Reel China: Hollywood tries to stay on China's good side ("Red Dawn" remake"

LA Times ^ | 3/11 | Fritz/Horn

[pabianice]

Without Beijing even uttering a critical word, MGM is changing the villains in its 'Red Dawn' remake from Chinese to North Korean. It's all about maintaining access to the Asian superpower's lucrative box office.

China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended.

When MGM decided a few years ago to remake "Red Dawn," a 1984 Cold War drama about a bunch of American farm kids repelling a Soviet invasion, the studio needed new villains, since the U.S.S.R. had collapsed in 1991. The producers substituted Chinese aggressors for the Soviets and filmed the movie in Michigan in 2009.

But 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.

The changes illustrate just how much sway China's government has in the global entertainment industry, even without uttering a word of official protest. Although it's unclear if anyone in China has seen "Red Dawn," a leaked version of the script last year resulted in critical editorials in the Global Times, a communist party-controlled paper.

[pabianice]

Filming "Sucked," Says Costar

by Marc Malkin Wed., Aug. 29, 2012 2:20 PM PDT

Red Dawn Film/District

It doesn't sound like Josh Hutcherson and Chris Hemsworth were given star treatment when they shot the remake of Red Dawn.

Costar Jeffrey Dean Morgan tells me that their first-time director, veteran stunt man Dan Bradley, was all about the cast feeling the action—no matter how brutal it may have been.

"There were a couple of rough days," the 46-year-old Magic City star told me last night at the premiere of his new movie, The Possession. "Dan wants you to do your own stunts."

A winter shoot made it even worse.

"I remember we were out in the middle of the woods outside of Detroit and it was like 30-below," Morgan said. "He wouldn't allow there to be cast chairs or heaters for us in between takes. It sucked.

"I was like, 'Are you kidding me? We're not really fighting a war. We're making a movie!'" he continued. "But no, it was like, 'No chairs, no heaters!' It was crazy."

Awww...

[mnehring]

If North Korea really tried this, once all their troops parachuted in, they would surrender so they could defect and get a hot meal.

[max americana]

” “But no, it was like, ‘No chairs, no heaters!’ It was crazy.”

These actors sure sound like tough guys..it must be from all those mascara and make-up everyday.

[grellis]

Poor widdle baby! What actually sucked was that for two weeks I couldn’t go hiking through one of my favorite parks because a bunch of hollyweird crybabies had to have the place to themselves.

[Real Cynic No More]

This political correctness BS for competitive advantage really burns me. Just like the villains in Clancy's The Sum of All Fears were changed from Islamist extremists to German took a lot away from the meaning of the book. And as a result, Iran just knows that we will bend over backward so as not to offend their sensibilities, while all the while their centrifuges keep spinning faster and faster (with thanks to Mitt Romney for this thought!) enriching uranium so they can have the bomb.

[Northern Yankee]

You got that right, assuming North Korea could even locate the United States.

A great Red Dawn satire would be having them attacking Canada instead, thinking they were in the United States, eh?

[bill1952]

I can write the reviews now:

“Bomb hits Hollywood!”

[mnehring]

Of course, how many of their 1950s surplus planes could even make it here?

[mnehring]

One thing to remember, in the original Red Dawn, it was Russia and Cuba who attacked us and our sole ally in the fight was China who Russia nuked.

Col. Andy Tanner: ...The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that's why they're here. That's why they won't use nukes anymore; and we won't either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing's pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.
Darryl Bates: What started it?
Col. Andy Tanner: I don't know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they're gonna fight.
Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?
Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forget what it was like.
Jed Eckert: ...Well, who *is* on our side?
Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.
Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.
Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.

[3Fingas]

A lot has changed since the first movie. Our State Department somehow managed to alienate/abandon all our long-standing allies and embolden all of enemies. That is a quite an accomplishment, even for people who don’t like the idea of America and are amenable to her diminution in the first place. Basically, Russia and China have been driven into each others arms by the incompetent boobs in our gubmint.

As for the movie, Hollywood just like our federal government is scared of China and will do anything to placate the “King of the East”. That never works out well.

Hopefully, if Romney/Ryan gets elected, they will snatch back our cajones from the Chinese creditors who currently own them. Not sure if a change of administration will restore our confidence on the global stage, but I do know that the current administration is perfectly contented to let America walk about missing an essential part.

[JerseyanExile]

It gets even worse - a bootleg version of the original movie (that is, with Chinese troops invading the US) is already in circulation in China. that’s right - the Chinese got the unedited copy, and got it earlier then we do.

[dfwgator]

The Chinese were the good guys in the original Red Dawn.

[dfwgator]

I would have preferred a fictional “What If” about a Nazi occupation, something akin to “It Happened Here” which was an excellent account of what a Nazi Occupation of Britain would have been like.

[3Fingas]

I would very much like to see the original cut of the remake instead of the China-approved version. So much for the artistic integrity that many in Hollywood talk about when slamming traditional values. Apparently, their integrity is up for sale when it doesn’t involve being profane or being critical of America.

[familyop]

Cao tao to the new masters. Ours have all virtually defected to where they’re surrounded with more happily subservient people elsewhere. And just remember: they’re more skilled, smart and generally better than we Americans are.

[The multi-pronged class war was started by the other half during the ‘70s, and the social leftism has been trickling down from their out-of-touch families since—feminism, no-fault divorce, homosexualism, more social engineering programs, anti-manufacturing regulations in rural counties, other attacks on constitutional rights, all.]

[tet68]

Oh, I could see a Korean Air assualt with Kim jong un
parachuting into Rodeo Drive.

[Northern Yankee]

Now that is funny!

Kim jong un leading the charge with credits cards, of course.

[pabianice]

The Man in the High Castle

Philip K. Dick

1 January 1962

The Man in the High Castle (1962) is a science fiction alternate history novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It won a Hugo Award in 1963[1][2] and has since been translated into many languages.

The story of The Man in the High Castle, about daily life under totalitarian Fascist imperialism, occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of a longer Second World War (1939–1947 in this history). The victorious Axis Powers — Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany — are conducting intrigues against each other in North America, specifically in the former U.S..

Giuseppe Zangara's assassination of U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, led to the weak governments of John Nance Garner (formerly FDR's VP-elect), and later of the Republican John W. Bricker in 1940. Both politicians failed to surmount the Great Depression and maintained the country's isolationist policy against participating in the Second World War; thus, the U.S. had insufficient military capabilities to assist the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or to defend itself against Japan in the Pacific.

In 1941, the Nazis conquered the USSR and then exterminated most of its Slavic peoples; the few whom they allowed to live were confined to reservations. In the Pacific, the Japanese destroyed the entire U.S. Navy fleet in a decisive, definitive attack on Pearl Harbor; thereafter, the superior Japanese military conquered Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania during the early forties. Afterward, the Axis Powers, each attacking from opposite fronts, conquered the coastal United States, and, by 1947, the United States and other remaining Allied forces surrendered to the Axis.

Japan established the puppet Pacific States of America out of Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, parts of Nevada and Washington as part of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The remaining Mountain, Great Plains and Southwestern states became the Rocky Mountain States, a buffer between the PSA and the remaining USA, now a Nazi puppet state in the style of Vichy France. Having defeated the Allies of World War II, the Third Reich and Imperial Japan became the resultant superpowers of their world and consequently embarked upon a Cold War.

One of the core narrative elements (Operation Dandelion) is centred on a pre-emptive Nazi nuclear strike on the Japanese Home Islands. The Nazis "have the hydrogen bomb" and the ability to wipe out the Home Islands. Their nuclear energy capabilities also fuel extremely fast air travel and the colonization of the moon, Venus, and Mars.

After Adolf Hitler's syphilitic incapacitation, Martin Bormann, as Nazi Party Chancellor, assumes power as Führer of Germany. Bormann proceeds to create a colonial empire to increase Germany's Lebensraum by using technology to drain the Mediterranean Sea and convert it into farmland (see Atlantropa), while sending spaceships to colonize Mars and other parts of the Solar System in the name of the Reich.

As the novel begins, Führer Bormann dies, initiating an internal power struggle between Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, and other top Nazis to succeed him as Reichskanzler.