[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

It's been eons since I've seen the original, but the remake is utterly generic and, for some fucking reason, very self-serious. You'd think this movie would best work as a sort of knowingly comedic thing like ... I don't know, the Addams Family or Brady Bunch movies. But no... it's super dramatic and predictably "high-octane" bullshit.

I didn't even finish it.

It's weird to me that you feel like you have to explain the plot of Red Dawn. I was under the impression that this was a cult classic for the snarks among us, and the stuff of biblical legend for rural survivalists and militia members.

it's from the 80s, at the height of the red/nuclear scare-- war games, the day after, etc. militaristic shit shifted from ww2 stuff to the then-present like top gun. rah rah america

people really were afraid they'd die in a mushroom cloud or from radiation poisoning. not like in the 60s when they'd tell you to hide under a desk, but this time you knew you'd be obliterated by ICBMs. no need for cuba.

there was also the neutron bomb (see: repo man), and ronnie raygun wanted star wars. the soviets were in afghanistan. a kgb man became soviet prime minister.

the soviet union was crumbling from within, but they didn't want you to know that-- they wanted you to be scared of the "evil empire" instead.

9/11 type "terrorism" doesn't hold a candle to the existential dread of the 80s

and gorbachev came as a huuuuuuuuuge relief

incidentally, i'm watching season 5 of "the americans" on tv which illustrates much of this