Chris Hemsworth & Connor Cruise in new Red Dawn clip: offensive or dumb?

Like it or not, the ill-fated and unnecessary Red Dawn remake/reboot is on the way and will arrive in theaters on (when else?) Thanksgiving day. This film has actually been years in the making, which would explain why the film’s stars — Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and … Connor Cruise — look younger than we’re used to seeing them these days. Obviously, Connor is a very good-looking young man, but we all know that nepotism has at least a fair amount to do with Connor landing a role here. Here’s the remake’s plot summary, which sounds almost indistinguishable from the original (basically, they’ve changed the setting from Colorado to Washington and changed the invading forces from Russians and Cubans to North Koreans), as well as a new clip:

In Red Dawn, a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky — shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerilla group of fighters. Taking inspiration from their high school mascot, they call themselves the Wolverines, banding together to protect one another, liberate their town from its captors, and take back their freedom.

[From IMDb]

Okay, so Connor doesn’t get much airplay at all in that clip. His role is obviously a supporting one, but he actually had a line (“I can’t“) in this trailer from about a month ago. Check it.

Honestly, the point of this post isn’t to bag on Connor Cruise. I feel bad for the kid (he’s not even a kid anymore) for having such a screwed-up, lift-obsessed father that pulled him into Scientology, so I won’t say much more about him here. What does offend me, however, is that the remake originally cast China as the invading country but then switched the identity of the Chinese soldiers to North Koreans in post-production. Because, you know, all Asians are interchangeable like that, right? Also, how on earth would North Korea ever be able to invade any other country in the first place? It doesn’t make sense, of course, but that’s Hollywood. As much as a clusterf*ck as this movie will probably be, I think Chris Hemworth might be enough of a box office draw to make it a moderately successful blockbuster. We shall see.

Here’s another clip that shows a bit of the ground combat and an ambush on the part of Hemsworth and Hutcherson. Don’t ask me why Hutcherson’s mouth hangs open the entire time he’s shooting a gun.

Photos courtesy of Contrafilm and Film District

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