red dawn: the chinese invaders are coming

Lots of chatter lately about MGM/UA's Red Dawn remake, with casting well underway and production set to begin next month. News recently broke that Tom Cruise's son, 14-year-old Connor, has been cast as one of the Wolverines. And Jen Wang over at Disgrasian had a pretty sweet Red Dawn post the other day: The Red Dawn Remake: The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming!

For those who are unfamiliar with the original Red Dawn, or perhaps too young to remember, the movie's about a group of midwestern teenagers who band together to save their town when Soviet forces invade the United States. Remember, this movie was produced in the middle of the Cold War, and probably scared the crap out of a lot of people back in 1984.

Only this time around, the foreign invaders in the remake are -- of course -- the Chinese (with Russian assistance). Not really surprising, considering all the rhetoric out there about China and its two billion people taking over, well, everything. I'm with Jen, who wonders if there's any way to do Red Dawn with a Chinese enemy without it being totally racist?

I posted a link to a pretty thorough script review a few months back, and it sounds like everything you'd expect from a movie about evil Chinese invaders. Of course, one way to deflect criticism about the racist bad guys is to make one of the good guys a hot Asian teenager. Who happens to be a cheerleader. Oh boy.

Anyway, my reason for bringing all this up is to point you to this great blog post by Roger Fan over at You Offend Me You Offend My Family, where he talks about some of the ups and downs of being a working Asian American actor in Hollywood, and a recent opportunity to be Red Dawn's "replacement reader for table read who can speak Chinese": When "Red Dawn" attacks...