Red Dawn - Update (North Koreans?)

Coming out on November 21 is the remake of the cult classic movie Red Dawn. I originally posted about this here around when it was first announced and when China was the villain (instead of the Soviet Union, as in the 1980s movie).

That was three years ago, and it's finally coming out.

But not without a big change. Rather ground-breaking, actually.

Yes, after Chinese outcry, they have changed the enemy from the Chinese to the North Koreans. I guess because we're not indebted to the North Koreans.

Instead, it just gets sillier.

Supposedly changing from Chinese to North Koreans just involved redoing/editing/deleting a couple of scenes and using digital technology to change the Chinese symbols to North Korean ones (you know, because all the peoople look alike and everything). Unless they digitally redressed everybody too, I'm assuming the uniforms weren't even accurate to begin with?

To me, this takes the remake from needless to stupid, with a pit stop at mystifying.

North Korea? Invading the US? It just boggles the mind.

Here's a little of the plot description from the Internet Movie Database:

"With the town completely overrun by the enemy, Matt and Jed watch helplessly as their father gives up his life to protect his family, allowing his sons to escape into the Cascade mountains. Determined to fight for their community and rescue what's left of their hometown, the brothers assemble a ragtag group of high school students and begin to fight back. Being a war hero, Jed is able to train this unlikely group of heroes the same way that he was trained. Soon they are transformed into sharp shooting, camouflaged, freedom fighters. Known as the "Wolverines" (after Matt's football team), the group soon becomes a national symbol for the resistance and the hope of Americans everywhere. What this enemy didn't realize is that what makes the U.S. great is not the size of its military, but rather the men and women who wear the uniform and the communities they come from."

The movie takes place in Spokane, Washington. I'm not sure exactly how mountainous the Michigan filming locations are, but whatever. I guess we'll see how they do it.

But come on. North Korea? Bringing the country to its knees, so that "with the fate of the country on the shoulders of these small town heroes, the Wolverines must summon the courage to overcome impossible odds and unity a town against the greatest threat this country ever faced."

The fate of the country?

Against North Korea?

There had better be a damned good explanation in the opening sequence explaining the backdrop of the movie for this to make *any* sense. They removed the Chinese because they didn't want to lose access to the Chinese box office, so I doubt they're going to have the Chinese secretly facilitating this whole thing.

The North Korean army is going to parachute in to Spokane (and I assume many other places). Seriously?

I just find the whole thing ridiculous. Especially because one of the main characters is a guy who's just back from Afghanistan, so it's obviously taking place in the extremely near future. At least in the video game Homefront, there was much more of a prelude to everything going to hell. The invasion actually took place in 2022 after North Korea managed to somehow unify with South Korea and yet be the dominant partner, wars broke out all over the world, and the US suffered a catastrophic economic collapse.

I still don't buy it, but it *could* be plausible. As a story idea, anyway.

It will be interesting to see what the pretext of the movie is. As it stands right now, it just seems really dumb.

For a hilarious look at this, check out the Guardian in the UK.

I love the "Take that, Unidentified Asians Who Are Probably North Koreans!"

So while all the pre-release stuff says they're North Korean, nothing actually in the film says that?

Now I'm really confused.