Red Dawn Remake...Please Do Not!

Remaking "Red Dawn," a film that portrays the then very real concerns of Soviet preemptive attack, would be rather easy in the Post-9/11 world. The media has served to feed the American citizenry with a continuous and ostensibly incredulous stream of bull-shit. Hollywood has capitalized on the trend and produced movies depicting Islamic terrorists demolishing large structures and authors have banked on the aforementioned tragedy by convincing us that America's demise is imminent.

The corny and rather redneck scenarios that interplay in "Red Dawn," a movie that depicts the unlikely invasion of Soviet trips into small-town America via means of parachutes, could be vastly improved upon. I could not help but internally chuckle as I observed the ridiculous escape of a few citizens and their safety from the occupying force.

It has been an all-too-popular and slovenly production trend to portray the physical invasion of an occupying national military. Our increasingly globalizing society has reiterated that future terrorist attacks will likely aim to detriment and destroy technological and intellectual capital, rather than, to conspicuously target exceedingly tall skyscrapers. Said attacks entail the type of sophistication only made recently available in the twenty-first century and would significantly cripple the day-to-day financial, physical and infrastructure operations of America.

Producing a cerebral film about the catastrophic, terrorist-provoked explosion of America's technological, energy and infrastructure grid would be undoubtedly difficult to attract the dollars and attention span of a nation largely obsessed with seeing how many pounds, dollars and 15 minutes of fame their fellow citizens can attain by participating in mindless reality programs.

The time has come, however, when the true effects of our disproportionately powered tech economy and an attack on it should be elucidated. Think about the aftermath. ATM's would not function, stop lights would cease to provide adequate protection against the insanity of our signal controlled traffic, energy facilities would be unable to generate power, airlines would be without direction, and Blackberry and iPhone consumers across the country would protest and angrily bitch about the dysfunction of it all. The film of technological disaster could illustrate the danger, disillusionment, and humor that a situation of such a magnitude could inspire.

In the interest of further creative liberties, however, the attack would need to be depicted as transpiring under the watch of the previous administration. The current president's anticipatory and contingency operations could potentially dull the imagery, by quelling the situation with strategy and intelligent insight.

Corey Scott-Vincent-William Dutra

Remaking Red [Yawn]...Dawn

As kitschy, ridiculous and dated as the film Red Dawn is, the point of the film does not get lost through bad haircuts and Soviet fears. The very real fear of waking up one day and having everything around you reversed, is a fear that has been with mankind ever since two rival societies decided to vilify each other, an attribute of humanity that I believe has been with us for thousands of years. Because a quality of mankind is to distrust others, and to allow our imaginations to take us to the worst possible conclusions, I don’t think that remaking Red Dawn in a post 9/11 world would be too difficult.

What I would do to remake the film is to have a series of dirty bombs detonate in major U.S. cities, causing extreme panic and governmental breakdown. In the aftermath of this, the Chinese, Saudi Arabia and Iran, would invade the United States from the coasts. The U.S. government would have to operate from Chicago, as the survivors would reside in the Midwestern United States from Utah to Ohio. For the remake of Red Dawn, most of the battle scenes could remain similar, hell we could even keep the corny haircuts, as most of the people in the Midwest haven’t really changed in the last 20+ years, we just have “the google” now, and our fears have been shifted from Soviets to “Islamofascists”.

It would be really easy to pray off the fears of Americans and remake this movie from a “post 9/11” stand. The only thing that has changed since the 1980s is that the systems of media have become even better at inspiring a complete and total fear in the hearts of the masses. So by playing off these fears, and our given absolute trust/”attempt at contempt with ‘mainstream’ media” we can create a world within Red Dawn that realistically appeals to people fears. The biggest effort of the new Red Dawn would be to avoid turning the film into a hate-piece against Islam, as most Americans already have a distrust of Islam and this movie, in the “post 9/11 world” would serve to that distrust. However, if we were to involve the original production crew, they probably wouldn’t give two shits about how Islam is portrayed, and would do whatever it takes to get the most tickets sold.

The way to sell the most tickets would be to do what the original film did, to rely upon the story as an über-nationalistic mouthpiece, talk about “courage”, and show that the Americans who courageously thought with their gut were able to take back the USA from those goddamned Ruskies, but now we replace Ruskies with “towel-heads”. Divide and conquer, inspire with-us or against-us attitudes and you’ll get your $200 million back in no time.

Jack Gustafson

Thinking the Unthinkable

Five Unthinkables for the political world of 2009:

1: A military coup will overthrow and ascend to power in the United States.

2: The European Union will dissolve as a result of Islamic extremists assuming power in Great Britain and France.

3: Nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran.

4: Turkey invades Northern Iraq as a result of Kurdish fighters detonating dirty bombs in Istanbul.

5: After failed peace talks between Japan and North Korea, North Korea sends missiles toward Seoul and Tokyo, followed by North Korean and Chinese ground troops fully invading Japan and South Korea.

Jack Gustafson