We've been talking about the Red Dawn remake for a long time. The original 1984 movie was about a Soviet invasion of the United States, and the small town rebels who take up arms fight back. I recently re-watched it, and all these years later, it's some pretty awful Cold War-era movie propaganda.
So after years of gathering dust on the shelf, dealing with studio money troubles and and going through some fairly ludicrous wholesale changes, Red Dawn is finally scheduled to be released in November. This time, the invaders were supposed to be from China... but it's um, not China anymore.
Here's the new trailer:
If you've been following the history of this project, you know that the original invaders were supposed to be Chinese, no doubt preying on modern American anxieties about China's billion-plus people and their growing global might.
At some point, far too late in the production of this thing, somebody realized that actual Chinese people watch movies, and the makers of Red Dawn might actually want to get in on some of that box office cash. But this would be hard to do when your movie is about evil Chinese invaders.
The solution: Asian Villain Swap! Seriously. The producers changed the movie's villains to North Korean forces. This required taking the movie, already in the can, and digitally altering and re-dubbing all the Chinese signage and dialogue to reflect Red Dawn's new Asian invasion. It's safe to say there won't be a whole lot of people in North Korea going to see this movie.
Insert [Asian bad guys]. Easy fix, right?
Judging from the trailer, the movie looks like what we expected: jingoistic nonsense. Brave (Mostly White) America fights back against evil foreign invaders! It's going to be the feel-good Thanksgiving movie of the year.
And is it me, or does Will Yun Lee pop up a lot in this trailer? According to IMDb, he plays the villain "Captain Lo" (this may have since changed in the North Korean switcheroo) and considering how much face time he gets, you'd think he's singlehandedly responsible for the North Korean invasion.
Anyway, there you go. This movie is happening.