Korea invades the US, huh? Sounds likely! "How DID this get made?" indeed.

 

Just mocking the original would be wonderful. It has Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen as siblings, Swayze's future 'Dirty Dancing' co-star Jennifer Grey, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Harry Dean fucking Stanton, and Powers Boothe being manly while talking around a camp fire. Are there age-inappropriate/potentially statutory rape-ish googly eyes made in Powers Boothe's direction? Hell yes! The plot is basically a series of militarily impossible situations that have the Keystone Cops of the Soviet Union and their dirty Mexican Latin American allies invading the US via the choke-point of American power: Calumet, Colorado. With the help of John Milius's dicrtion and screenplay, it all adds up to the least subtle bit of Reagan-era propaganda this side of a 'Just Say No' after school special.

[sillstaw 414]

My favorite thing about the remake (aside from the fact that it was shot in 2009)? Originally, the invaders were supposed to be Chinese. Then, sometime in the three years between shooting it and its release, they suddenly realized that oh yeah, China is actually a big market for movies and they probably wouldn't appreciate being the villains in a movie about how much ass America kicks. So they digitally changed all the mentions of China and all the Chinese flags to make them North Korean.

 

Because really, it's not like there's a difference in how Chinese people and Korean people look, right? Oh wait...

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

...and it's not like the Chinese will resent being arbitrarily interchanged with Koreans as the villain. After all, every azn is just like every other azn...

 

Also, how the balls does North Korean invade the US? I kind of want to see the remake just to find out what kind of idiotic explanation is put forth for such a scenario.

[Namssorg 1]

I joined the earwolf forum for the sole purpose of suggesting the remake of Red Dawn. My friends and I went to see this movie because A. It was the worst rated movie we could find playing that weekend and B. The trailer had tons of explosions.

 

You HAVE to see this movie with friends. Be ready to laugh at the absolute shitstorm of bad script, terrible acting, and a sky full of North Korean paratroopers. I was belly laughing so hard at certain parts of this movie (That were not supposed to be funny) I was afraid I may be asked to leave the theater.

 

This movie is unbelievably stupid and somewhat offensive.. and at the same time is filled with fist pumping moments of awesomeness. Not awesome because the scene is good, but awesome because what you are witnessing even exists on film at all. For people to see. Josh Peck, who was great in The Wackness, turns in one of the most cringe-inducing performances I have ever seen captured at 24fps in this movie. Also: Skinny Thor.

 

I can think of no other movie where I said, "WHAT?!!!" out loud as many times as I did during this piece of beautiful garbage.

 

It's SO bad. I think I got more enjoyment out of this shitty movie than I did out of some of the actually very good films that came out last year. I would love to hear the HDTGM podcast tackle this gem.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

I'm 34, and I'm surprised by how many people I waited on at my theater that seemed to be in my general age group or a little younger that had no idea what "Red Dawn" was, much less that it was a remake, which I just can't understand at all. As a child of the 80's with cable, the original "Red Dawn" was on at least twice a day for what I would guess was a solid decade. Even if you don't think you've seen "Red Dawn", I guarantee you that you HAVE seen it at least 14 times. I recently saw it for the first time in a very long time, and I don't think I even remembered about two-thirds of it, but I'm sure that I knew it by heart when I was 10.

 

Believe it or not, there was also a lot of confusion a couple months back with another film that had the word "Dawn" in it's title that caused some mix-ups, which led to people coming out of their theaters and alleging that we sold them the ticket to the wrong film, which was certainly not the case. One film was the fifth in a series of extremely popular films about vampires, and the other was a re-make of a movie that's been on TV every day for nearly 30 years, and people still couldn't tell the titles apart. No matter how much money a movie makes, no matter how much something pops up on TV, and no matter how many millions of dollars are spent on marketing a film to drive you into theaters, some people cannot be reached. I'd like to believe that these people that show up oblivious to anything and everything around them are just immune to the hype, but most times, I think they really just ARE fucking idiots.

[RyanSz 3140]

The problem with the remake is that it is set in present day, like the original was. Yet there is a problem in that in the 80s, it was reasonable to think that a group of high schoolers could fight a Guerrilla war with Soviets for at least a little while before being overwhelmed and killed, which happened at the end and was discussed in the film's epilogue. Yet in today's time with all of the technology military groups have, these kids would have been found in about 10 minutes and there heads would have been on pikes five minutes after that.

 

***SPOLIERS FOR A MOVIE THAT TANKED AT THE BOX OFFICE****

 

The whole invasion is based on the idea that they used an EMP to weaken the US and that Russia was backing North Korea. This makes the whole point of the movie where the kids have to take the main bad guy's EMP resistant phone so the army can start a counterattack. So with everything electric except this phone not working, once the kids get the phone and kill the bad guy, the army guy they are working with takes off in a helicopter, which shouldn't work due to the EMP.

 

Even worse is that the movie doesn't follow the original with an epilogue that states while the kids died, their struggle gave others hope to fight back and the enemy was eventually beaten. Instead this movie doesn't want all of the pretty kids to die so they leave it ambiguous where they are still fighting and getting new recruits.

 

This movie was balls.

[PatLalley 3]

How is it possible that you guys haven't done Red Dawn?

[seanotron 2307]

I'm 34, and I'm surprised by how many people I waited on at my theater that seemed to be in my general age group or a little younger that had no idea what "Red Dawn" was, much less that it was a remake, which I just can't understand at all. As a child of the 80's with cable, the original "Red Dawn" was on at least twice a day for what I would guess was a solid decade. Even if you don't think you've seen "Red Dawn", I guarantee you that you HAVE seen it at least 14 times. I recently saw it for the first time in a very long time, and I don't think I even remembered about two-thirds of it, but I'm sure that I knew it by heart when I was 10.

 

I'm in the same age group as you and I have honestly never seen it. But I've also never seen Top Gun, so I know I'm an outlier.

 

I'm sure I've seen most of the key scenes thanks to clip shows, however.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

 

I'm in the same age group as you and I have honestly never seen it. But I've also never seen Top Gun, so I know I'm an outlier.

 

I'm sure I've seen most of the key scenes thanks to clip shows, however.

"Top Gun" may have been more of an HBO/Showtime thing, like it depends on which one you had while growing up. I had Showtime, and it seemed like "Iron Eagle" was on alllllllllll the time, but I never saw "Top Gun" on cable all that much, but I never really liked it anyway.