Posted on 03/16/2011 8:55:59 AM PDT by kristinn
Without Beijing even uttering a critical word, MGM is changing the villains in its 'Red Dawn' remake from Chinese to North Korean. It's all about maintaining access to the Asian superpower's lucrative box office.
has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.
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.
But potential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.
As a result, the filmmakers 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
What's wrong with Hollywood, that they have to keep re-making pictures? Don't they have any new ideas?
The NORKs invading the USA??? Seriously??? The original movie was great and didn’t need to be rebooted. WOVERINES!!!
“...excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.”
Guess what, morons, you just offended a large part of your audience in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. You see, making the invading force into North Koreans changes this movie from an interesting speculation as to the possible, into something on the other side of an LSD-induced fantasy. It simply isn’t believable, and thus I will not see it...and I was actually looking forward to it.
Thus are the wages of kissing Red Communist ass.
How about a sequel called, “Cresent Dawn” about a terrorist, Islamic cell that infiltrates across our porous southern border? Oh, wait... that’s actually happening.
The same is true for yet another remake “Arthur”. From the trailer I saw, the original charming movie turned tasteless.
How many more films are they (no talent Hollywood) going to destroy?
At least this makes it more believable, since I think a group of high-schoolers could single-handedly defeat the North Koreans.
That would be like Costa Rica invading Nazi Germany.
In short, no. Call it the "Gen X effect"...the generation raised without creativity, thanks to cable and MTV, is now at the controls, and has no idea what to do. So they do what they're best at...destroying that which has already been done.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I made the mistake of having my sons learn German. It should have been Mandarin, so they could speak to their bosses.
Meanwhile the CHICOMs rubbed it in Obama’s face by playing a virulent anti-american ditty about them kicking our asses in Korea at the White House.
They just managed to make ‘Battle Los Angeles’ look more realistic and probable.
North Korea invading the USA? ROFLMAO. That is inconceivable—why are the writers these days so pitiful?
Why change the story line. It was the cuban’s and the russians the last time that attacked and the Chinese were on our side.
From the movie when the kids are asking the downed fighter pilot who is on our side he reponds “about 700 million screamin china men”. The kid says that he thought there were a billion china men. The pilot says something tothe effect that there used to be...
I am not going to see a movie with a lame concept.
NK as the agitator? Really?
Because a North Korean takeover is so plausible.
/sarccccc
Spanish and Arabic would help too... for the future.
Wonder how much Canada would charge us to take Hollywood?.
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