Lots and lots came in overnight in response to my post. A smattering:
The Soviets in Red Dawn also executed many Americans for the purpose of drawing out the Wolverines. Does Plotz’s pathetic pandering imply that we are killing innocents in Iraq? Also, did the Soviets in Red Dawn shut down the American “rape-rooms” and capture the government officials who gassed the Nebraskans (obviously I could go on – what a pathetic attempt by Plotz to try to compare our invasion of Iraq with the Soviet aggression imagined in the movie or real in Afghanistan). Last, why doesn’t McCain bring up Saddam’s atrocities every time Obama says it was a mistake to invade. McCain should simply ask Obama if he would prefer if the torture and rape rooms were still open for business. Galling.
Keep up the good work
And:
I could either write a lengthy, night owl rebuttal to Plotz’s piece, or grab a cold one and shout “WOLVERINES!” from my roofdeck. Ah, choices.
And:
I watch Red Dawn every once in a while. I don’t know if you recall the rage at the movie from the left at the time. It is no wonder they are back to have another shot at it. I was a bit disappointed in the ending because I thought they wimped out. Remember the narrator says “The war ended as wars always do.” Well, I’m a surgeon and we have a saying too. “Bleeding always stops.” The implications are the same. We assume that America won the war but it is never stated. I always felt that they shied away from being thought too patriotic and “jingoistic” at Hollywood cocktail parties. Still, it is pretty good and head and shoulders over anything since “Rules of Engagement.”
[Update: Lots of readers (rightly) object to the suggestion the Americans might not have won. From a reader: “The movie makers clearly implied we won by virtue of the existence of the resistance memorial.”
And, finally, I fear this reader is right:
Plotz illustrates why the remake will suck. The writer and director will buy into the same assumptions, and make the eleventy-billionth remake of a movie with a Halliburton-like company and a Dick Cheney-like CEO plotting to take over America.