Posted on 11/22/2012 4:25:01 PM PST by Old Sarge
Okay, Folks, I took The Bride to see the late screening of "Red Dawn" last night.
WARNING: SPOILERS!!!
The theater was barely half-full, lots of inconsiderate people who kept their cel phones on until the last possible second.
During the first two minutes of the film, the story flashed many current events showing how the world was collapsing. One of the flash images was the current _Resident of the White House speaking about cyber-threats. One of the youths in the audience at the sight of Dear Leader squealed out, "Obamaaaaa!!"
The graphics and the sets and effects were superb. But the story line (North Korea invading the pacific NW? Riiight...) left a little to be desired. They had the Russians invading the eastern seaboard, but there was no mention of the brown hordes coming over the southern border this time; only that the Texas border was burning.
Rather than a shot-down Air Force pilot this time, they had three Marines link up with the Wolverines; one was a bearded Sergeant-Major, another a jingo-spouting badass. The third is the token Asian techie.
The Wolverines themselves were updated to reflect PC sensibilities; two Hispanics and a black kid round out the gang. As for their fates, Jed buys it like in the original, but Mattie, who is now a hot-dogging high-school quarterback who gets his buddies killed, transforms into the new leader of the Wolverines after Jed's demise.
The improvised tech the movie uses is updated for our modern age. Cel phones detonate IED's, and phone cameras are used to gather intel. Most weapons were gleaned off the enemy dead, including C-4. An enemy EMP burst takes out the grid before the invasion, and the Wolverines/Marines fight to steal one of the enemy's hardened comms packages.
As the credits rolled, the theater, unexpectedly, broke into applause.
Overall, we thought that Red Dawn 2012 had high and low points, but it's still a worthy successor to Red Dawn 1984.
Yep, the chair was still against the wall.
But the DJ on Radio Free America gave a shout-out to the Wolverines - he played CCR...
The personal antagonist was “Captain Cho”, a minor functionary. Jed and Matt watched as Cho blew their father away, so it got personal.
There was a cameo appearence of a Russian Spetznaz officer, but we only saw him twice.
Mustn’t offend the enemy, you know...
So it was the spoliers that saved the day? I figured it was the archers or the lancers, but that makes sense now.
Thanks, that is too bad, in the old one the officers mentioned, added much to the overall complexity and depth of the movie and the background of, and the reason for the movie.
People forget that under that flag waving shoot-em up genre of the original, this was the real situation of the time, a true, life and death situation, that we all lived in true and justified fear of.
Thank God for Ronald Reagan.
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The entire concept, starting with the original, was absurd. The same is true of nearly every film these days. You don't go to the movies for realism, you turn on the Military Channel.
And, the fact is that although China is the second largest market for American films, there is a strict quota in place and this film will probaly not even be distributed theatrically there.
The Chinese were the good guys in the first one.
Check out Aussie made “Tomorrow, When the War Began” (2011) for a much better re-make of the original concept...not better than the original...it’s hard to beat John Milius...better than the official remake.
The original CAVCO system in Canada is still strong if the minimum requirements for "Canadian Content" are met. A CC deal, if structured to fit into every possible incentive slot, can deliver 52% of the cost in TCs. These credits need to be monetized though and usually net about 90-95%.
Puerto Rico has a generous Cash Rebate too but it is limited in such a way that it only makes sense to shoot low budget projects there, and it does not encompass salaries of non-PR residents.
The Michigan deal has been very successful in meeting its stated goals...to create a well-trained film production talent pool (BTL) and to support maintenance and growth of production infra-structure.
In the 2009/10/11 period there were about 120 features shot in Michigan. In the 1999/2000/2001 period there were fewer than twenty.
That's a lot of money into Michigan that could just as easily have gone to Vancouver or Toronto or Rumania or Bulgaria or Texas or New Mexico...
The remake is higher-budget, hokey, contrived and defiant with much better special effects and higher production values and I loved it.
And spoilers? Everybody knows that the enemy was going to be the Chinese but they changed it for political-correctness, but who cares? It's a contrived plot anyway. The remake is faithful to the spirit of the original.
Fact is, the real Red Dawn has already happened, and he is living in the White Hut.
We can only wish for a parachuting invader so everybody knows who the enemy is.
In the same way the Russians were in WW-II. Enemy of my enemy sort of thing.
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