Hmm...at the risk of that whole nostalgia making an older movie better than what it really was thing..I don't know that the new version is going to be better. I didn't think North Koreans had enough food to make it to Iowa*? Or is that why they are invading..to get some high fructose corn syrup?



And here..once again for those that don't really want to spend $11 to go see another crappy movie (possibly crappy) - I present the entire movie in emoticons:





































BeachAV8R


I do not know if they are invading Iowa in the movie - that was just a convenient "heartland" place I made up to fit the post..

PS - Attention film trailer directors..it is now officially time to retire Filter's "Nice Shot" song because we are tired of it. Really tired of it. Really, really, really tired of it. We know it was a nice shot. Man.

Oh, for God's sake

The *original* sucked rocks. Now they've re-made it? Does anyone at the major chains have any creativity? Is all they can do raid film vaults of bad B-list movies from the 1970s? What's next? White Lightning, anyone? Siege of Firebase Gloria? How about The Love Boat, the movie?

I think I'll give it a miss,thanks.
The emoticons version looks much better.

I like the concept of the movie and somewhat enjoyed the game Homefront. Perhaps if it were a different enemy..............say someone who could actually accomplish the task ie Russia then it would be more believable. I think if the stuff ever hit the fan like that then you'll see a lot of "Wolverines" about.

It's a crazy premise for a movie anyway.
I mean who in their right mind would invade a country where the majority (I guess) of citizens owns a firearm?
Doomed to failure from the start

I can't wait to play Homefront. Bought it on a Steam Sale for $7 or something a long time ago..and it looks like a fun game.

Red Dawn in the 80s had probably more of hit home feel to it because of the Cold War and all that. I was a military brat living on a military base at the time... I think I was in 5th grade or something. So of course we all thought it was great. I don't think any kid could have spent more time in the woods playing "war" with my buddies as much as we did. So youth and the era defined what the original Red Dawn were to me.

I'll be curious about the premise of North Korea invading the U.S. Like I said..the high fructose corn syrup seems to make the most sense. Although I read a story over the weekend that the new NK first lady has a thing for high fashion handbags. Maybe it was just a NK trip to the Mall of America that went horribly wrong.

you forgot WOLVERINESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The original had Lea Thompson! With an AK!!! That alone gives it at least 2 stars...

That's it! Time to shop around my screenplay for Lavern & Shirley: The Movie

I'm with Beach as far as the original goes.

My wife and I have deal involving Patrick Swayze movies. I'll sit thru Dirty Dancing if she'll watch Red Dawn. Neither one of us has made the first move. :P

The first one was awful. The second one cannot be much better even with a newer Brat Pack.

The remake was originally supposed to have China as the adversary, until the cat got out of the bag while the movie was in production, and the producers were forced to change everything to North Korea as a result. Which is why the movie is coming out now, and not back in 2009, when it was originally scheduled for release.

Tom Eckert: "Boys! Avenge me! Avenge me!"

Heresy!

*Ducks for cover* Actually, and whisper it softly, but in all fairness Cat is probably right. I strongly suspect that if I watched it now (as opposed to being 11 yrs old lol) I would probably come to the same conclusion. Thats why I will never watch it again. It was impressive, (albeit highly improbable) at that age though. Teenagers fending off Spetsnaz airborne commandoes and helicopter Gunships in the defence of "Freedom" and etc.

Wolverines!!!

Hmmmmmm.

"Red Dawn" did not suck when I saw it.

Dead serious, my man. The original Red Dawn had a bad premise, wooden acting, poor writing, histrionic dialogue, questionable special effects, Powers Boothe, and Patrick Swazey. The only redeeming factor was that they at least tried to use the right-for-the-time Mi-24 attack helicopter rather than faking it with a UH-1 or Jet-Ranger. The obviously-Filipino ersatz Viet-Cong in Siege of Firebase Gloria, even with their hand grenades that kept bouncing after the explosion, were more entertaining. Just one woman's opinion, for what it's worth.

I loved the first one and will see this one.

Yup, going against the grain on this one. Looks like a great action popcorn flick. I don't always need to think during a movie and sometimes I just want to be entertained.

Oh come on...the original was AWESOME!

Don't know that it needed a remake, though.

I liked the original as a kid. Watched it again with my kids a couple years ago, we liked it. It's still retarded how the cubans/russians supposedly pulled it off.

?!?!?!

Col Tanner's explanation of the strategic fight was fascinating to 15 yr old me.

I am not saying it was "The Godfather" but it was an entertaining action movie.

All that hates gonna burn you up

Keeps me warm

I liked the original. Not strong on realism, but a good saga.

And how wrong could you be with Lea Thompson and guns ?

Yep the original was good. The new one looks crappy, how would North Korea get even a platoon full of people over here? I'l skip it.

They hid one soldier inside every BBQ Grill that China shipped over that summer.

Walmart must be stopped.

No, they said the movie wasn't about the Chinese.

Whats wrong with you people? The first one is an Instant Classic! One of the best movies of all time. You don't know how many times I day dreamed during English class, just wishing the Russians the attacked so my friends and we could make our own guerilla outfit and kick the Ruskies butts! What more could a kid growing up in the 80/90's want? Awesome movie. Insulting that they are making it again, same with Total Recall. Should be a law against that.

I noticed a big omission from the original film. In the original, Cuban soldiers assisted in the Soviet invasion of the US. However in the trailer for this new film I noticed only NK soldiers! If I was Castro, I would be offended by the neglect.

Seriously man, can't we have an American play an American any more? Thor's Australian accent is struggling to bust out. This looks horrible and I am so tired of the politically correct nonsense in Hollywood that says it's only ok to show the North Koreans invading and not the Chinese which logically speaking is the real military threat to the USA. If you're gonna do an invasion movie show a believable enemy. They don't make Russia or China the enemy any more because they want their movies to not be censored over there.

And I loved the original! Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze for the absolute freakin' win! As a kid in the 80's who loved to shoot guns with his father this movie was the best.

They should have just made a sequel to the original or a remake set back in the 80's and expanded on the strategic situation that was actually more plausible and believable than this crap.

- Western Europe sold out
- NATO dissolved
- The Third World was in absolute chaos and leftist revolution was everywhere. Dominoes were falling all over the globe
- Latin American communist regimes raised big armies
- U.S. troops ordered out of Germany
- Limited nuke strikes
- Deception and Soviet sappers played a large role
- Communist spies subverted the U.S. Govt.

Way more plausible than this NK Super Weapon crap!

P.S. looks like this one is set in Seattle.

Jason

I thought the original Red Dawn film was pretty good....when I was 11.

I'm still 11 in my mind. Adulthood is a #%&*$# pain in the ass.

Jason

I think the Aussie made version The Day the War Started ? Its on cable. ( Hot looking women blowing things up in Gas Tankers and Trash Trucks in New Zealand is better then this one. I think its sad that Aussie or English Actors are playing Americans in films made in America instead of own Actors Another sad thing was Sending our athletes to the Games in
uniforms made by Chinese . Just my 2 cents.

I just checked the main cast and there are only 2 non-Americans playing Americans in the film; Hemsworth and Lucas.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234719/

"Blackhawk Down" had a lot more than 2 non-US actors playing Americans!

Oh near gawd......... Fun in 84/85. Totally stupid now. What the heck.......is threes comapny the movie next? How bout the Waltons 40 years later, THE MOVIE? GUHGHGHG

The original was pretty good IMHO, you have to remember it was made in the 80's when people thought something like this was actually possible. The film makers went through the trouble of making replicas of T-72s, ZSU-23s, BTR's, BRDM's and other Soviet Bloc hardware. And the snow battle scene between the M1s and T-72s with the A-7s and F-111s was pretty well done. This remake looks pretty...meh..I didnt see any eastern bloc hardware in the whole trailer besides some CGI AN-12s. The only redeeming things I saw were Adrianne Palicki (Tyra from Friday Night Lights) and Isabel Lucas (from The Pacific)..giggity giggity

Yeah, it hasn't stood the test of time, but then again neither has On The Beach. Some movies just have to be viewed through the lens of the time in which they were made.

The comment about A7s and F111s made me think - where were the A10s? All shot down, maybe? Powers Boothe's character was an F15 pilot, correct?

I give the makers of the original a lot of credit for going the extra mile to get good looking hardware on set. As Cat mentions, going so far as building their own "Hinds" out of Pumas, and even making their own best guess camo from B&W photos that were available of Soviet KMLK.

They didn't go the easy/much cheaper route and just paint red stars on whatever the national guard would let them use for filming.

You know the thing that impressed me about the original Red Dawn - remember the scene when they are the gas station/outdoors store with the pickup truck. Then you see an explosion in the background..and the director actually thought to make sure the sound took a second or two to reach the truck.

Are you kidding me??? This is awesome! Red Dawn was the only movie I went to see in the theater TWICE when it came out!

Seeing that I'm about the same age as the "brat pack" of the 80s, as an early teen when this was new, and being smack dab in the middle of the Cold War, this was what teenaged boys dreamed of. Defending your home and shouting WOLVERINES! I can't count how many times my friends and I would take our toy guns into the woods, camp out, and become (play) Wolverines for a weekend.

Yeah, it's a bit corny, but it was a big part of my childhood, and the trailer looks pretty kick ass to me.

I even sat and watched the entire movie about a week ago on TV again.

When you see the numbers for this new movie you'll know that I was one who bought a ticket.

As others have pointed out in this thread, I think the biggest problem with this remake is that the premise is so completely unbelievable and has an adversary which in real life would have absolutely no way of pulling off such an invasion. Even with all of the b movie cheese, at least the original film had a plausible premise.

LOL, this made me laugh, the rest of the world has been saying the exact same thing about American actors and their hash job of everyone elses accent for years!
Regarding the movie The Day the War Began, yeah it's not too bad in a lightweight sort of way, there is a whole series of books, and i will be interested to see the sequel when it comes out next year. the whole PC thing is crap, especially in the case of a film portraying an historical event, example Guy Gibson's dogs name in Dam Busters, sounds like a stink was made over that, but hey the dogs name was what it was, get over it PC Police!

Craig

So...nobody could possibly some day employ some sort of uber EMP bomb to knock out the grid, including computers, power, weapons systems and invade the USA? Maybe like the Korean War the Chinese are helping? The original film had a less likely scenario IMO...Cubans and Ruskies just dropped into Colorado (?) after a few nukes on the major cities.

Of course they took out China too...

Are you trying to tell us that Thor's an American?

LOL, good point. He should play an American with a Norse God accent...from Australia.

I was only about 5 when the original came out, so I ended up seeing it about 10-12 years later. I didn't really like it very much. I enjoyed the idea of the movie, just not the execution. It definitely could have some used some better writing and acting.

The North Koreans as an enemy worked better in "Tomorrow When the War Began", but they were just generic "Asians" and never identified specifically. Could have been Chinese, or a combo.

Probably would have preferred a remake using the original Russians as enemies again. I think I could believe that a bit more than North Koreans.

This film's conceit is no less absurd than the first, you may as well think of Red Dawn in a similar class as Rambo
rather than a thinking man's thriller. In that respect, the film 's major conceit simply sets up the audience for at
once for the usual bombastic messages that gets people feeling patriotic- the Soviets could have produced similar
shallow propaganda for consumption.

I seem to recall that some of the real world ideas for Red Dawn came from certain pundits and political
theorists without military backgrounds. These people promoted the belief that Latin America was in danger
of falling one by one, and sooner or later you'd have a Mexican-Marxist state that threatened the U.S. Just the ideas of
people who get paid to conjure up these scenarios from think tanks.

The Red Army was always primarily a land power designed to fight and win on a nuclear battlefield on a single
contiguous land mass, that is, Eurasia, before NATO could win the Battle of the Atlantic and turn the corner on the invasion of Europe. In no way did the Soviets
preoccupy themselves with conquering the U.S. They had neither the lift capability to transfer that much men and
equipment (undetected, no less), and. therefore by extension, nor the ability to maintain supply lines that far.

Even if they were to conduct an invasion like that, it couldn't have been a complete strategic surprise through
backdoor like it was shown in the opening scenes. Weeks or months of fighting and detection would have preceded it.

I loved that part when Charlie Sheen (I think) asks, "What did you fly, Colonel?"

"I was an Eagle driver, kid."

Oh man, that was so killer.

Kind of funny in a way how most folks are shooting down this movie because "it could never happen".

Well, I'm pretty sure Transformers aren't living under the ocean or on the moon...

Batman can't fly with some sort of rigid winged cape...

And these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Actually I believe that Soviets never made such a shallow propaganda. Usually its some crazy CIA guy who wants to start the war, and Soviets save the world. Sure its propaganda but not that shallow as Red Dawn.

That aside, I don't get whats the problem with the movie? Looks like a nice action movie.

The concept behind the original movie was truly great, the execution sucked IMO. Hopefully this one will be better.

I think the premise was what got me, too.

I can remember thinking at the time, "Cubans invading the U.S.? Like, ohmigod, what-ever. I'm so very sure."

Yeah, in 1984 I was that gal with the parachute pants, the pixie haircut (never could get big hair right so I cut it short), waay too much eye makeup, and a generous helping of Valspeak and sarcasm. It used to drive my boy-toy (haha!) bananas.

And, AK or not, I thought Lea Thompson was like a total skank, for sure.

What!?

I had to sit through what felt like 20 hours of "Some Kind of Wonderful" because my girlfriend said that there was a hot locker room scene with Lea in it.

Gah that movie sucked...

Not trying to be pedantic but the difference with films like Transformers and Batman is that they are scifi and comic book genres so the expectation for realism isn't there and it isn't required. I think most of us here who watch an action/military themed movie expect a reasonable amount of realism.

Sit through "All the Right Moves" and you won't be disappointed.

I think for me the sticking point will be that I've read every book about North Korea I can get my hands on (I took an interest since I lived in Seoul for a couple years)...so I have a pretty good idea of what they are about. It would have been a much more believable premise with China as the adversary or even a resurgent Russia (they find a zillion barrels of oil in their backyard or something and suddenly are flush with cash to bring back their military).

I'll still go see it..

It WAS China originally. They re-did the entire film to CGI the NKs in instead. They didn't want to piss off the Chinese market.

[/url] [url=http://screenrant.com/red-dawn-villains-china-north-korea-schrad-106177/]

I Hope they do a sequel to Tomorrow when the War began. It was on the light side but a fun flick. One of the best Pilot to enemy quotes that I ever heard of was real life. During one of the Arab Wars. A enemy ground controler on the same frek said Enemy Aircraft, you are invading our airspace depart or we will send intercept fighters. The Pilots replied :
Roger, I can Wait.

Don't bother. It's way too short and was done with anticipation of a sequel (developer went out of business). It's a rail shooter with lots of "keep spawning bad guys until you move forward to the next section" BS.

I pre-ordered it as it looked like it would be really cool but it's not even worth the $7 you paid for it let alone the 10-20 hours you'll waste on it.

it's official.....Hollywood has died

Free internet porn to have been invented?

Then you read Red Phoenix. Excellent book. I read it when I was a grunt at Camp Casey in 1989.

Oooooohhh, Camp Casey.

Yep.. I've been to Camp Casey. I wonder if it has changed much since 1980-2..? I think I even saw a movie there when I was up there with my Dad. It was this tiny, tiny Quonset hut with a screen about 9 x 6' or something. I think there were 30 seats in there?

The best part was on "Take Your Son To Work Day" for the elementary school. Dad took me up to the DMZ where he was supervising the building of a bunker. It was really wild to look across the DMZ with binos and see the North Korean flags and you could even here some marshal type music coming over the loud speakers. Very impressive. And the ride itself was pretty cool too. I remember winding up the side of a mountain behind a deuce and a half (we were in a Jeep) and the road was only as wide as the vehicles. On both sides were mine fields. Again..quite the impression on a 10 year old.

If you ever have a chance..a great book to read about North and South Korea and why they are what they are is "The Two Koreas" by Oberdorfer: Amazon Link.. Brilliant book. I exchanged e-mails with the author and hoped he updated it with ever more recent material. Fascinating stuff..

BeachAV8R

I have very fond memories of TDC and the western corridor!



Bullet

Touche. Touche.

Looks like an absolute stinker of a movie.

Beach.

I'm sure it's changed since I was there in 89. We had a full size theater right next to the gym and Burger King, about a mile up from the main gate towards Division HQ. My barracks was about a 5 minute walk from BK. Near the main gate was a little strip mall of sorts with a decent size PX and food court.

I've heard that Americans don't even patrol the Z anymore, except for the JSA guys.

North Korea could probably pull off an effective internal attack in the U.S. using moles and infiltrated special forces. Even few hundred personel would probably be enough to cause a level of havoc somewhere between the Mumbai attack and Tet '68 in intensity.

Anyway, no sense in judging the original now, it fit the spirit of its era well enough.

I was about 15 miles down the road from you, at Camp Essayons (June 89-90.) We had to go about 5 miles to either Camp Red Cloud or Camp Stanley for a movie theater, and IIRC the BK at Casey was the closest one to us.

Why would the Chinese fight for something they get handed over on a silver platter anyway???

It may not always be that way. One day China may be in the same situation most of the West is in now.

Camp Laguardia '90- '91.....Camp Red Cloud north/west

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=37.745132&lon=127.039247&z=15&l=0&m=b

Don't think for a minute the average American appreciates being sold out.

Spent a LOT of time in the bars outside LaGuardia! Staggered back to Essayons quite a few times, too LOL.

The American consumer sure acts that way though.

I was at Camp Casey last year.

First time I was at Camp Casey/Hovey and Area 1 was in 1998 (right after Camp Casey/Hovey got flooded out). 13 years later and it's changed a lot. The Burger King has moved away from the theatre. The "tiger face" tank is no longer there in front of 1st Tank. TDC has grown a bit and you'll find no Korean juicy girls anymore in the bars (only Philipinos). Big railway station right in the middle of the ville. Most of the old bars are still there and even the hobby shop. 4P3 and Garryowen are closed. CRC is still there. Rod Range has been renovated and Nightmare Range looks good. It's amazing what a decade will do to an area.

I was so pissed ,one night on CQ and I tripped into a turtle trap, almost a year staggering back from TDC never hit one. Stone cold sober I trip into one...I still , I think have photo's of Casey's airfield from my hooche.




Bullet

How can a movie suck, but evoke such passion of WOLVERINE!!!

That scene where he shot his traitor friend was pretty intense...

I bet that's the scene that gets cut out, or changed so that they let the traitor live and then redeem himself.

The original would be considered too intense for today's gutless PC censors.

If this film were made before the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, or if it weren't film noir but a classic Hollywood picture, it would have been PC for its day- no swearing or cursing, no blood or amputated limbs, no women and children killed, and the archetype John Wayne would have never executed anyone- in those films, good guys were unambiguously white, and bad guys were un-mistakenly black. To execute even an enemy would have never of happened, unarmed or captured enemies would be dispatched by some ironic cause or maybe by one of their own. The technical aspects of Red Dawn aren't commendable or anything, but at least the characters show more of an array of human motivations- rather than just simply rah-rah-rah schlock, the characters start showing more complex or corruptible dimensions of character.

The military strategy doesn't make any sense- by the film's own plot development, the Soviets essentially trap themselves in a corridor of the American Midwest, unwilling to commit further as 'both sides agree to forgo any use of nuclear weapons.'

The Soviets would have certainly used weapons of mass destruction in Western Europe- they had huge stockpiles of chemical and gas warheads and tactical nuclear weapons, which were to them not necessarily a bogeyman, but just another tool to paste entire gridsquares and open up gaps for the armor to roll through.

If this were a 'proper' story, it would have been more intense than any film has really attempted.

Unlike WW2 films, you would follow grunts as they have been through battles together, as they get on, get wounded, are taken off the line, you would get to know them, lose some, get attached to others, grow to dislike others, and so forth.

WW3 would have probably looked much different than this- instead of years, the war would have been over in days or weeks. Battles themselves would be exceedingly more violent than WW2 standards, the density of tanks and fighting vehicles per kilometer would have been far and away incomparable to anything before then, events would be resolved in a much different concept of time and space.