Just curious if anyone here was planning to see the remake of "Red Dawn" which opens in cinemas this week... ? I know many people here are fans of John Marsden's "Tomorrow When The War Began" series, in which Australia is invaded by a mysterious unnamed foreign power, and a group of teenagers become resistance fighters, waging a campaign of guerilla warfare against this nameless, faceless "Enemy".... I don't know if the original 80s version of "Red Dawn" was a direct influence on Marsden when writing the "Tomorrow" series, but the two stories have many similarities and I think it's a funny coincidence that "Red Dawn" is coming back to cinema screens so soon after the movie version of "Tomorrow When The War Began". Here's the trailer for the new "Red Dawn":
~Link~In the original film, Russia and Cuba team up to invade the United States. Most of the action takes place in a small town in Colorado, which is overrun in a matter of minutes by brutally violent Soviet paratroopers, prompting a group of teenagers to flee into the surrounding mountains. Armed only with hunting rifles, pistols, and bows and arrows, the teens struggle to survive the bitter winter and the KGB patrols hunting for them. Toughened by this experience, the teens form into a unit of resistence fighters, waging their own campaign of guerrilla warfare against the commies... under the banner of "The Wolverines" (their local football team).
Of course, now that The Cold War is over, Hollywood needed to look for a new boogeyman, and so in the 2012 version, America is invaded by North Korea.
The 80s film is considered a classic by some, but to be honest, I found it to be an unintentionally hilarious, "so bad it's good" laugh riot. With the exception of one Cuban soldier, who is depicted sympathetically, all of the invaders come across as either camp, moustache twirling pantomime villains or bungling idiots that wouldn't even be capable of graduating from the "Star Wars" stormtrooper marksmanship academy... The acting of Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson as the teen guerillas is often extremely goofy. These were among the earliest roles of their careers and their lack of experience is painfully obvious. It doesn't help that many of the patriotic speeches they are given to deliver are pretty uninspired, and much of the fight choreography is embarassingly clumsy. Also, the technical details of the commies' invasion plot are full of holes.... Marsden had the right idea by making his antagonists a faceless, unknown "other", that way he didn't have to bother with coming up with a convincing invasion strategy, or depicting the teens' adversaries in a way that was culturally sensitive.
Frankly, "Red Dawn" is such a product of it's time that I'm surprised anyone bothered to remake it. Nevertheless, I'm going to see "Red Dawn 2012" anyway, because I've been given a stack of free movie tickets for my birthday and I have a morbid curiosity... a part of me hopes this turns out to be a movie that is as goofy and unintentionally hilarious as the original. I'm in the mood for a good laugh...
That said, I would be just as happy if "Red Dawn 2012", against all odds, managed to be an unironically good movie - or at least a movie that was as "good" as the recent film of "Tomorrow When The War Began" was... I found "Tomorrow" to be an entertaining enough action/adventure yarn with the odd really goofy scene now and then where it was trying unsuccessfully to be profound, as well as some really laboured attempts at comic relief (not enough to derail the movie, but enough to stop it from being great IMHO).... but I'm not optimistic about "Red Dawn" being as good as "Tomorrow When The War Began"... partly because "Red Dawn", unlike "Tomorrow When The War Began", provides the audience with an identifiable antagonist. Which means "Red Dawn" is obligated to provide a depiction of North Korea invading the US in such a way that is both technically convincing and culturally plausible. In the real world, I'm not convinced North Korea is either sufficiently powerful in it's military resources or self-confident enough as a nation to pull it off. But I'm still interested to see what strategy the filmmakers come up with to try and make it come off.
Just a final thought, there's some Aussie refugees from "Home & Away" in the new "Red Dawn" (Chris Hemsworth and Isabel Lucas).... say, didn't "Tomorrow When The War Began" also have some refugees from Summer Bay and Ramsay St in the cast??? Hmmmm....
