Reel China: Hollywood Tries to Stay on China's Good Side (Red Dawn Remake Goes '1984')

The Los Angeles Times ^ | Wednesday, March 16, 2011 | Ben Fritz and John Horn

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

Another turd from Hollyweird that will get flushed with few people seeing it.

[karnage]

Paramount did the same thing with The Sum of All Fears - turned the Islamic terrorists into... Kurt Waldheim!

[BobL]

“The NORKs invading the USA??? Seriously??? The original movie was great and didn’t need to be rebooted. WOVERINES!!!”

If Haley Barbour has his way and GUTS the military (as president), I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

I’m mean someone has to come here and pick up the spoils of a defenseless United States.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The NORKs invading the USA??? Seriously??? ****

They could have made the enemy Nazis like they did in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, so as not to offend the moslems.

[redgolum]

He throws the glass of rot gut whiskey into the fire, causing a flare up.

[socal_parrot]

How about a movie where high school kids defend their southern Arizona county against Mexican cartels and illegal aliens and then get sued by the Obama Justice Department for violating their civil rights?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Guess what, morons, you just offended a large part of your audience in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

They know and they don't care. Hollywood's movies aren't targeted at most of the US, as the last decade of anti-Iraq war movies which made no money demonstrate.

Hollywood makes only a few types of movies these days:

- "Serious" movies with left-wing social and political messages for the upper-class urbanites on the East and West coast. These are the films that no one sees but we hear so much about during awards season.

- Action/special effects movies, often based on comic-books, filled with CGI and plentiful explosions for males in their teens and early 20s. This is where Hollywood makes it's money or loses big.

- There are also some animated films (the ones from Pixar tend to be quite good) aimed at the pre-teens.

And as far as Hollywood is concerned, the rest of us can go pound sand.

[SampleMan]

Yea, NK invading the United States... Can’t wait to see how that works.

Maybe it will be a field trip of American teenagers visiting one of the high security SK islands facing NK, when the Norks attack...

Darn, and I was thinking that this might be worth seeing. NOT.

[Boogieman]

When MGM decided a few years ago to remake "Red Dawn," a 1984 Cold War drama about a bunch of American farm kids repelling a Soviet invasion, the studio needed new villains, since the U.S.S.R. had collapsed in 1991. The producers substituted Chinese aggressors for the Soviets and filmed the movie in Michigan in 2009. Wow, the level of cowardice in Hollywood is amazing. First, they pick the Chinese because they are too gutless to feature the actual imminent threat that everyone in the world is aware of, then they back down on that as well. I guess I should be thankful they didn't rewrite the movie with KKK-Militia-Christian Fundamentalist-Domestic Terrorist villains like they usually do.

[Durus]

Thanks for the gratuitous slam.

[Durus]

Thanks for the gratuitous slam.

[AppyPappy]

North Korea too far-fetched. OK, would you believe Rhode Island?

[EQAndyBuzz]

They should have just had the Mexican cartels invade us, take the entire southwest and move into California.

Oh wait.... Never mind.

[Azeem]

Why not just change it to HOMEFRONT since the video game has the exact same premise.

The writer of Red Dawn wrote HOMEFRONT as well.

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/homefront/11462

[Poison Pill]

Wait, the NOKOs are going to invade America? No way that works. The second the paratroopers hit the ground they'd be kissing off Dear Leader and opening corner grocery stores.

I've got a much better idea. Scrap the remake and do a sequel. Red Dawn II. In the film, Charlie Sheen reprises his role from the first movie. See you thought he died and the end of the first movie right? But no. He lives and goes on to found a huge Google type tech company. In the process he makes a $100 billion but goes crazy and starts calling himself "The Warlock". Then he hires a mercenary army made up of disillusioned Gulf War vets and they attempt to take over America so they can corner the market for porn, hookers and blow. The Chi-Coms will love it!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

What's wrong with Hollywood, that they have to keep re-making pictures? Don't they have any new ideas?

The serious answer is "yes, they do have new ideas" or at least the creative side people do. The problem is that on the business side of the industry, there's a lot of fear of doing anything original. When movies cost an average of $65 million to make and another $35 million to market, they figure it's smarter to go with what the public already knows. It's all about risk reduction.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That is inconceivable—why are the writers these days so pitiful?

It wasn't the writers who made this decision. They wrote Chinese as the bad guys. The crew made the movie with Chinese as the bad guys. it's the studio leadership that ordered the change. And from their point of view, it's strictly business.

[Conservative Vet]

You’re right! They butchered the book—and Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan??? CAIR lobbied the filmmaker to avoid the “terrorist Arab” stereotype. A few months after filming wrapped, 9/11 happened and the stereotype was validated yet again.

I heard an interview with Vince Flynn once and he said a film producer didn’t want to make a movie of one of his novels with Arabs as villains. He said, “Can’t you make the terrorists Filipino instead?” (Probably because at the beginning of the book, Mitch Rapp kills a corrupt Filipino General during a hostage rescue. This was based on reports of Gracia Burnham that a Filipino general was trying to get a cut of the ransom when she was held with her husband by the Abu Sayaaf. Unfortunately, corrupt Filipino generals are also an “earned” stereotype: i.e. Angelo Reyes, Jacinto Ligot, Carlos Garcia etc...)

[Dilbert San Diego]

Thanks for the info. I thought I had heard once that Hollywood made some movie in which they changed the ethnicity of the Muslim villians to be politically correct.

Anybody remember there were some Libyian bad guys in “Back to the Future”? If they made that movie today, the bad guys who wanted to buy the plutonium would have to be some Nazi skinhead type, so as not to offend certain people.

[wku man]

Well, that's the way I see it, and I'm an Xer.

Creativity began dying after MTV went on the air, and was put out of its misery with the advent of the internet. How else do you explain so many re-made movies and TV shows, movies made from comic books and video games, and so many songs from the 70s and 80s being covered by no-talent Gen X and Generation.com bands?

How many times are we going to see the Camelot story re-hashed and sexed up? What's the next spin on the old Mr. and Mrs. Smith franchise? Which crappy-a** emo, screamo, death metal, crust punk, thrashcore, grindcore or metalcore (for the life of me, I can't tell the difference between any of them) is going to cover another lame Hall and Oates song?

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!