The other day Vince and I were making S’mores and chatting about life, when he pointed out that 2011 was the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War, that era in world history when everyone lived in pants-crapping fear that the U.S. and Russia were going to destroy us all. More importantly than global genocide and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, the Cold War had an undeniable impact on the movie industry, most notably in creating one of the easiest and most overused plot devices of the last 50 years.

Obviously, the Cold War gave us classics like Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and the entire James Bond franchise. It also gave us The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy’s career, as well as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and wherever else Shia LeBeouf and his grandfather Harrison Ford take us. It gave us The Manhattan Project, The Good Shepherd, Thirteen Days, Top Gun, Good Night, and Good Luck, and even Salt, which was a modern reminder of just how hilariously off-the-wall – and flat out terrible – some Cold War films were.

In fact, those are the films that I want to celebrate – the movies that both embraced the terrifying nightmare of global war and laughed in the face of four decades of silent terror. Because without them, we’d probably all be living in mountain bunkers or adapting to our tentacles.

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I’ve read the script for MGM’s Red Dawn remake, and let me tell you, probably the least offensive thing about it is the fact that the bad guys are Chinese.  Offensive to your intelligence, anyway.  In any case, because we’re all old, drippy nightgown-covered vaginas nowadays, MGM is changing the bad guys in the movie from Chinese to North Korean, thereby excising any element of integrity from the original, which was a pretty crappy movie to begin with.

Without Beijing even uttering a critical word, MGM is changing the villains in its ‘Red Dawn’ remake from Chinese to North Korean.

When MGM decided a few years ago to remake “Red Dawn,” a 1984 Cold War drama about a bunch of American farm kids repelling a Soviet invasion, the studio needed new villains, since the U.S.S.R. had collapsed in 1991. The producers substituted Chinese aggressors for the Soviets and filmed the movie in Michigan in 2009.

But potential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.

As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.

People close to the picture said the changes will cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story’s fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean. It’s impossible to eliminate all references to China, the people said, though the changes will give North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S. [LA Times]

Spending a million dollars to avoid offending a repressive Communist regime with a fictional movie?  Why, that’s EXACTLY what Ronald Reagan would’ve done!  (*strips down to American-flag speedo, shadow boxes to “Living in America”*)

Here we have the first shot of the full cast of the Red Dawn remake (thanks to DailyBlam). Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth and The Wackness‘s Josh Peck play the Eckert-brother roles Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze played in the original.  Rounding out the cast are Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Edwin Hodge, Alyssa Diaz, and– What! No Asian chick!?  That does it, I’m calling my congressman. …Congressperson.

Now that MGM seems to have their financial troubles worked out, the plan is to get this one released this year.  Making his directing debut is veteran stunt man Dan Bradley, second unit director on Green Zone, Quantum of Solace, the Bourne movies, Indiana Jones 4, etc.  This time around, the Chinese have invaded Spokane, and the script I saw was prettay, prettay cheeseball.  Er, I mean “faithful to the original.”

The original, released in 1984, written and directed by infamous hippie-hater John Milius (who inspired the Walter Sobchek character in Big Lebowski), was considered the most violent movie of its time with 134 acts of violence per hour, and was named the 15th best conservative movie of all time by the National Review.  As contemporized for modern conservatives, I’m surprised the remake doesn’t feature an invasion by Mexico.  Sure, Mexico might not have as many tanks, but have you seen how many soldiers they can pack into them?

So I got ahold of the script for the upcoming Red Dawn remake from MGM, and thought I’d try to give you a scoop on as much as I can without spoiling the whole movie.  Generally speaking, the story isn’t bad, but the dialog is a cliché-ridden mess, and a lot of the action sequences are only half written or fuzzy from a physics standpoint.  It’s hard to imagine how they’d shoot a lot of them unless they use that “cause-blur-effect” style shaky-cam editing, but considering the director did stunts on Bourne and was the second-unit director on Quantum of Solace, that’s probably exactly what they’ll do.  Other stuff:

Xenophobia!
In the original it was the Soviets invading Colorado, this time it’s the Chinese invading Spokane.  Because of tensions with Taiwan, and anger about a worldwide financial crisis caused by the U.S., and uh, because Russia doesn’t like Georgia getting accepted into NATO.  Or something.  The main thing is that Chinese people are the bad guys and a lot of them die.

Parkour!

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A reader over at CHUD snapped this spy pic from the set of the Red Dawn remake in downtown Detroit.  Which is impressive, as I would’ve assumed one would have to attempt to dress and act like a homeless person in downtown Detroit in order to blend in, and that doing something like pull out a camera is like begging to be robbed and murdered.  Anyway, the picture apparently shows the new American flag after a surprise invasion by the Chinese.  It gives me hope that this movie will be xenophobic as all hell and let us relive the glory days of cold war action movies.  Remember when Rambo went back in time and won the Vietnam war?  That was awesome.  Maybe this bit of revisionist history will stop the Chinese from being so uppity.

[full pic at CHUD]

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