Made in 1984 during the closing years of the Cold War, John Milius Red Dawn tells the story of a group of American high-school students engaged in geurilla warfare against an invading Soviet army. Two and a half decades later, Hollywood decided it was time for a remake, only this time with contemporary Chinese forces as the outside aggressor. Filmed in 2009, the completed movie has been in limbo for some time due to MGMs financial difficulties, with a release date tentatively scheduled for some point in late 2011. However, before any of us get to see the film, it seems like there’s a little bit more tweaking to be done. Specifically, after concerns arose that depicting a hostile China would damage the movies box office take in that highly profitable market, MGM have decided to digitally alter the film in order to change the invading forces from Chinese to North Korean.
Financially and politically, this does seem like quite a smart move. In the time since the Red Dawn remake was conceived, China has become an increasingly important market for American films – in 2010 China was Hollywood’s fifth biggest non-domestic market, earning over $1.5 billion in revenue despite government restrictions that limit the number of non-Chinese releases to a mere twenty films. The Red Dawn remake has already received negative attention in China following script leaks, which lead the Chinese press to accuse the film of “demonizing” China. By comparison, North Korea is a closed economy that already has a radically anti-Western stance, and as such MGM has much less to lose by depicting them as an enemy.
According to the Los Angeles Times, changes to the film will mostly include digitally altering Chinese flags and insignias to those of the North Korean military, as well as alterations to some dialogue and reshooting the opening scene.
I’ve got to say, this doesn’t strike me as a particularly good indicator of the quality of the film. If the villains are so interchangeable, one can hardly imagine that the movie has any kind of political insight or serious depth. Not that we should have been expecting that anyway; let’s not forget that at the time of the originals release, the Guinness Book of World Records called it the most violent film ever made.
The remake stars Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Isabel Lucas and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and was directed by Dan Bradley (who previously worked as a stunt coordinator on the Spider-Man and Bourne films).
