Thankfully Canada (America's Hat) remains neutral.

(Corrected and complete post. Title got cut short before.)

By the way, my political beliefs notwithstanding, you offered nothing else to suggest whether or not you think a film like this one will fly in 2008 given the strange political undercurrent... so until you do, let's just call your post a troll and we'll move on with our lives. S'okay? S'alright.

And cue self-rightous jingolistic blustering from Cygnus or some other wingnut in 5,4,3,..

M. Night, I'll expect a phone call and a residual check. You're welcome.

Swayze and Howell were fine, so were Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson (the rest of "The Wolverines" gave awful movie-of-the-week type performances.)

Most of the parts were very underwritten and provided no real link for the audience to care about. The script (and the directing and the editing) even managed to waste Harry Dean Stanton as Swayze and Sheens' father. This is one remake I don't mind hearing about. The original left a lot of room for improvement.

http://www.sundayherald.com/in ternational/shinternational/di splay.var.2278991.0.0.php

Be sure to reply to this with something "witty" and pithy though. I'd hate for you to not have had the last word on the subject. Maybe you can even wait until this thread gets to the bottom of the page and THEN reply. That'd be boss and you wouldn't have to worry about somebody calling you out for being a troll again.

First, Amerika WAS kick ass.

Second, I agree that a remake just isn't going to work. Russia's making a comeback and China's a military threat, but not for invading us... but Americans aren't afraid of them. There's no one country anyone's afraid of being invaded from, so how would this work unless like others suggested it was taken under an opposite angle where we were the invaders (which I can see hollywood doing). Kudos to the guy who said make'm Canadians invaded by America, but you don't find out til the end :) It wouldn't be very realistic though unfortunately it's not like Canada is JUST like the US.

Last, the ignorance is just beyond words from the left in this thread.... red dawn wasn't jingoistic or fear mongering. The USSR was an actual, real threat to us and the scenario presented was nowhere near out of the realm of possibility. I fear for the country when the people of 'hope' win only to realize there are actual threats in the world and preparing or acting against them isn't 'cowing people' through fear.

Best coming-of-age movie ever. And absolutely not jingoistic (by John Milius standards, I mean). The Ron O'Neal character truly gives the movie a moral added value, and some kind of anti-war stance much more powerful than any long speech.

They could attack us.

But now, there's nothing comparable. The only countries with populations and technology up to the task are China and India, neither of whom would really want anything to do with us. (They're quite happy with us being fat and complacent consumers of their goods and services, I expect.)

And no terrorist threat would make any sense. The most any terrorist-favoring state could manage here might be to take over a city or two, and even that would be with the threat of a nuke, not land forces. There's just no way to make this work.

And if you do a period remake, set in the 80s, that will lose all the emotional context that the original one had. To those who lived through those times, the USSR now seems like an almost laughably deflated nemesis, and to those who didn't, it'd be a purely intellectual effort to imagine we could be threatened that way.

We're just now getting to the end of 8 years of apocalyptic non-fiction--what use is there for a film like this?

(Cut to scene 2)

Scene 2: An overweight white guy and his overweight family drive down the superhighway in their massive 10mpg (pickup/Hummer/SUV), listening to Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity, and cursing those damned immigrants/Democrats/homosexua ls for the way they're destroying America. On the way home from their mega-church, they stop at Wal-Mart to pick up 30 cubic feet of Chinese-made goods.

The end.

Besides here's something to consider when you lightly dismiss Dobbs (and other peoples) "invasion" viewpoint...

Right now we have 15 million ILLEGAL aliens in the country, mostly from Mexico and South America. Several studies estimate that in the next 10 years, even at a conservative level, that number will literally more than double to a whopping 30-35 million. To put that into perspective, the whole freakin' population of Mexico AS A COUNTRY is only 90 million -- so you're talking about ONE THIRD of Mexico deciding it wants to just move across the border and plop itself into the U.S.

That's a pretty fucking big number. So no matter what side of the aisle you are on regarding immigration, American taxpayers had better be bracing their checkbooks for the day when those same numbers of people start to demand full social services coverage....

The funny thing about INVASION USA...even as a cheaper action flick...is that it still holds up better than the crappy low to mid-range action flicks of today. Part of that is because they recognized back then that you really do need a "star" in the lead, and Norris certainly had his own big fan base and charisma in his prime. But movies like INVASION USA also always came with a great story hook that got your blood going and made you pump your fist. You'd be sitting there watching him fight Rostoff (the main villain) and be saying "Give it to that Russian bastard, Chuck! Screw the pistol...screw the machine gun...they're too good for this prick! What's that? You're gonna use the rocket launcher and blow his commie asses out the window! You the man, Chuck! Go for it!"

Ahh, they don't make great action exploitation flicks like INVASION USA anymore...

WORLD WAR III with Rock Hudson was about Russians invading and seizing the Alaskan pipeline and threatening to blow it up unless the U.S. restored full grain shipments to the Soviet Union since they were having drastic food shortages. What I remember most about WORLD WAR III is that as the movie plays out, Rock Hudson (as the President) has to keep deciding if what level of Defcon and military readiness he wants to ratchet up to. By the end of the movie, I remember being so worked up I was ready to push the button myself!

AMERIKA was the same way. As a miniseries, it got your blood going with the idea of the Russians taking over America, and it built to the point where Kris Kristofferson finally leads a revolt...which then has a certain ending that I won't spoil here. I remember liking AMERIKA, but the twist ending really was truly shitty. They clearly put it on thinking it made the strongest statement, but it was a fucked up ending for sure...

Not to mention, in the digital age of world markets and trading, even if China wanted to call in some of its loans on a large scale to cause trouble, that would tumble the dollar for sure -- but like falling dominoes it would most definitely cause repercussions on the value of other currencies around the world. Which means at that point EVERYONE would get pissed at the Chinese and want to bomb them (and some probably would), which in turn would now tumble THEIR economy in return.

Economics really doesn't work. The only thing that makes sense is wanting something you can PHYSICALLY take. For example, I could see the Chinese wanting to invade for grain given severe crop shortages that they are currently experiencing (which by the way ARE projected to cause serious problems down the road)...

http://tinyurl.com/5sk964

I'm an admirer of John Milius as a brilliant screenwriter, even I would hang out with him at a dive, but he's a bat-shit right-wing nut (not exercise of gun rights, I completely support 2nd Amendment) whose paranoia gets him. Perhaps he's sort of a Neoconservative lunatic with unabashed jingoism. Maybe he woke up and saw how execrably stupid Bush-Cheney administration is and repented to get rid of Reaganesque cult-think.

Not that I like 'commie socialist' Democratic politics, just that screaming about "Russians are coming" fantasy board game invasion of America is borderline paranoia. There's a policy of nuclear deterrence which worked that led to exorbitantly expensive tax-subsidized arms race between USSR and USA that partly led to the USSR's 1991 collapse and dissolution, at the cost of approximately 3 trillion dollars on a bill stuck to taxpayers left by Reagan-Bush administration. Is it worth that much compromising America with further deficits and national debt? George W. Bush beat Reagan with the biggest tax waste in US history with wars started on big, impeachable lies and rampant corruption & fraud (where's 2.3 trillion dollars that disappeared from the Pentagon budget preceding 9/11? No shit, google "Rumsfeld 2.3 trillion missing".

And now with the remake of Red Dawn in consideration, forget China. PRC is our friend, even help float USA by financing close to 2 billion dollars daily. And what do we Americans have in return? Slavery to Chinese financial system with over 1 trillion dollars in their govt bank accounts while threatening to push the "nuclear option" of dollar sell if America fuck up overseas that piss off PRC, like invading Iran. China don't like the fact that US Dollar is rapidly depreciating so they are watching US govt's moves closely to make state finance affair decision, regardless of US's say like Congressional complaint about trade currency valuation in fixed foreign exchange between Yuan and USD.

Demonizing Islamic Republic of Iran as an adversary is a good idea in terms of pure jingoistic propaganda conjured up by bat-shit Neoconservative morons. Is anyone famous right-wing left in Hollywood besides Ron Silver and James Woods? Even Neoliberal that share Neocon ideology by advocating American military-economic domination of the world that can be achieved by duping the brainwashed masses with Orwellian "Two Minute Hate" propaganda in facilitating "problem, reaction, solution" that will prove so regressive in FUBAR policies that it will precipitate the fall of the United States Empire?

Red Dawn, while I never saw it in full, sounds like an outrageous example of right-wing paranoia typical of Reaganesque Cold War policy (the other obvious example is Rambo: First Blood Part II), which serve as perfect American propaganda designed to bamboozle the gullible into surrendering their thinking brains and get on with jingo program. It worked in the 80's, why not try in this dawn of the 21st century? Bruckheimer/Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down is perfect propaganda, edited on the suggestion of Neocon White House cabinet members serving as propagandists (Rumsfeld) and the Pentagon staff. The awfully lame-ass CGI shitfest "300" is a fine example of Fascist Art on par with Triumph of the Will (google 'Movie review of "300": Exemplary showcase in Fascist Art'; I wrote the review).

Bring it on and we will make sure the propaganda effort fail spectacularly. Do Red Dawn re-make with Iran/Syria as the bad guys and the world will LMAO at USA as the dumb brutes in imitating Nazis.

Again, the memory was previously happily burying this one...

The Russians invade on what they think are orders from on high, only it turns out to be the stripper chick's 10 year old brother, playing what he thinks is an online RTS - he's playing Russia, and he's kicking America's ass - UNTIL his troops land in Hicksville, Tennessee...

Like I try to explain to people... a Government ISN'T a country... its merely an occupying force. The difference is some people choose their occupying force, and others don't.

Huge Weaving knows what he's talking about... "People should't be afraid of their governments... GOVERNMENTS should be afraid of their people".

Because the CCP consists of Chinese people, the population don't see that actually the Japanese invasion (and oh do they still quack on about that) and the rise of the Commies are not very different. Neither were elected. My God, this country is frustrating.

To be honest, remaking a Swayze picture (which seems to be the trend recently) is only a good idea if you can get Swayze to reprise his role, or appear in some form. Donnie Darko 2: Swazye Kruger. Point Break 2: 100% pure Swayze.

Then other people get anxious when you imply criticism of their object of worship, the nation-state.