Seems like half the people posting the Catching Fire trailer today are talking about how the first Hunger Games was a disappointment, though you’d never know it from its 85% recommended rating on RottenTomatoes (count me staunchly among the other 15). I guess that was before people realized that we could enjoy Jennifer Lawrence in movies that were actually good. In any case, the hype train starts today, fittingly the day after the MTV Movie Awards, which used to be the industry’s foremost venue for premiering new Twilight trailers. I never thought I’d say this, but The Hunger Games actually makes me miss Twilight. Twilight was so dumb and so weird and it was so much fun to ridicule. The Hunger Games is full of fake-meaningful names and themes and there are just enough competing allusions that it never really adds up to anything, it just distracts you long enough to not make fun of it. And where’s the fun in that? Give me feats-of-strength abstinence sex and shirtless temptation wolves any day. You think Hunger Games is going to give us fan-made felt uteruses or a woman having to fight off a cat named Plutarch Heavensbee with her husband’s CPap machine? I doubt it. And that means we’ve all lost something, friends. We’ve lost something.

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We only have time for one take … and THIS is that take!

There was a time, about eighteen months ago, when you couldn’t swing a cat without running into someone name-checking Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” theory (believe me, I tried, the cat was not pleased). People loved that Gladwell riff, they loved it so much they actually sort of lurved it. Why? Well, it was an easy way for folks to discuss change, and why we rarely saw it coming. Which is why I’d posit that the current “normal” of Hollywood, releasing fantastically awful reboots and hyping terrifically terrible retreads, is all about to change. Red Dawn is that “tipping point,” heralding a bright new era of innovation, even as 2012′s version of Red Dawn is over there in the darkened corner, finger blasting various farm animals.

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At long last, we have the trailer for MGM’s remake of Red Dawn (directed by Bourne stunt coordinator Dan Bradley and actually shot in 2009), in which we reinvent a tiny hermit nation of starving Stalinists with a persecution complex as a massive invading force to avoid offending the Chinese (who, ironically for a Communist superpower, have too much money to risk alienating). The whole thing is in such wildly poor taste that I don’t know whether to be nauseated or impressed. All I know is that if they make it through the entire movie without calling anyone “gook” they’re full of sh*t. What’s he saying in the banner pic? “Piece of a sh*t?” Haha, okay, sure, buddy, whatever you say.

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In lieu of a regular trailer-trailer, our first look at the Red Dawn remake comes by way of an Entertainment Tonight segment with an announcer talking over the whole thing. No matter, you can still see enough of it for it to be really depressing. The film, directed by Bourne stunt coordinator Dan Bradley, which stars Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, and Josh Peck, was delayed when MGM decided to change the invading force from China to North Korea (despite the fact that a hermit nation of 25 million is significantly less scary or believable as an invading force than 1.3 billion Chinese with the world’s largest army). The irony of 2012 is that nowadays, you can’t even properly fear-monger about the communists because they have too much money.

Anyway, you can now add “paranoid delusions of being invaded by communists†” to the list of sh*t happening now that should’ve stayed in the 80s, just behind fluorescent ray bans and those high-waisted shorts that make girls’ butts look like horses. Seriously, have you seen what pants from the 80s look like recently? I saw an old picture of Hall and Oates the other day, and I swear the zipper on Oates’ acid wash denim was longer than my forearm. But I’m sure every psychotic militia group is going to be in theaters opening day for this one, so great job on that. And it’s got its own segment on Entertainment F*cking Tonight. Perfect.

† Added bonus: the commies are slant eyes now too!

As if it wasn’t bad enough that they gave him a girl’s name in The Hunger Games (“Peeta” – true story: I thought it was “Peter” for the entire movie), Josh Hutcherson was recently made to throw out the first pitch at a Cincinnati Reds as a cruel joke. Hutcherson promptly plunked the ball three feet in front of the plate and spent all night scrubbing dirt stains out of his lacy sun dress (I’m guessing). Jay Leno made Hutcherson relive the humiliation last night on his “show” that people supposedly “watch,” where Hutcherson tried to explain: “Jay, Jay, I’m an athlete,” he sputtered, “I’m a better athlete than that, I promise you!”

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