'Red Dawn' Filmmakers Essentially Say 'They All Look the Same'
Invading Chinese army to be digitally altered to invading North Korean army
This story out of the Los Angeles Times doesn't necessarily shock me in terms of its content as much as it sort of surprises me how blatantly they just announce their plans.
I'm sure many of you remember the Red Dawn remake at MGM that has been sitting on the shelf for quite some time now after missing its November 24, 2010 release due to MGM's bankruptcy woes. Well, the film is still sitting there, in the can with an MPAA rating ready to be shown to the public. However, there is now a hitch. While the original, 1984 Cold War flick featured a Soviet invasion of the U.S. this new film needed to have a new aggressor and the Chinese substituted for the Soviets. Well, despite issues being raised before only after the film has been completed for about a year do the producers no longer see it as a good idea:
Here's a snippet from the "L.A. Times" report:
[Potential] distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.
As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from "Red Dawn," substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.
People close to the picture said the changes will cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean. It's impossible to eliminate all references to China, the people said, though the changes will give North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S.
So essentially Red Dawn will now involve a joint effort on the part of North Korea and China attacking the United States? And while Chinese symbols will be changed to Korean what about the actors and the language they're speaking in? Will the dialogue now need to be dubbed?
Of course, the production already has one thing going for them, a Chinese actor wasn't portraying the man leading the invading charge. Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee portrays Captain Lo, leader of what was previously the China's People's Liberation Army. I also notice that according to IMDb, Ho-Sung Pak, another Korean-American actor, plays one of the Chinese soldiers. I have no idea the nationality of the majority of the actors used to portray what was previously the Chinese army in the film, but wouldn't it be ironic if most of them ended up being Korean in the first place?
While several people commented on the "Times" piece laughing at the idea of a North Korean invasion of the U.S., only one person even brought up the fact this basically means the filmmakers see all Asians as one and the same and are rather open about it, such as this comment by sonicsustain:
"I guess any Asian is good since they're all the same anyways, right Hollywood? You probably won't even have to change Chinese lines to Korean, since, as a bright UCLA student pointed out this week, all Asian people sound the same anyways."
If you aren't familiar with the UCLA student mentioned here's that piece of insanity:
I'm not some authority on Asian culture, but I can't help but believe such a blatant and outspoken disregard for the differences between nationalities won't be seen as a major offense by not just Chinese and Koreans, but by all Asians. I'd say it's one thing to be quietly ignorant, but this just seems like a group of people in an office going, "We can just say the Chinese are North Koreans… the audience won't be able to tell the difference." Whether that is true or not, I don't know about you, but I don't see how that can go over too well.
Perhaps what strikes me most about all of this is my own personal ignorance and lack of attention given to this subject in the past. Being a white American it's easy to overlook whether or not a film production remained faithful to a character's nationality in the actor they chose to portray said character, but this example shows me that no matter how easy it is to overlook, it's not excusable. This is something I will be sure to pay closer attention to in the future. If anything, this bit of news is a wake up call.
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Hollywood hates asian, they messed up on avatar the last airbender already, casting white people on Asian rolls and what's worst is casting Indian people in Asian rolls, when the movie was inspired by aboriginal and chinese and Japanese culture. Also if people hang around Asian people you can tell later on who's chinese or philipino to Japanese, korean, and viet. Also if it balance out us Asian can't even tell if people are russian, british, german, and polish. But the people that know, Hollywood should just keep in mind, people are educated and instead of looking at details on how to hold a gun or to look corners properly while your in a military squad, please Hollywood look at details on culture. And that video of the UCLA that's how racist people look like, pretty and dumb.
hey..do you have any problem with us asian people?if you dont like this movie then talk like that
Hemsworth is an Aussie in his late twenties being passed off as an American teenager so perhaps the lesson is that movies are make believe.
As far as the UCLA student video, the best part is that she was studying political science. It's good to read that she later acknowledged her mistake.
Yeah, the idea of North Korea invading the US is pretty dumb by itself… China invading was already pretty dumb. There is no way out for this movie.
It is no surprise for me the way Hollywood portrays foreigners. They mix Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Southeast Asian people all the time.
Another example: pretty much everyone from every nation below Mexico is portrayed as mexican (which is very wrong, in Latin America there is a good amount of black, white and mixed people).
The same thing happens to europeans in american movies, but in this case it is not much about the color of the skin, it is more about the accent.
It's the same Hollywood movie (and possibly wider) mindset that says amost every Muslim in the world is a terrorist in waiting.
Apart from those Sex and the City 2 Middle Eastern women who secretly longed to shop from the latest collections at Fifth Avenue, of course.
Middle Eastern women are notoriously materialistic. What do you think they wear under their religious garments? The shop a lot
Hollywood already showed us their "what's the diff" attitude last year with The Karate Kid. Karate is Japanese; Jackie Chan (and his character, I think) are Chinese. But all those martial arts are the same, right? $359 million worldwide washes away a lot of sins in Hollywood.
If you saw the movie they mentioned this, and he doesn't learn karate. It was just named that in North America for marketing, and The Kung Fu Kid internationally.
And to say that this useless remake isn't DOA would be an understatement. It's pandering. Hey, China is going to be the next superpower let's make them North Korean instead. Yeah, no.
Hmm… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homefront_%28video_game%29 "Writer(s) John Milius"
Apparently the game was also supposed to feature China as the invaders, but they made the change for the same reason… they just wised up much earlier in the development process.
At least in that one it's set 20 years in the future, apparently after the US has a total economic collapse and Korea reunifies and takes over other nations in the area. I have no idea how they're going to make a Korean invasion in current times seem even slightly plausible.
I think this is stupid for a lot of reasons, but I can only get worked up about the race issue to a point. I really have no idea how racially mixed other parts of the world have become… perhaps there really is no-one of Korean ancestry who is in the Chinese Military, or vice-versa. Ultimately though, it actually seems more harmful to me to say that an actor can only portray a very specific nationality based on their race, as it just seems to punish minority actors who already have too small of a pool of roles for which to compete.
But as I said, the whole idea is pretty stupid on a number of levels. It only barely seemed to make sense back in the early 80's if you turned off your brain. I didn't see the point of remaking it at all, as what fear of invasion are they supposedly tapping into in this political climate? The original was supposed to drum up support for the Afghani insurgents trying to fight off invasion from the USSR. Well, now we're the ones fighting the insurgents in Afghanistan… yet I somehow don't think this film was going to do something so daring as to turn the whole issue on its head.
And the idea of North Korea, with their (admittedly huge) reserve of poorly-equipped infantry, nearly non-existent Navy and poorly trained and maintained all-defensive Air Force are going to somehow get 5000 miles across the Pacific to invade the most weaponized nation on Earth (with a population of over 300 million) is hard to see as anything but laughable.
That's really well put.
Much nicer than I would say it. Which is that the first one was stupid, borderline idiotic claptrap and clearly in the present day even considering remaking it meant that new and untold depths of even greater stupidity were being mined.
The makers now proving this.
At what point during the presentation/budgeting/casting………you know….. entire actual production phase of the film did they NOT think ahead and use their brains (oh wait, that could be the clue) that this might not come across in whatever way they weirdly seemed to think it originally would?
Although, I think the UCLA airhead probably was the target audience………..the more dangerously ironic thing is, the flick whenever it sees the light of day, will probably find more like her to flock to it.
She's it's audience.
not sure what surprises me more: Alexandra's ignorance or the fact that she got accepted into UCLA.
I think the Asian demographic is the second highest attending the school. Just because there were some asians talking on their phones in the library, she automatically suggests that their families were affected by the tsunami? Really? That's as ignorant as digitally altering the Chinese for Koreans.
That youtube video is why the whole world hates America.
Was anybody going to see this movie in the first place?
The comment about white people of all nationalities being interchangeable is acceptable, but other races isn't, is an example of being over sensitive. However the attitude that all Asians are just interchangeable is racsist. So this situation depends on perspective of the filmmakers. To be a fly on the wall in that meeting.
They could at least give us a list of possible release dates. It's been 5 months since it missed it's release. And worst of all, no trailer, no photos, no star takes on the situation, nothing.
Just hurry up and get it out. Unless MGM is still in bankruptcy.
I gather these changes are being made because they couldn't find anybody who wanted to release it as is, for fear of torpedoing their future business with China. I don't know if they have anyone who has agreed to release it once the changes are made.
I'm interested in seeing Cabin in the Woods finally find a release.
This movie will blow no matter the nationality of the invading force
Why not just show Red Dawn as is in the US and Euro markets
and the north korean version in China and other asian markets. MGM is really messing up. Changing from China to
North Korea is so stupid. Its asskissing at its worst.
China now tells us what films we can make???
I have no interest in seeing this film at all now.
This film will be a huge box office flop in the USA.
Again best case scenario would be to release two versions of the film. One for the US and Euro markets one for the
China and asian markets. otherwise this film will crash
and burn.
God that girl in the video is such a moron. Unbelievable.
And why is it necessary to even remake Red Dawn anyway? The original one sucked bad enough.