Red Dawn redux...

This raised a smile on my part. Red Dawn, late Cold War – ahem – cultural artifact, has been remade (albeit some years back). This time instead of a Cuban and Soviet invasion of (as a comment in Slate put it) strategic high schools, I mean of course the Mid-West of the US, the foes are the – cough – Chinese, I mean of course the North Koreans.

Seems MGM realised almost too late that to put the PRC in the role of the enemy might curb the commercial reach of the film (a potential audience of hundreds of millions being nothing to sneeze at), that and an inevitable and reasonable critical response from China. So, at the last moment PRC imagery was replaced, mostly through CGI, with NK imagery.

So far as I know the DPRK is a better sport about this than the PRC and hasn’t commented upon their role as bad guys.

Anyhow, the plot device, given away in the trailer so this is no spoiler, is that the North Koreans use some sort of high tech to shut down US defences in order that they can invade. There’s imagery of turboprops shedding paratroopers like flower petals over Mid-Western skies. Unlikely. Well… yeah.

Oddly enough speaking of paratroopers surely the opposite dynamic is more likely, at least according to the Daily Telegraph.

And the feasibility of North Korea invading the US, or their relative military weight? This handy online site might help cut through any confusion. As might this.

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