It's always perspective: If you are the one fighting against the "powers that be", you are a "freedom fighter". If you are the "powers that be", the "freedom fighters" are "terrorists" and "rabble-rousers". Back in catholic school in about the 3rd grade, a Jesuit priest was teaching about the U.S. Revolutionary War and asked us "When is a revolution legal?" None of us had a good answer so he told us "A revoultion is legal if you win". If England had crushed the colonials, history today would label the colonists as unsucessful rebels and we would be taught that our good and noble British army had bravely defended us against the traitorous, vile rebels. It is the victor who writes history.
As far as "Red Dawn" is concerned, I saw and rather liked the original movie but at no time time did I take it seriously as a political statement. I suppose it resonated with the Reagan-sotted rightwingers seeking to demonize the "Evil Empire"; for the rest of us it was just a movie and a way to pass a couple of hours. I do find it irritating the way Hollywood now panders in such an open way to influences having nothing to do with the art of film making. I live in Hollywood and when the remake was first announced, quite a few comments were made regarding the wisdom of casting China as the heavy. The studio(s) had to know going in about the doubts and criticism. That they chose to go ahead and make the film anyway speaks volumes about how disconnected the management of the studios is regarding real world situations. Hollywood no longer has studio heads who make films as art (hence, endless remakes), rather the studios are run by corporate bean counters who just hang on until their "golden parachutes" take effect and they can bail and go on to the next corporation that will hire and overpay them and grant them a sinecure when they leave. When the Oscars were presented recently, there was a lot of huffing and puffing about how the big, popular (in terms of ticket sales) box office films were snubbed by the Academy and low grossing (by bean counter standards) films were reaping all the Awards. The irony is that the rate of return for the awarded films (cost to make the film versus revenue) is probably greater than the multi-multi-millon dollar major studio projects and the awarded films will probably be remebered longer because they are art, not product. The Times article noted the "Red Dawn" remake may go directly to DVD and bypass the theaters entirely. I wonder how much the studio is going to pay out as severance to the studio exec in charge of production when they fire him? Knowing Hollywood, they maight even promote him.
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