The teaser poster for the remake - notice the release date.

Of all the films released in the 80’s, the least likely candidate for the remake treatment would be Red Dawn.  Released in 1984 at the height of the Cold War, if one movie perfectly encapsulated the Reagan era, it was this one (if I were to choose two movies, the second would be Rocky IV).

Co-written (with Kevin Reynolds, who would later direct Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Waterworld) and directed by John Milius, Red Dawn proposed a scary yet highly improbable scenario: What if Russia and its Communist brethren Cuba decided to engage in a full-fledged attack on small town America?  And what if our only means of hope lay in not our fathers and sons, policemen and soldiers, not even the National Guard, but a group of ragtag high school kids?

It’s a right winger’s wet dream come to life and the reason the film worked as well as it did was because of Milius, a hawkish, Teddy Roosevelt –worshipping,  pro-gun conservative who was also an immensely talented writer/director.  Pals with Steven Spielberg in the 70’s and part of the filmmaker’s small circle of film geek collaborators, Milius was (at least partially) responsible for writing Quint’s famous Indianapolis monologue in Jaws, co-wrote 1941 (with Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale), and has co-written and/or directed a nice array of films, including The Wind and the Lion, Big Wednesday, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (he coined the infamous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” line),  Conan the Barbarian, and Walter Hill’s Extreme Prejudice.    Milius is also a celebrated script doctor who has left his stamp on an indelible group of films, including Dirty Harry and The Hunt for Red October.  The character of Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, in the Coen Brother’s The Big Lebowski was based on Milius, so that should give more perspective on the guy.

With Red Dawn, which, for all you trivia hounds out there, was the very first film to be rated PG-13, Milius seemed to have delivered a film that played both as an entertaining “what-if?”  and a pretty good representation of where he stood politically. Featuring an impressive, Brat Pack-ish cast that includes Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey, with small turns by Harry Dean Stanton and Powers Boothe, Red Dawn was obviously aimed at a more younger crowd who, in the era of Rocky and Rambo, Schwarzenegger and Norris, were able to finally see heroes they could truly relate to.  When the evil Reds parachute down in front of a high school and immediately shoot and kill a teacher in the film’s opening scenes, it’s the kids that take action, managing to escape and start a resistance group, which they dub “Wolverines” after their school mascot.  At a time of uncertainty, when good and evil was literally black and white, Red Dawn fit the bill.

Unfortunately, it’s that very reason that Red Dawn seemed like such a poor choice for a remake.  The film plays more like a time capsule now, a valid yet ultimately dated representation of a bygone era.  It’s fun in a cheesy, guilty pleasure sort of way.  Red Dawn was simply a movie of its time and any remake would dilute the concept of the film, thus making it an utterly futile endeavor.

The orginal "Wolverines" from the 1984 original...

MGM, the beleaguered studio that released Red Dawn, had been in trouble for many years when it decided to remake the film.  In the past decade or so, as part of a strategic plan to put some sheen back into Leo the Lion, MGM decided to dig deep into their vast library, one of the biggest of all the studios, and start remaking some of their more popular catalog titles.  A pair of Norman Jewison films, The Thomas Crown Affair and Rollerball, were both remade with John McTiernan at the helm with mixed results.  Other films on tap to be remade included Child’s Play, WarGames, Poltergeist, and RoboCop.  The Red Dawn remake went into production in September 2009 with former stunt coordinator Dan Bradley at the helm.  Milius, who of late has not worked much, was not involved with the production (he will receive a story credit along with Reynolds) but commented with his typical bravado to the L.A. Times when asked what he thought of his film being redone: “I think it’s a stupid thing to do. The movie is not very old.”

Milius was allowed to read the script of the remake, however, and had more to say about it:  ”It was terrible. There was a strange feeling to the whole thing. They were fans of the movie so they put in stuff they thought was neat. It’s all about neat action scenes, and has nothing to do with story.”

All things considered, there were no high hopes for this Red Dawn remake, further dashed when MGM’s financial hardships finally reached a zenith point. Originally set to open on November 24, 2010, the film, along with Zookeeper and The Cabin in the Woods, was shelved indefinitely when MGM filed for bankruptcy (Zookeeper has since been released via a partnership with Sony, while The Cabin in the Woods will be out in theaters April 13 through Lionsgate).  By the start of 2011, it seemed that Red Dawn was going to remain in limbo, another remake that bit the dust.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the movie theater…

In September of 2011, Film District agreed to take over distribution duties for the film and has now set a November 2, 2012 release date.  And in an industry rarity, the amount of time that has passed since production ceased might actually bode well for the film.

...and the new class from the 2012 remake.

The cast of Red Dawn 2012 (which is how it shall be referred to from now on) includes Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise (son of Tom), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  When cameras started rolling in 2009, none of these actors were household names.  What a difference a few years make.  At the time, Hemsworth was best known for his small but crucial part as Kirk’s dad in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot.  His role here, presumably the one played by Swayze in the original, would have been his first major lead.  Instead, his first major lead ended up being in a little film called Thor in which he was cast as the titular hero.  Hemsworth more than held his own in that film, proving to be a charismatic lead who, as a plus, wears a beard really well. With that film having grossed $449.3 million worldwide, the Aussie actor suddenly found himself with some cachet.  He will again play Thor in Marvel’s much anticipated ensemble piece The Avengers and will appear as the male lead in Snow White and the Huntsmen, both to be released this summer ahead of Red Dawn 2012.

Another male member of the ensemble, Josh Hutcherson, also saw his stock rise in the past year.  He was cast as Peeta, one of the male leads, in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’  YA book (Hemsworth’s brother Liam was cast as Gale, the second male lead).  The film opened last week after much anticipation, grossing over $150 million and breaking box-office records.  One of the female leads, Adrianne Palicki, late of television’s Friday Night Lights, also has a major role in another potential summer blockbuster, G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

The fact that a movie that has been gathering dust for almost two years now has some weighty stars in its cast, all of whom appeal to the young demographic, is amazing in itself.  But the odd production history of Red Dawn 2012 does not end there.  In a bit of post-production tinkering that is unprecedented, the villains of Red Dawn 2012 are not the same villains when the film was in production.

With the fall of communism in Russia and the threat of the “evil empire” now diminished (although the recent controversial election of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as president has caused tensions in the country as well as Stateside), Red Dawn 2012 needed a new world power to serve as its villain.   China seemed like a logical choice from an ideological standpoint, although Milius dutifully pointed out in that same interview, “There’s only one example in 4,000 years of Chinese territorial adventurism, and that was in 1979, when they invaded Vietnam, and to put it mildly they got their [butts] handed to them…Why would China want us? They sell us stuff. We’re a market. I would have done it about Mexico.”

Not the real John Milius...but close.

But in the eyes of the filmmakers, it seemed no other nation other than China matched the enormity of the Russkies in the first film.  But tensions between China and the U.S. are nowhere near where it was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  In fact, since the economic meltdown of 2008, the U.S. has had an uneasy interdependence with the Chinese, with the communist country holding roughly 26% of our global debt.  Furthermore, as domestic box-office continues to take a nose dive due to a rickety economy, higher ticket surcharges, and poor product, the international audience has become more important to a studio’s bottom line.  Earlier this year, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the industry’s preeminent lobbyist group responsible for rating films and monitoring piracy, reached a massive agreement with the Chinese market, paving the way for more movies to be released as a means to curb Web piracy, which is rampant in that country.

All things considered, MGM decided that it would not be wise to bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.  Depicting the Chinese as bloodthirsty villains who follow through with an unprovoked attack  on America would probably cut the box-office dramatically in that territory.  So their solution?  Make the villains North Korean.

North Korea has heavily been in the news for several years now, mostly depicting them as a nuclear threat.  While it’s way too early to predict what the death of “supreme leader” Kim Jong-Il and the ascension of his son Kim Jong-un will bring, the nation was just recently in the headlines again when President Obama called for them and Iran to drop all nuclear plans.

As far as a film market, North Korea’s is nonexistent.  While Kim Jong-Il was said to be a huge movie buff, the North Korean censors did not allow many Western films to make it through the pipeline.  In 2010, it was announced that Bend it Like Beckham became the very first Western film to be shown on broadcast television there, albeit in a heavily censored form – the film was cut from 112 minutes to a meager hour.

So North Korea became a more politically correct villain and at a cost of about $1 million, most negative references to China have been dropped, the opening sequence has been altered, and through various digital nips and tucks, any symbol associated with China have been replaced by one’s from North Korea.

This odd twist only seems to have enriched Red Dawn 2012.  The substitution of North Korea as the villains kind of bridges the gap between the 1984 version and the remake.  It kind of seems like such a no-brainer that one wonders why the filmmakers didn’t go with them in the first place.

So, does the fact that two of its stars have been in a pair of huge tentpole films and that the villains are now more of a “real world” threat bode well for Red Dawn 2012?  It’s hard to tell based on the fickle tastes of moviegoers today, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.  While a Red Dawn remake was never my cup of tea, I have to admit that I am a lot more curious about it now than I was two years ago.  And if Red Dawn 2012 does prove to be a huge hit, it would be a rare success for a movie shelved as long as it has, complemented by one of the strangest and most amazing comeback stories in Hollywood history…

© Shantipedia 2012