Red Dawn, Part I
Dec. 18th, 2007 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI was all excited to post a parody of Red Dawn, but it was harder to write than I thought it would be. As it turns out, the movie itself is a parody and there's nothing that I could write that would be funnier than a bunch of high school kids taking on the Red Army using hunting rifles and snappy action movie dialogue.
This said, I'll do my best. For some of you, this will be a trip down memory lane. Maybe others among you have never seen this fantastic movie, and this will encourage you to rent it. Anyway, throw on some popcorn, pour yourself a Stoli, and enjoy!
It's 1984. The U.S. has decided that among the biggest threats to its empire is the small, poor country of Nicaragua, so it has illegally mined Nicaragua's harbour and funded some drug-dealing terrorists to overthrow its government. The Russians are deep in an Afghan quagmire and the U.S. happily supports heroic Cold War freedom-fighter Osama bin Laden. Reagan has won the election, wetting the panties of reactionary chickenhawks everywhere. But director John Milius has a grim view of the near future, and wants to warn us of what might happen if we don't bomb Cuba now now now!
Subtitles provide convenient background in broken English:
Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years.
Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet Union invades.
Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000.
El Salvador and Honduras fall.
Greens Party gains control of West German parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil.
Mexico plunged into revolution.
NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.
Greens Party? WTF? Also, even though this part of the movie is silent, you can tell that they're pronouncing it "NEW-CEW-LAR."
The opening music is wonderful.
OMGWTF911BBQ!
Ah, idyllic small town America, with its wide, pedestrian-unfriendly streets, sexy cowgirl murals, and gratuitous product placement! Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world was like this?
In a few minutes, a coalition of Russians and Cubans will invade Calumet, Colorado. Because, despite the fact that they totally pwned the U.S. Department of Defense in a sneak attack, they didn’t bother to do anything remotely resembling background research, so they decided to put their base in a small town that no one cares about. Why? I don’t know.
Meet your protagonists, Matt Eckert, Arturo (known as Aardvark, because no one likes them foreigner names), and Jed Eckert. Their opening dialogue establishes them as red-blooded Amurrcans who like football, women, and apple pie. Naturally, Jed drives a Chevy.
It also establishes that their high school football team, the Wolverines, totally suck. Let’s hope these guys are better at terrorism than they are at sports.
Mr. Teasdale, the high school history teacher, delivers a foreshadowing-heavy lecture about Genghis Khan. Incidentally, he’s the only black guy in the movie. I wonder what will happen to him!
P.S. He spelled "Genghis" wrong.
Cubans: All your base are now belong to us.
“Oh hey you guys, what’s u—rgh!”
Farewell, Token Black Guy! Your appearance was brief, but you played the stereotype to its fullest, and we salute you.
The Cubans shoot up a high school for no reason other than that they are totally evil.
It’s Jed and his Chevy to the rescue. He manages to rescue Matty and Aardvark, along with Darryl, the prissy student council president and son of the mayor, and Robert and Danny, two random kids.
Three guesses as to what the next shot is.
In case of Soviet invasion, NRA membership will not protect you.
Our Heroes raid the local gas station convenience store for supplies: hunting rifles, canned soup, bows and arrows, and most importantly, a football.
Road trip!
Road block!
But they are rescued by helicopter ex machina, and escape into the mountains.
SQUEE!
Meet Col. Bella, the emo Cuban. His main purpose in the movie is to whine about how everyone else is Doing it Wrong. And he’s pretty much right. Also, he has a badass moustache.
In this scene, group dynamics are established.
Danny: “Waaaah. I wanna go home!”
Darryl, who is obviously a Democrat: “As student council president, I say we surrender.”
Danny: “Good idea!”
Jed: “No.”
Darryl: “Let’s vote on it.”
Jed: “Vote? Do you think this is some kind of democracy?”
Darryl: “This is madness!”
Jed: “Madness? This is Spartaaaaa!”
In this scene, homoerotic subtext is established.
Shut up. It’s a brotherly hug. Never mind where Matty's hand is going.
Robert: “I’m with you. If you can't beat the ho-yay, you might as well join in on the ho-yay. Also, every action movie needs an obligatory psycho, and it doesn't look like Danny's up to the task.”
Robert kills his first deer. Matt informs him that when you pop your deer-killing cherry, you have to drink the poor thing’s blood. Robert realizes that killing something and drinking its blood isn’t so bad after all. From this point on, he’s pretty much a ruthless killer who likes killing. It's lucky that the commies invaded or this kid would be looking at a lifetime of date rape and pulling the wings off flies.
“The blood is the life!”
The boys venture into town to see if the commies are still there.
The commies are still there.
In Soviet America, none of your trash Hollywood action movies. It is all Alexander Nevsky, all the time. It’s![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gillen's fantasy come to life, basically.
We’ve secretly replaced your regular small town America with 100% unfiltered AWESOME. Let’s see if anyone notices!
Oh, come on. They didn’t go for a giant statue? I would go for a giant statue. Maybe that's what the scaffold is for.
Shop woman: “Where the hell did you guys come from?”
Jed: “We’ve been hiding in the mountains.”
Shop woman: “Are you nuts? They’re not letting anyone out of town. How do you plan to get out?”
Jed: “That’s easy. We’ll wait for the scene change, and then we’ll inexplicably be in another location. By the way, where are our families?”
Shop woman: “Oh, they’ve all been shipped to the re-education camp where the drive-in used to be. You should be able to find it, as it’s smack in the middle of the city and apparently unguarded. Also, I’ll be praying for you!”
The boys visit the Worst Gulag Ever. Seriously, the scene goes on forever and none of the guards notice them, perhaps because they’re distracted by the booming announcements that Americans are capitalist imperialist pigdogs who have betrayed their revolutionary past. Next time they might want to turn the volume down on that a bit so that they can tell when their re-education camp is being infiltrated by high school kids.
In an awesome and totally unexpected twist, Daddy Eckert is played by Harry Dean Stanton. Unfortunately, this only highlights the fact that no one else in the movie can act.
Daddy Eckert: “Hey, you know how I was a total asshole to you boys when you were growing up?”
Jed: “Yeah. You used to beat us.”
Matty: “And starve us.”
Jed: “And you never came to any of our football games.”
Daddy Eckert: “Well, I did it to toughen you up in case the Soviets ever invaded.”
Matty: “Thanks, dad.”
Daddy Eckert: “You get why I had to break both of your arms now, right?”
Jed: “Totally. Good thing you planned ahead.”
Daddy Eckert: “P.S. Your mom is dead.”
Jed: *sob*
Matty: *sob*
Daddy Eckert: “No crying! Crying is for pussies. We’re real manly men. In the new America, there will be no emotions whatsoever.”
“Boys! Avenge me! AVEEEEENGE MEEEEE!”
He says this really loudly. Good thing this is the Worst Gulag Ever, or the guards would have overheard, killed the kids, and the movie would be only half an hour long.
See what I mean about the scene change?
Next up: Girls, guns, and liquor!
This said, I'll do my best. For some of you, this will be a trip down memory lane. Maybe others among you have never seen this fantastic movie, and this will encourage you to rent it. Anyway, throw on some popcorn, pour yourself a Stoli, and enjoy!
It's 1984. The U.S. has decided that among the biggest threats to its empire is the small, poor country of Nicaragua, so it has illegally mined Nicaragua's harbour and funded some drug-dealing terrorists to overthrow its government. The Russians are deep in an Afghan quagmire and the U.S. happily supports heroic Cold War freedom-fighter Osama bin Laden. Reagan has won the election, wetting the panties of reactionary chickenhawks everywhere. But director John Milius has a grim view of the near future, and wants to warn us of what might happen if we don't bomb Cuba now now now!
Subtitles provide convenient background in broken English:
Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years.
Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet Union invades.
Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000.
El Salvador and Honduras fall.
Greens Party gains control of West German parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil.
Mexico plunged into revolution.
NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.
Greens Party? WTF? Also, even though this part of the movie is silent, you can tell that they're pronouncing it "NEW-CEW-LAR."
The opening music is wonderful.
OMGWTF911BBQ!
Ah, idyllic small town America, with its wide, pedestrian-unfriendly streets, sexy cowgirl murals, and gratuitous product placement! Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world was like this?
In a few minutes, a coalition of Russians and Cubans will invade Calumet, Colorado. Because, despite the fact that they totally pwned the U.S. Department of Defense in a sneak attack, they didn’t bother to do anything remotely resembling background research, so they decided to put their base in a small town that no one cares about. Why? I don’t know.
Meet your protagonists, Matt Eckert, Arturo (known as Aardvark, because no one likes them foreigner names), and Jed Eckert. Their opening dialogue establishes them as red-blooded Amurrcans who like football, women, and apple pie. Naturally, Jed drives a Chevy.
It also establishes that their high school football team, the Wolverines, totally suck. Let’s hope these guys are better at terrorism than they are at sports.
Mr. Teasdale, the high school history teacher, delivers a foreshadowing-heavy lecture about Genghis Khan. Incidentally, he’s the only black guy in the movie. I wonder what will happen to him!
P.S. He spelled "Genghis" wrong.
Cubans: All your base are now belong to us.
“Oh hey you guys, what’s u—rgh!”
Farewell, Token Black Guy! Your appearance was brief, but you played the stereotype to its fullest, and we salute you.
The Cubans shoot up a high school for no reason other than that they are totally evil.
It’s Jed and his Chevy to the rescue. He manages to rescue Matty and Aardvark, along with Darryl, the prissy student council president and son of the mayor, and Robert and Danny, two random kids.
Three guesses as to what the next shot is.
In case of Soviet invasion, NRA membership will not protect you.
Our Heroes raid the local gas station convenience store for supplies: hunting rifles, canned soup, bows and arrows, and most importantly, a football.
Road trip!
Road block!
But they are rescued by helicopter ex machina, and escape into the mountains.
SQUEE!
Meet Col. Bella, the emo Cuban. His main purpose in the movie is to whine about how everyone else is Doing it Wrong. And he’s pretty much right. Also, he has a badass moustache.
In this scene, group dynamics are established.
Danny: “Waaaah. I wanna go home!”
Darryl, who is obviously a Democrat: “As student council president, I say we surrender.”
Danny: “Good idea!”
Jed: “No.”
Darryl: “Let’s vote on it.”
Jed: “Vote? Do you think this is some kind of democracy?”
Darryl: “This is madness!”
Jed: “Madness? This is Spartaaaaa!”
In this scene, homoerotic subtext is established.
Shut up. It’s a brotherly hug. Never mind where Matty's hand is going.
Robert: “I’m with you. If you can't beat the ho-yay, you might as well join in on the ho-yay. Also, every action movie needs an obligatory psycho, and it doesn't look like Danny's up to the task.”
Robert kills his first deer. Matt informs him that when you pop your deer-killing cherry, you have to drink the poor thing’s blood. Robert realizes that killing something and drinking its blood isn’t so bad after all. From this point on, he’s pretty much a ruthless killer who likes killing. It's lucky that the commies invaded or this kid would be looking at a lifetime of date rape and pulling the wings off flies.
“The blood is the life!”
The boys venture into town to see if the commies are still there.
The commies are still there.
In Soviet America, none of your trash Hollywood action movies. It is all Alexander Nevsky, all the time. It’s
gillen's fantasy come to life, basically.We’ve secretly replaced your regular small town America with 100% unfiltered AWESOME. Let’s see if anyone notices!
Oh, come on. They didn’t go for a giant statue? I would go for a giant statue. Maybe that's what the scaffold is for.
Shop woman: “Where the hell did you guys come from?”
Jed: “We’ve been hiding in the mountains.”
Shop woman: “Are you nuts? They’re not letting anyone out of town. How do you plan to get out?”
Jed: “That’s easy. We’ll wait for the scene change, and then we’ll inexplicably be in another location. By the way, where are our families?”
Shop woman: “Oh, they’ve all been shipped to the re-education camp where the drive-in used to be. You should be able to find it, as it’s smack in the middle of the city and apparently unguarded. Also, I’ll be praying for you!”
The boys visit the Worst Gulag Ever. Seriously, the scene goes on forever and none of the guards notice them, perhaps because they’re distracted by the booming announcements that Americans are capitalist imperialist pigdogs who have betrayed their revolutionary past. Next time they might want to turn the volume down on that a bit so that they can tell when their re-education camp is being infiltrated by high school kids.
In an awesome and totally unexpected twist, Daddy Eckert is played by Harry Dean Stanton. Unfortunately, this only highlights the fact that no one else in the movie can act.
Daddy Eckert: “Hey, you know how I was a total asshole to you boys when you were growing up?”
Jed: “Yeah. You used to beat us.”
Matty: “And starve us.”
Jed: “And you never came to any of our football games.”
Daddy Eckert: “Well, I did it to toughen you up in case the Soviets ever invaded.”
Matty: “Thanks, dad.”
Daddy Eckert: “You get why I had to break both of your arms now, right?”
Jed: “Totally. Good thing you planned ahead.”
Daddy Eckert: “P.S. Your mom is dead.”
Jed: *sob*
Matty: *sob*
Daddy Eckert: “No crying! Crying is for pussies. We’re real manly men. In the new America, there will be no emotions whatsoever.”
“Boys! Avenge me! AVEEEEENGE MEEEEE!”
He says this really loudly. Good thing this is the Worst Gulag Ever, or the guards would have overheard, killed the kids, and the movie would be only half an hour long.
See what I mean about the scene change?
Next up: Girls, guns, and liquor!
