Red dawn-in theaters November 21
In Red Dawn, a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerrilla group of fighters. Taking inspiration from their high school mascot, they call themselves the Wolverines, banding together to protect one another, liberate their town from its captors, and take back their freedom.
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I just saw a trailer for th enew Red Dawn flic. Looked pretty cool, lots of action plus a few scenes lifted from the original. My only complaint was the actors seemed a little old to be high school kids?
If you think they look too old, then you should skip Taken 2 where Maggie Grace plays Neeson's daughter that is young enough to not have her driver's license yet!
Maggie Grace is very attractive but, hell, on closeups you could see the wrinkles starting. She's only 1 year younger than me after all!
Maggie Grace has them starting. Probably from living the "Hollywood Life". I could see them despite the makeup on screen when I went to see Taken 2. They made the premise of her being an unlicensed teen a bit absurd. She likely could have pulled it off when she was still doing Lost but at almost 30? Nope...
I've seen the previews (when I went to see Skyfall the other day). It was... well, pretty neutral about who was who from what I could tell. There were no fingers pointed at the bad guys or anything. In the original movie, I remember them talking about the invasion, and Russians.... But I couldn't tell who was who this time, from the previews anyway.
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Took me a second to realize that the main guy is Thor... /sigh lol
Review: Red Dawn
November 19, 2012, 7:31 am
I'll give you a moment to plant your tush in a seat. If you're behind the wheel, pull over and put it in "P". All set? Are you sure? Triple sure? Final chance... Red Dawn doesn't suck.
Yes, I know this sounds preposterous. I know this sounds inconceivable. I might as well have told you Pluto is no longer a planet, but it's true. The been-sitting-on-a-shelf-since-2010 remake of one of the '80s most ridiculous revered films is shockingly tolerable and surprisingly entertaining.
Swapping Soviets for Chinese North Koreans, Red Dawn follows the same parachuting-invasion of America plotline, the puffy-faced Chris Hemsworth subbing for Patrick Swayze. Surrounded by a capable enough supporting cast, including Peeta himself, Josh Hutcherson and the big screen debut of Tom Cruise's kid Connor, this is kids versus Communists and the guys with tanks and RPGs don't have a prayer, not against the self-proclaimed "Wolverines" and their run and shoot - and run - offense.
The dialogue doesn't evoke thoughts of Chaucer but what'd you expect? This is the Norse god of thunder, Thor, leading the charge. And can he ever topple evil regimes; not with brute force, but rather guerrilla warfare and home court advantage – no one knows Spokane, Washington like these rebellious youths.
Red Dawn is undoubtedly outlandish (what country would actually want ownership of Spokane for God's sake?) but stunt coordinator-turned-director Dan Bradley delivers the eye candy with explosions in spades to keep you largely tuned in for the 93-minute runtime.
Score a minor victory for unbelievability.
Final Cut Score: 82%
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Nov 16 2012 8:09 AM EST Chris Hemsworth Says 'Red Dawn' Was 'Calm Before The Storm'
Actor jokes with MTV News that as his old films come out, he gets 'younger and less experienced.'
By Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz)
Please forgive Chris Hemsworth if he has some trouble remembering the making of "Red Dawn." Since shooting the remake of the cult favorite 1984 film starring Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell and Lea Thompson (Hello, 1980s!) in 2009, the 29-year-old Australian has been very busy indeed, starring in "Thor," "The Avengers," and "Snow White and the Huntsman." Why the delay? "Red Dawn" was caught in a black hole of MGM's storied financial troubles, you see, and maybe that ended up being the best thing for it.
Not only does the November 21 release star the now bankable Hemsworth (reprising Swayze's big brother role of Jed), but it features Josh Hutcherson coming off "The Hunger Games," plus Josh Peck (star of the highly underrated "The Wackness") and "Friday Night Lights" alum Adrianne Palicki. The young cast form a ragtag bunch of characters caught up in a terrifying circumstance: their hometown has just been overrun by a North Korean invasion force. In times like these it's good to have Chris Hemsworth on your side.
Chris Hemsworth: [Laughs] Yes, it was. Actually I was shooting "Cabin in the Woods" at the time and auditioning for "Thor" and "Red Dawn." I was hoping to get one of them. I got a call on a Friday about "Red Dawn" saying I got the part and then a call on Saturday morning saying I got "Thor"!
MTV: I'd call that a good weekend. Did you have any sense at the time you made it that the release might be delayed due to MGM's problems? Hemsworth: During shooting, I didn't have any clue there would be problems. And then afterwards, I heard there was a hold up and they were having some delays, and now it's kind of a Benjamin Button thing. As my films come out, I get younger and less experienced.
MTV: The original "Red Dawn" has a strong following here in the States. Were you familiar with it? Was it as big back home?
Hemsworth: I had seen it at some point. It wasn't etched in my memory though. I hadn't seen it numerous times like a lot of people from the states.
MTV: You fill some pretty big shoes taking over a role that Patrick Swayze played in the original. Was that on your mind much?
Hemsworth: I'm a huge fan of his work and the character he created was very iconic. I hope he would be proud of this version. But I didn't want to get into a position where I was mimicking someone else. I wanted to come at it from a fresh angle. The script is a bit different anyway. It follows the relationship of the two brothers a little more than the original did.
MTV: Since filming "Red Dawn," both yours and Josh Hutcherson's careers have certainly blossomed. Have you guys kept in touch?
Hemsworth: Yeah, we see each other at various events and obviously Liam is working with him so there's that connection. I saw Josh at the MTV Movie Awards actually. We were talking about "Red Dawn" and how making it was kind of the calm before the storm.
Zombie Swayze? That would add a whole new audience segment.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
I would rate Red Dawn up there with the original... except for a couple of things.
1) It was... I don't quite know how to put this... "generic" or "Ambivalent" comes to mind though.
2) the female actors got "bit parts" compared to the original.
3) Some of them "weren't High School kids" which was the main theme of the original.
Other than that the actors were good. The movie was well made... as Ryan pointed out some time back the camo appeared to be Chi-Com camo which as *I* pointed out "could happen".
The Russians had a prominent part- which also would be par for the course because the Russians are main sponsors of the DPRK.
I won't give away any of the movie, but, overall I give it a 4 out of 5. My wife gives it a 4 out or 5.
No part of the movie was 'unbelievable' in our opinion.
She doesn't recall the original movie well enough to compare them in that respect, I do, however, remember the original and I liked the original better (it would have had 5 out of 5).
I recommend the movie to all of you. Go see it if you have time - but catch it on matinee or with some other discount. I had to pay full price because they didn't take Mil discount before 6 pm. (assholes)
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I saw Red Dawn over the weekend and I'd agree with Rick just about 100% on the review he gave though I did miss the first 10 minutes of the movie.
It was very good and enjoyable but it wasn't great and, it didn't really emotionally "grab" me the way you would think fighting for your life and country against an invading force should. I think the original did a much better job of that even with it's tiny $4 mil budget. The scene with Jed and Matt's father in this version came the closest (however I'm disappointed with the way that was cut but, maybe that was just for theaters so it kept the PG-13 rating). The only other scene that jumps to mind was the fallout of liberating Erica between Julie and Jed. I felt that scene was just poorly written overall and could have been done to be much more emotionally gripping to show that actions have lasting consequences. There are other scenes that may have tried to "grab you" but the pacing during them was so fleeting that they didn't have a chance to really sink in. The original did a much better job of this in a number of scenes, you can surely take your pick of which ones whether it is the "Avenge me!" scene, the scene where the mass execution occurs, or the decision on what to do with Daryl after his collaboration.
I do think it did a decent job of paying homage to the original while giving it a more modern interpretation (I got a chuckle out of the deer's blood scene). The scenery and settings were very well done from the checkpoints, to the run down buildings (thanks Detroit, you're finally good for something!), to the police station, and to the re-education camp (I would have liked to have seen more of this). The effects were great and aside from the needed CGI for some scenes, things like crashes and explosions were done for real which is something I always appreciate in a movie!
Some things not in it that would have made it great would have been a large scale battle between US Forces and the invasion forces brought about by the efforts of the Wolverines at retrieval of a certain item, especially after the time and resources dedicated to it. As it is, the item was whisked off and you never really see the fruits of everything that went into the retrieving that item. Sorry if I'm being vague but I'm trying not to give anything away since apparently the spoiler tags no longer work after the board software upgrade. I also would have liked to have seen more difficult and morality testing choices needing to be made, especially after the heavy emphasis by some of the characters on the need to make difficult choices. The original had the previously mentioned scene with deciding Daryl's fate where as I didn't really see anything like that in this one. One last thing should have been less focus on just the Jed, Matt, and Toni (only because she was Jed's love interest) characters and more focus on the others in the group. The original did a superb job of involving all of the cast where none really totally overshadowed the others (though Jed and Matt were definitely known to be "in charge"), where as in this one the heavy bias on the 3 is much more obvious. And like Rick said, the girls seemed to be given bit roles as love interests with them not doing a whole lot but shooting some guns every now and then. They aren't really shown to be the strong and independent characters like they were in the original.
One thing confused me though after seeing the movie. I originally thought the whole hoopla over the change in antagonist from China to NK was stupid because they were afraid in alienating the Chinese market yet in the movie, Russia is left as a major antagonist (though oddly their role hardly gets more than a mention and a handful of scenes). Were they just not afraid of alienating the Russian movie market or did they just not care? Honestly, I'm betting if they had left China as the main antagonist, it still would have been a success because I'm sure the Chinese market would have cheered on a US invasion.
Oh, and one other criticism I thought of and I don't think I'm really giving anything away here...
The heavy military hardware. It was all "captured" equipment (HMMWVs, Abrams, Deuces, etc.). I don't think I saw a single Commie tank, armored vehicle, jeep, or truck.
I was very disappointed by that, especially after the trouble the original went to to mock up real Russian hardware when such stuff was still somewhat of a mystery behind the Iron Curtain. Considering how cheap real Commie hardware is today, that is unacceptable in my book.
If and when you see "Red Dawn," the rah-rah remake of mature-looking teenagers and their kin fighting against an invasion against America, remember -- the enemy is North Korea, even though they're Chinese.
A tad confusing, but here's the backstory: The original, as a Gen X subset might recall, pitted the likes of Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, and C. Thomas Howell against Russian forces. Since the Soviet Union is so Cold War 1984, the natural invading forces of the 21st century should by all rights be China, due to its sheer size, military might, and the fact that it owns about 8 percent of U.S. debt. In a way, a Chinese invasion would be the equivalent of Mafia money lenders coming to break a few legs.
Fear of big government?
The project, starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, and other up-and-coming heartthrobs, actually finished up in 2010, sat on a shelf for two years as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer struggled with (cue irony) massive debt issues. The filmmakers weren't twiddling their thumbs: To maximize sales, every reference to China was removed in postproduction.
[F]ilmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from "Red Dawn," substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake. The changes illustrate just how much sway China's government has in the global entertainment industry, even without uttering a word of official protest. Although it's unclear if anyone in China has seen "Red Dawn," a leaked version of the script last year resulted in critical editorials in the Global Times, a communist party-controlled paper. (March 16, 2011, Los Angeles Times)
This is hardly the first time a character's ethnicity has been changed over global politics. Peter X. Feng, University of Delaware associate professor of film and author of "Identities in Motion: Asian American Film and Video," tells Yahoo! the practice goes all the way back to World War 1, when Cecil B. DeMille changed his Japanese villain in "The Cheat" (1915) to Burmese for the 1923 reissue, after Japan became an ally.
Movie companies — here and overseas — have long geared storylines to maximize global profits. That's why sequels and action films rule, to trade on familiar name properties and make for easier plot translations. Overseas partnerships are more commonplace. So blaming China's censor board for the digital makeover may be obvious -- but might there be more to the story?
Communist fears vs. capitalist deals
The change triggered underground grumblings of capitulation (and of the implicit racism of interchangeable Asians), but "Red Dawn" isn't the only movie where China is conspicuous for its absence. (Warning: mild spoiler ahead.) In "Skyfall," James Bond's archenemy is Latin bisexual Raoul Silva, who was M's favored recruit before he turned cyberterrorist. China is involved, but only as a backstory catalyst for Silva's psychosis and a few location shots. The Cold War-birthed franchise has faced down enemies of every extraction, be it hapa Chinese-German mobster Dr. No, Russian counterintelligence agent Rosa Krebb, or Bolivian General Medrano. This time around, 007 is facing an enemy of MI6's own making. (End of mild spoiler.)
Our best chance at a big-screen Chinese villain will be in the upcoming "Iron Man 3" — aptly named the Mandarin. (Incidentally, the half-Chinese/half-English evildoer will be played by half-Indian, half-English Ben Kingsley.) But, the comic book villain's origin as a Chinese exile with extraterrestrial rings will be de-emphasized. "It's less about his specific ethnicity than the symbolism of various cultures and iconography that he perverts for his own end," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Entertainment Weekly, which described the Mandarin's aesthetic as a hodgepodge of "samurai hair, to his royal robe, to his bin Laden-esque beard, and the AK-47." The Mandarin, therefore, will be more like Pan-Asian Express.
It wasn't so long ago that popular culture traded on anxieties about America's external threats. Japan's 20th-century rise, which triggered magazine headlines like "How to cope with Japan's business invasion," inspired authors and artists about how the Asian tiger would change the American way of life. Styx's 1983 song "Mr. Roboto" hinted darkly at a Japanese mechanized world taking over a free world. Movies such as "Gung Ho" (1986), "Black Rain" (1989), and "Rising Sun" (1993) played on cultural collisions. As Americans plugged into their Sony Walkmans, Sony's spending spree, which included Columbia Pictures Entertainment, came under intense criticism, notwithstanding the fact that English-speaking nations such as Australia and Great Britain owned more American land than Japan did.
These days with China, not so much, despite plenty of U.S. election-year tough talk involving China. The Obama administration blocked a Chinese company from buying an Oregon wind farm, because it was close to a Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility a few miles away -- the first such veto in 22 years. Much more blatant were the political ads: "The Chinese Professor," which shows an instructor chortling with his class over American fiscal fecklessness, was revived after its midterm election debut.
Any anxiety Hollywood has about China revolves less around its economic influence than the country's sheer population size, a notion that could be traced back to the 19th-century "Yellow Peril" fears over Chinese labor. Japan, an on-again, off-again ally, posed dangers of infiltration because it could be "smarter or craftier or more treacherous," Feng observes. "There are so many Chinese, [the fear is] that they would keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, like the Barbarian invasions, that they will just overwhelm us with numbers."
Hollywood abandons America
In a way, figuring out where are Chinese villains are is less about China and more about America ducking its fears. If you go back to the beginning of Tinseltown, a bad guy's ethnicity was key. Hypervocal bloggers Elliot Mandel and James Furbush monitored 100 action films from the past 60 years, tracking a shifty rainbow from black ("Birth of a Nation") to Russians and Germans (Cold War era) to drug dealers and U.S. government corruption (Nixonian days), then back to Russians and drugs (Reagan era), and what Mandel and Furbush called "generic white guys."
After 9/11 happened, Hollywood took an abrupt left turn from their usual way of doing things. No longer would the movies in the next decade reflect current events or the deepest fears of the population.
Instead of embracing the cultural fear of terrorism, natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or man-made ones like the BP oil spill, religious fanaticism, a horrible recession and subprime mortgages run amok, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, climate change, and a looming government defaulting on its debt, Hollywood ran from its obligation to amplify the country's fears and instead turned to remakes, prequels, sequels, and cartoonish comic book movies in the last decade. (August 3, 2011, A Brief History of Hollywood Villains and America's Collective Fears)
"I think mostly Hollywood has, for whatever reason, lost the ability to use horror and action films as a vehicle for cultural critiques," Furbush explains to Yahoo!. "What horror and action movies did was provide a method for talking about those societal fears in a way that was acceptable. You could talk about the Russians invading America and have that conversation through a movie like Red Dawn where you wouldn't have it in more prestigious dramas. But, by and large, I don't think action movies are really tackling modern fears like is China going to make the U.S. irrelevant in a decade."
Zombifying villains, whitewashing heroes
Without a doubt, Hollywood has been more than guilty of perpetuating damaging racial stereotypes. Maybe it's not just money, maybe storytellers, worn down by homefront protests over the years, are exercising caution. Definitely as America's citizens -- and those international film deals -- have diversified, egregious typecasting has diminished. These days, the preferred go-to evildoers tend be zombies. When you're the undead, race no longer matters.
But in this retreat, a different kind of issue has popped up: whitewashing. The film "21" (2008), based on the true story of largely Asian MIT students who beat the casinos, cast only one white actor.
Racial bogeymans have been whitewashed even in comic adaptations: In "The Dark Knight Rises," Liam Neeson played Batman's mentor and nihilist Ra's al Ghul. "Prince of Persia" (2010) earned criticism for, among things, casting Jake Gyllenhaal as Middle Eastern royalty.
M. Night Shymalan faced fan fury for whitewashing "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (2010). It's less about race than about watering down culture.
Scholars like Feng gets that Hollywood relies on marquee names to maximize box-office draw. The underlying problem is plain ol' equity.
"The point of acting is to act," he says -- and an actor doesn't need to be blind, disabled, or Chinese to play a blind, disabled, or Chinese character. It's the difficulty that Asian actors have in getting roles that are perceived to be white. "For me it's a question about equity rather than realism," he says.
But not to worry, there might be a chance for a Chinese villain in the near future, in a series project called "Awesome Asian Guys." (Full disclosure: The author threw in a few bucks for this Kickstarter project, with no hope of any return investment other than a T-shirt.) "When we were growing up in the '80s and '90's, we'd always see hard-hitting Asian bad guys in flicks like 'Die Hard,' 'Bloodsport,' and 'Karate Kid 2,'" goes the pitch from "offbeat" filmmakers Stephen Dypiangco and Patrick Epino. "These badasses were cool, but they'd only have a two-minute lifespan before they were killed or beaten to a pulp. It sucked that you barely saw them onscreen and rarely got to know them." The solution: a Web series devoted entirely to generic Asian bad guys.
It's a step -- somewhere.
See a clip for 'Red Dawn':
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Nikita Khrushchev:"We will bury you"
"Your grandchildren will live under communism."
“You Americans are so gullible.
No, you won’t accept To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ."
We’ll so weaken your To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. until you’ll To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 15 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. like overripe fruit into our hands."
Re: MGM to Bring Back Red Dawn and RoboCop
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(Especially since they'll be wearing ChiCom camo still. 
)
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