'Red Dawn' Trailer: Chris Hemsworth Creating Chaos

Whether or not you like the original Red Dawn, a product of Walter Sobchak inspiration and notable Hollywood conservative John Milius, it at least has a specific ideology beyond the basic concept of "blow s*** up real good." (Part of that ideology is a strong anti-gun control sentiment, as invading forces use firearm purchase records to find potential resistance, and of course the Wolverines triumph in part because they have weapons.)

Looking at the first trailer for the remake, which was shot a couple years ago but shelved in part because of MGM's once-dire financial situation, I can't tell if this wants to be anything but a crass commercial enterprise that trades on patriotism (an argument levied at the original, to be fair) or a subversive comedy masquerading as action movie.

Whatever this Red Dawn is, it features Chris Hemsworth in his pre-Thor days, as well as Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise (the younger Cruise, if you're wondering), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, most of whom band together to form a guerilla resistance group called the Wolverines, the better to fight off that North Korean invasion that no one has ever been afraid of.

So... Chris Hemsworth plays a Marine in this one? Doesn't that completely counter the original premise, that regular ol' Americans are able to resist a large-scale invasion? If anything, the fun of this trailer is trying to spot the other big reason for this film's delay: the fact that the invaders were originally Chinese and then digitally reworked to be North Korean, so as not to piss off the rapidly expanding Chinese market for American films. That also counters the original premise, since the Milius version was based on the idea of an invasion that actually scared people at the time, thanks to general Cold War paranoia.

Yahoo has the trailer. Red Dawn opens on November 21, just in time for people to either celebrate or mourn the results of the US Presidential election over Thanksgiving dinner.

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.