A Red Dwan redux?

Guest Rant provided By: Kester Pelagius (Mise-en-scene Crypt)

If there was ever any doubt that mindless radioactive zombies have taken over Hollywood then the fact rumors coming out of Cannes about a re-make of Red Dawn being considered should be proof enough it's time to climb into our fallout shelters and lock the hatch. (Blurb here.)

For those who've forgotten the plot of Red Dawn it was about a rag-tag group of high school kids who escape into the mountains at the outset of World War III just after a joint Russian-Cuban invasion of the United States. From there this group of athletic youths- joined by two young females who survived vile gang rape- lead a guerrilla war against the murderous, raping, communist invaders.

In other words it was your basic feel-good "good guys kick the bad guys arses" action film. It wasn't green, it wasn't politically correct, it didn't have any CGI, and it was full of rugged characters possessed of that rarest of commodities in films today; common sense. This movie had people pissing into a car radiator because they didn't have water. Now that's realism!

The problem is the world has changed. Political correctness has smothered common sense in its crib and we've seen corporations use strong-arm tactics to take money from old men and young kids for downloading music. Music that you can hear freely on the radio, but apparently not on your computer. Worse, the global climate has changed. For starters Cuba and Russia poses less of a threat to American sovereignty than our own government does. The world is (apparently) no longer threatened by global cooling or a fast depleting ozone layer, now it's global warming and Al Gore documentaries. Worse America, some pundits would shout, has been grossly mismanaged by a government whose ruinous foreign and domestic policies have all but ceded the country to foreign invaders- oops- I mean "illegal immigrants". Illegal immigrants, that's the proper PC thing to say, which brings us back to Red Dawn .

It's not politically correct to actually say anything bad about anyone, much less specific groups or countries, which means this movie will be weak and anemic. The original story would have to be modified. Alas Hollywood doesn't have the gonads to produce a story that tackles the real issues threatening American sovereignty, much less explore countries that offer a true real and present danger. Then again what constitutes a real and present danger seems to depend on what your politics are. And therein is a large part of the problem.

Obviously the original story will never make it in the current environment of dumbed down politically correct all-flash-and-no-substance movie making. Besides which there's no "green" message in the original movie and no terrorists. So what sort of a re-envisioned mutant abortion is Hollywood's remake machine likely to fart out of it's weeping puss-sore of a sphincter?

I shudder to think. I shudder to think!

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Original trailer