Movies Rebooting the 1980's Including Red Dawn

LOS ANGELES - "Clash of the Titans" writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are understandably excited about their movie arriving in theaters Friday. But if you really want to get them going, mention the "Red Dawn" remake coming later this year.

"I love that movie," Hay says of the 1984 Cold War adventure flick where Colorado high school students use guerrilla warfare to stave off a Soviet invasion of America. "Everyone from my generation loves 'Red Dawn.' It's really ripe for a remake."

These days, it seems any movie that came out during the 1980s is ripe for a remake. "Clash of the Titans" and "Red Dawn" are but two of a significant number of '80s-related films Hollywood will bring to theaters in coming months.

Joining their ranks are Disney's mega-budget "Tron" sequel starring Jeff Bridges; reboots of "The Karate Kid," "Predator" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchises; a follow-up to Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and the Sylvester Stallone-directed "The Expendables"; an '80s-style, men-on-a-mission movie teaming Stallone with other action stars of his vintage.

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"I remember it being a kind of forced Prozac happy time without the Prozac," Cusack says. "We were sort of like optimism by martial law. There were jumbotrons of Ronald Reagan everywhere. There were Dr. Pepper people dancing. There was this militant patriotism, nationalism, faux spirituality to it. I look back on it as an intense, dark decade."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36096993/ns/entertainment-movies/



Red Dawn, oh boy the militias are drooling. Ok, I confess I always kind of enjoyed it too.

Of course AZ never left the 80's so I'm not sure how many will notice.

But I really think that's because John Milius is a talented director who managed to tell a gripping tale of invasion and resistance in addition to making a right wing propaganda film. As I understand it, the remake will feature the Chinese as the dastardly invaders.

Holy Cold War Batman!

look forward to the remake as well.

Gonna be hard to portray the Chinese as "red", however, given that they have embraced unfettered free-market capitalism so whole-heartedly.......

Of course, they can probably get knock-offs of our military gear at budget prices. :3

I appreciate how it showed the kids just sort of falling into being a resistance, rather than being militia types geared up from the git go. How their battles, important as they were to the kids, were just minor distractions to the enemy - as shown by the tank battle that they got caught up in. And how only, what, two of the group survived? The Nicaraguan commandant who wrote love letters home, who had been a resistance fighter himself in his youth, related better to the Wolverines than the Russians he was fighting for.

There is a lot more depth in that than most us lefties give it credit for.

Milius, as a director, is a little right wing and hawkish, but I've always thought he had a very interesting take on war and the complexities of those caught up in it. His characters are rarely dry and shallow, but usually have amazing depth to them. They have loves, hopes, dreams, and often deep wounds from the scars of what they've experienced. You care a lot about the kids in Red Dawn, and in the end, when the enemy commander lets the wounded Jed go carrying his dead brother away, you end up having enormous sympathy and compassion for him too.

Those aren't the kinds of things that I normally get from your usual right wing brainless shoot 'em up.

RED DAWN.. John Milius who wrote the original is a well know right winger in Hollywood. It's hard for me to comprehend how someone could write something as insanely brilliant as Apocalypse Now and then move on to one of the stupidest movies ever made. I mean new levels of dumb penetrated that script. Not to mention the movie was full of paranoid ideas, really really bad acting, and ham handed camera work.

AVENGE ME!!! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

It's horrible. Take those scenes out and it's one fantastic movie though.

Not sure why directors do that. It was one of the greatest films ever made, there was no reason to screw with it.

The only movie I think that truly benefitted from a "directors cut" was the LOTR trilogy.

It's not a work of entirely original authorship, which may explain the unevenness of the man's output.

I thought 'Red Dawn' was one of the most ignorant movies I have ever seen, topped only by 'Moonwalker'. This is one remake I will be avoiding.

only this time we're being invaded by Mexico.

Sucks on toast

Yes, I'm serious.

It was cheesy as hell, but it was fun to listen to.

not only a pretty dumb movie, but incredibly predictable.

Not anything I would want to see remade or would watch if it was, but that is my opinion and everyone has their tastes.

Damn. Now I'll HAVE to see it.

it's much funnier than if you haven't. I think the project was basically John sitting up one night thinking what would it be like to make one of those movies I made in the 1980s only now I'm 40...
Ski Patrol, fear of Russians, big concert scene, crazy side kick, lots of drugs, quick shots of breasts... The movie was very funny.

the soviet / america business council (social club)..

The Commies invade the US. Do they attack Washington? New York? LA? Pearl Harbor?

No, they attack a bunch of high school shitkickers in the middle of nowhere USA.

They NUKED NY and Washington, and drove their armies up the midwest to split the country in half - the great plains is wonderful terrain for armored movement. So, yes, they'd roll through a lot of little shit-kicker towns from Texas to North Dakota. And the resistance groups would fall back and hide in the mountains.

Kind of like Afghanistan.

The rest of those movies are remakes/reboots.

And I like the premise of Wall Street because it's about the time frame that Gekko is released from Prison for what he did back in the 80s. So why lump it in with those other lame excuses?

"Predators" actually looks like a pretty good reboot, though.

And I really enjoyed the other horror reimaginings - Friday the 13th, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc...

The movie going audience has changed a bit since then. This year's top movie (Avatar) was about natives fighting off a dominant invading military using local customs, plucky young warriors, and a deep understanding of the land...

Waitasecond...

It's a play on Ronald Reagan's big proto-teabag applause line, "The most frightening words in the english language are, "We're from the government... and we're here to help you."

Don't bother.

One sentence review.....

They should have just 3-D rendered the original.

Longer review.......

Let me get this rant out of the way, the free screening I went to was a 3-D presentation of the film, and in true modern free screening tradition, they scanned everyone before letting them in and made everybody put their cell phones with cameras (now days, that means ALL cell phones) back in their cars, all to discourage taping of the film. Now, did I mention that this film was in 3-D? that means that for the most part, if you are not watching this thing with 3-D glasses, it's total shit. Why the hell do they think someone wants to tape this version? Has some genius invented a 3-D home camera or maybe they'll put 3-D glasses over the lens of their camera, or maybe they just shoot it and hope someone will buy their pirated version to see it on TVshotinshaky"Ihopetheydon'tcatchme"cam with 3-D glasses? What the hell was the point? And in all honesty, this movie was made for regular screening, not 3-D. I was constantly removing my glasses hoping to maybe see the incredible background scenery better, but instead saw the same blur that was obviously the fault of bad 3-D upscaling. It's like all those "Hi-Def" upscaled films on Blu-ray where the only thing magnified are the main actors and everything else looks like it was shot through gauze.

As for the film itself, as a remake it's a terrible film. They changed it so much, it barely resembles the original. Remember when they remade films, they tried to stay within the confines of the original plot and had "cameos" of former actors in the film as a sly wink to the audience? Not this piece of shit. Remember how the original was about how Perseus bravely did everything for some sweet poontang while the Gods casually looked on and tried to help/hinder our horny hero? Well now it's been turned into a cheesy revenge flick where everyone just wants to kill somebody else be it a man/god, god/god, god/demi-god, demi-god/god, man/man, man/creature, creature/man, demi-god/creature, man/woman(are you keeping track?). As for cameos, the only good one comes when we see a robotic owl for about 10-seconds being treated like it was some sort of useless prop instead of a miracle of god/mechanical engineering.

Even as a stand alone film, this thing sucks. If you thought Harry Hamlin was a wooden actor, you ain't seen nothin' yet until you see Sam Worthington once again barely move a muscle on his face while reciting dialog. The only reason this guy gets acting gigs is that all casting directors are gay and he gives the best ass-fuck/blow jobs in the biz, cause it's certainly not acting talent. When a 10-second robot owl cameo shows more emotion in it's face then the lead character, your movie's in trouble.

So anyway, the movie goes like this, baby and mother are discovered by an ugly fisherman in a sarcophogus in the ocean. Somehow the mother decides the ugly fisherman is the man for her and actually stays with him on his one-man operated huge-ass fishing boat. The boy is Perseus, who grows into adulthood in 2 minutes while the mother and fisherman miraculously stay the same age(no explanation is given for this). So the boat is sailing into a port located next to a huge-ass cliff where a 20 story stone statue of Zeus(Liam Neeson) is being destroyed by pulling it down with rope into the bay where it capsizes the boat. Hades(Ralph Fiennes) comes down and kills all the soldiers who destroyed the statue while the boat sinks in the ocean with Perseus, swimming faster than a sinking boat, fails to rescue his family. He surfaces in time to see Hades and blame him for everything and swears vengeance(never mind it was the soldiers, not the Gods that killed his "family").

Hades then shows up at a "we want to kill the Gods" palace party where Princess Andromeda is proclaimed hotter than the Gods by her mother who is promptly killed by Hades and then Hades pronounces that Phil(The Kraken) will kill everyone if they don't sacrifice Andromeda. Perseus shows up with the surviving soldiers and Hades kicks their asses until he sees Perseus and says to everyone "This dude's the son of Zeus and can kill Phil(the Kraken)" and takes off. So the freshly widowed(and apparently not giving a shit about it) King puts together a group consisting of soldiers and Perseus to go find the witches to ask how to kill Phil(the Kraken) because even though they've never seen Phil(the Kraken) before, they all know he's a bad-ass.

Hades then creates Calibos from Perseus' other step-dad(not the fisherman, but another dude) and tells him to kill Perseus. Calibos then gets in a fight with Perseus and the soldiers and two monster hunters and IO(hot immortal chick who loves Perseus and says she's been watching him his whole life, even though his life was pretty much fishing up to now.....she also introduces him to Pegasus Obama) and kicks their asses until he gets his hand chopped off and his blood creates giant scorpions who kicks their asses until ancient desert Djinns hypnotize the scorpions and turn them into domesticated pack animals. Since Perseus and crew never heard of a horse that doesn't fly, much less brought any horses with them, they ride giant scorpions and camels to see the blind witches who kicks their asses until Perseus grabs the one eye they use to see and finds out that only Medusa can kill Phil(the Kraken).

Zeus(Liam Neeson) then visits Perseus in the middle of the night and tells him to quit this shit and hang with the Gods. Since Perseus thinks his "family"(even though by now he knows they really were never his family) was killed by Hades he tells his dad off and Zeus says O.K. and gives him a Greek lightsaber that he doesn't want to use and a coin to cross the river Styx to get to Medusa.

Then Perseus and the soldiers fight Medusa, who kicks their asses until Pereus uses the guy who taught him how to fight as a distraction to chop off Medusa's head. Then Calibos "kills" IO and Perseus kills Calibos with the Greek lightsaber that he doesn't want to use. Perseus then gets on Pegasus Obama and flies back just in time to kill Phil(the Kraken), hit Hades with a lightning bolt streaming from the Greek lightsaber that he doesn't want to use and sends him back to the underworld, and rescues Andromeda. Andromeda then offers Perseus the chance to become King and bang her hot ass, but he refuses because he wants some immortal IO poontang. Zeus then shows up and tells him again to quit this shit and hang with the Gods. Perseus tells his dad off again and Zeus says O.K. and brings IO back to life to bang throughout eternity...........the end.

I'm not kidding, that's the story. The only cool thing in this movie is the Pantheon Of The Gods scenes with Liam and Ralph chewing up the scenery while the other Gods stand in a circle looking like dumb-shits. This film is just unbelievably bad.

And to top it all off, I lost my fucking sunglasses at the theater. I should have gone to Passover.

I especially liked all the references to Afghanistan, from the Soviet perspective.

I don't need to see another version of it.

The one I like is already perfect.

AVENGE ME!!!!!

american insurgents.

too funny.

Otherwise, it sucked donkey dicks. So will the re-make.......

was a typical B picture: formulaic, predictable, trite, cliche-ridden chock full of comic book, uni-dimensional characters.

That, in no way, interfered with it being a fun movie.

Not all films are destined to be great art with stirring, deep, philosophical, thought provoking messages (there are plenty who try to be that that just plain suck).

It was entertainment for entertainments sake and it shows by some of the responses in this thread.

with the whole post-apocalyptic society-as-we-know-it-is-gone-and-we're-on-our-own thing. Red Dawn, Mad Max, I Am Legend, The Stand, all the zombie movies, etc., etc. I think it has to do with with our visceral fear of loss of control and absence of order. Escapist trash, but at least to me, hugely entertaining escapist trash. :)