Dan Foster says the likely crappiness of the new Red Dawn remake explains why we need a Red Dawn remake so badly:
To wit: MGM has taken the extraordinary step of digitally scrubbing the film of all references to Red China as the invading villains — substituting dialogue, removing images of Chinese flags and insignia etc. — because “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.” All without the PRC even uttering a single word of protest.
And who are the new invaders? North Korea. That's right, the starving-to-death, massively brainwashed “Hermit Kingdom.” I imagine at this very moment, Hollywood script doctors are working on a revised first act in which Kim Jong Il decides it’s a good idea to let hundreds of thousands of his captive countrymen travel to America.
Foster has convinced me the new Red Dawn will suck, but I can't for the life of me figure out why he thinks this suggests we desperately need a Red Dawn remake. It was a film for its time. You might as well try to remake Rocky IV.
In fact, the reason the remake will suck illustrates precisely why we don't need a rehash of 1980s nationalist anti-Soviet propaganda. The U.S. is currently not facing any existential threats on the scale of the Soviet Union: not from China, not from Russia, not from al-Qaeda. That's the real reason why a film about young patriots turning back a foreign assault has less resonance; there's no one we can realistically imagine invading the U.S. Personally, I think the world's a better place for that, but war movies are a force that gives some people meaning.
Anyway, the story changes basically turn Red Dawn into a movie version of the video game Homefront, which is written by the same guy.
