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.
