Red Dawn: Difference between revisions
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[[File:red_dawn_movie_image_3684.jpg|frame|<small>The war to liberate the Mickey D's begins...At Dawn.</small> ]]
{{quote|''"Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... 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."''
|''[[Opening Narration]]''}}
After the opening narration, we cut to a classroom of teenagers in scenic Colorado. Their little piece of America gets invaded by Soviet and Cuban paratroopers. Six students manage to get away in [[The Hero|Jed Eckert]]'s truck and escape to the mountains, where they become guerillas against the new communist regime. They're joined by two girls, Toni and Erica, and later [[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines|downed pilot]] Colonel Andy Tanner, who teaches them some basic military tactics. Oh, and they have guns.
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* [[Analogy Backfire]]: Only if one assumes this was analogous to the USSR invading Afghanistan. Many Taliban fighters gained experience repelling the Soviets, and would later use those skills attacking civilians.
** And, ironically, Americans.
* [[Anti-Villain]]: Colonel Bella, who is an officer in the invading army, but finds himself sympathizing with the guerrillas.
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: Even girls, subverting [[Men Are the Expendable Gender]].
* [[Axe Crazy]]: Robert slides down the rungs.
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* [[Bilingual Dialogue]]: Cuban and Russian troops speak their own language, with subtitles. Played for laughs in one scene when a Russian officer playing tourist [[Fun with Foreign Languages|pretends to translate]] a forestry sign, saying it commemorates [[In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You|a bloody Indian revolt]].
* [[Bittersweet Ending]], The kids lose their innocence and {{spoiler|All but two lose their lives}}, though it's suggested by the Partisan Rock memorial that [[America Wins the War]].
* [[Black Dude Dies First]]: The History teacher at the beginning of the movie is the ''very first person'' killed onscreen when he walks up to some [[It's Raining Men|heavily armed paratroopers]], [[What an Idiot!|asking them]] [[Too Dumb to Live|what's going on]].
** Everyone thought it was a US military training drop which had been blown off course -- people don't automatically [[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here|assume they're being invaded]].
** In addition, Aardvark, the [[Token Minority|one Latino]] among the Wolverines, is the first one of them to get killed.
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* [[Clifftop Caterwauling]]
* <s>[[China Takes Over the World]]</s> [[China Takes Over the World|North Korea Takes Over The World]]: the remake of the film is a slight smaller scale of this trope where the <s> Chinese</s> North Koreans take over America.
* [[Click. "Hello."]]: "You lose."
* [[Colonel Badass]]: Both [[Cool Old Guy|Tanner]] and [[Worthy Opponent|Bella]] qualify.
* [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]: Colonel Strelnikov "The Hunter", who not only thinks of ways to track (and later trap) the Wolverines, but also orders the reprisals against civilians to stop as it only creates support for them.
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* [[Elite Mooks]]: Soviet ''spetsnaz'' are brought in to track down the Wolverines. They're as effective as all the other mooks. They may however have been the ones responsible for the ambush that got {{spoiler|Robert and Toni}} killed. Colonel Strelnikov is also the one who kills {{spoiler|Jed and Matt, although Jed kills him too}}.
* [[Et Tu, Brute?]]: {{spoiler|The revelation that one of their own has betrayed them signifies a turn for the worst for the Wolverines fortunes.}}
* [[Exact Words]]: Early in the movie, a bumper sticker appears, with the line "[[Tempting Fate|They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers]]". The camera pulls back to show a communist soldier prying a handgun...
* [[Executive Meddling]]: Writer-director John Milius wanted to focus on the [[War Is Hell]] aspect, while the studio pressed for a more idealized presentation. The most obvious result of this is the tacked-on epilogue, which explicitly states that Americans won the war due to bravery of fighters like the Wolverines. Without it, the movie would have left it open if the efforts of the Wolverines changed ''anything'' in the end. The darker approach shows through in several places, such as how many of the heroes meet their ends in meaningless deaths.
** For the remake, the enemies were changed from Chinese to [http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-china-red-dawn-20110316,0,995726.story North Koreans]. The studio claims this is because North Korea will make a scarier villain, but most observers believe this was done to avoid losing box office revenues in China. This happened after production ended, so they have to digitally alter all Chinese symbols and dub all Chinese dialogue.
*** Actually, it was mostly done to help the film secure a distributor, as no other major studio wanted to touch a film about China invading America.
* [[Expanded Universe]]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130704131124/http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=124063 This thread on alternatehistory.com], which got to 335 pages (!) as of April 2011 before moving to [https://web.archive.org/web/20131222015247/http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=31 its current location], is a so-called "double-blind what-if" in which posters role-play veterans of the war depicted in the movie. Much discussion on weapons and campaigns of the war, as well as on the fates of surviving movie characters; for example, {{spoiler|Colonel Bella ended up defecting to the Allied side shortly after the events of the movie, became a U.S. citizen and helped U.S. authorities track down war criminals after the end of the war.}}
** [[Red Dawn Plus 20|Now has its own Tropes page]].
* [[Facing the Bullets One-Liner]]: God Bless America...
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* [[Mood Whiplash]]: The movie keeps shifting between pure [[Narm]] (often with lines about patriotism and fighting spirit) and genuinely dark moments.
* [[Narm]]: "AVENGE ME! AVENGE ME!"
* [[Not So Different]]:
** The Soviet soldiers in general. When they're not getting shot or blown up, they talk about their families, goof around, invent hilarious translations for English signage, and otherwise act a little like tourists.
** Subverted however of the Wolverines asks this when Jed is about to execute both a captured soldier and {{spoiler|The Mayor's completely unwilling [[The Mole|turncoat]] of a son}}.
{{quote|'''Matt''': "What's the difference, Jed? Tell me, what's the difference between us and them?"
'''Jed''': "[[Shut
** Colonel Bella gets his moment as well when the aftermath of a Wolverines raid [[Heel Realization|reminds]] him of his own guerrilla fighter past:
{{quote|'''Bella''': "I have seen this before. But these are my men!"}}
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'''Col. Tanner''': "There ''were''." ''(tosses his booze on the fire, so it gives out a great burst of flame)'' }}
** This exchange may become [[Harsher in Hindsight]] or [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] with the remake, since the Chinese <s>are</s> were the prospective villains.
** It's never explained what happened to the rest of the Nuclear Triad, like the SSBN's each of which carry at least a dozen Missles and most of which are likely carrying mutiple warheads. Or the Nuclear Armed B-52's, which were often kept on Airborne Alert during the Cold War. Apparently the subs and bombers decided to sit out the war as well.
*** It's an implied part of the backstory: one of the divergent points in this timeline was greater success by the nuclear disarmament activists in the 80s, as witness the political dissolution of NATO. Apparently this is the timeline where they succeeded in their goal, successfully applied political pressure to make the US dismantle the majority of its strategic deterrents... and then the Law of Unintended Consequences bit everyone smack in the ass.
* [[One Sided Battle]]: The Wolverines regularly wipe out [[Mooks|larger forces]], even though guerilla doctrine advises using a large number of guerillas to attack much smaller army units. There is some thought given to tactics however, such as making an ambushed force take cover in an area covered by claymore mines, or [[We Need a Distraction|using the girls to plant bombs]]. Also by the end of the movie all except two of the Wolverines have been killed.
* [[Pragmatic Villainy]]: As stated above, Bella opposes killing civilians not because it is morally wrong but because it increases support for the Wolverines.
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* [[The Quisling]]: Mayor Bates. Unusually for this trope, he's clearly following the enemy out of fear alone, and is obviously terrified and disgusted by his town's [[Day of the Jackboot|new occupiers]].
* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: The [[Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan]] inspired the film.
* [[Reality Ensues]]: At times it's shown that it takes more than just waving a gun around to fight a war.
* [[Reality Subtext]]: The current political climate necessitated the change of the antagonists in the remake from China to North Korea.
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** Though to be fair, they were likely starving by that point.
* [[Spot the Imposter]]: On being asked what's the capital of Texas, Colonel Tanner replies "Austin" and is immediately accused by Toni of being a [[Dirty Communist]]. He replies that she's seen too many movies. It doesn't help that Tanner's answer that Austin was the capital of Texas was correct, while Toni was certain that ''[[What an Idiot!|Houston]]'' was its capital. Likely a [[Shout-Out]] to a well-known incident during the Battle of the Bulge (see the [[Real Life]] section of [[Spot the Imposter]]).
* [[Truth in Television]]: When the film was released, NPR had a former member of the Dutch Resistance give a review of it. He said the movie exactly portrayed the life of a partisan force, including the desperation, mistrust, and "cannibalism" (ie, "swallowed a bug" scene) that occurs.
* [[Token Minority]]: Averted for the remake. Early scripts mentioned an Asian American Wolverine named Erica Yu. However, "Erica" is now being played by the white Isabel Lucas.
** [[Token Enemy Minority]]: The remake's [[Wikipedia]] page lists Asian American actor Ken Choi as part of the [[wikipedia:Red Dawn (upcoming film)#Cast|cast]]. His character's surname is Smith so it can be presumed that he's a [[But Not Too Black|half-white]] American good guy. Alternately, he may be adopted, or the name could be a placeholder.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]▼
[[Category:Red Dawn]]▼
[[Category:Film]]
▲[[Category:Films of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Riff Trax]]
[[Category:Military and Warfare Films]]
[[Category:Multiple Works Need Separate Pages]]
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