Plot
In the original, the Russians and Cubans invade a small town in Colorado, forcing the high school students who escape to the woods to band together and create a military force called the Wolverines after their mascot. The movie takes place over the course of a few months as the Wolverines wage a guerrilla war against the Communist forces.
The remake on the other hand uses the North Koreans instead, and rather than a small town in Colorado, it takes place in Spokane Washington, an area where I currently live, more on that later. other than that its basically the same, in fact scenes from the original are even used in the remake.
The verdict: I liked both of these movies, however at the time that the original came out it was the height of the Cold War when there was a fear of Russian invasion, thus providing a bit more of realism. The remake on the other has an invasion that needed a setup with fake news footage. This took away from the realism a bit and an invasion by North Korea is currently in real life not a concern. Point to the Original
Characters
The original had a lot of characters, from Patrick Swayze and little Charlie Sheen, the many other high school students, the Air Force pilot, the many Soviet officers. None of them really got the time to be fleshed out, and no matter how many times I see it I only know the main characters as Patrick Swayzee and Charlie Sheen. That's really all I can say about that.
The remake did a little better, there were only a handful of main characters, all of which had identifiable traits. Plus I found this the perfect movie for Hutcherson's attempt to get into action movies, as his character starts as the classic Hutcherson character, and is forced to evolve into an action star through circumstance. The relationships here are also stronger, and when someone died it held far more weight than the original did.
The Verdict: This one was easy, I actually remembered the characters in the remake, which is the biggest factor. I wasn't a fan of Jeffery Dean Morgan's character, I was expecting The Comedian, or John Winchester, but instead got a guy I couldn't like. That aside, point to the remake.
Other Issues
Both of these movies have their fair share of small problems, for example; why did the Soviet Union invade Colorado rather than a coastal state, and with Cuba's help they could have easily taken Florida. Hell, how did they manage to invade without ANY resistance. The only explanation given is a sneak attack on the command center, but with all the spying going on chances are we would of had some idea it would happen, and been on alert.
The remake I'm able to pick apart a lot more, simply because I live near Spokane. For example, Spokane isn't a small town, in fact its one of the largest cities in the state, in fact the perfect location in Washington would have been my hometown of Cashmere, its small, in a highly defensible valley, the surrounding towns are small, and the nearest military base is at least an hour away. Plus we have woods nearby. Another issue is that you can't get Seattle news out of Spokane, though I must commend them for getting an actual Seattle news anchor. Then there was the deer, I didn't catch this, but my brother claims that the specific deer used isn't native to the state of Washington. Next there is the fact that Spokane is surrounded by military bases throughout the state. In Washington we have multiple Army, Air Force, and Navy bases, some within a few miles of Spokane, and at Eastern Washington University, the school I attend, there is an ROTC chapter where many of the students have already served. Then there is the Hanford site, it wasn't even mentioned in the movie, yet it is a large nuclear facility that isn't too far from Spokane, sure it was shut down years ago, but it is still a Nuclear Reactor that could have played into the plot, it felt like a missed opportunity. The biggest issue however is how few guns there were. In the Eastern half of the state almost every household owns at least 1 gun, my father's personal collection is in the double digits, same goes for his neighbor. In fact my friend owns a set of Russian military AK-47s, proving that some people even have automatic weaponry. It sort of bugged me that in the movie they had such a hard time finding guns, when I know there are a lot of them in the area. Also the movie claims the Koreans invaded Seattle and Spokane, these two cities are almost 500 miles apart with many gun owners and military bases between them, how did they only capture these two cities, yet the capital Olympia was left untouched? Lastly was the Korean's magic EMP device, it took out all communications, yet the Wolverines were still able to watch TV and use radios, sure it was the big explanation as to why they were able to invade, but it doesn't work when you see that the television still works.
But these are all small things that can be looked past. Besides there were probably millions of other problems with these movies. And in the case of the remake they tried to cover it up by finding an actual news anchor from the state to cameo, rather than an actor.
Final Verdict
With the score tied up it all comes down to which movie I felt was more enjoyable. I feel that if you combined the plot of the original, with the character development of the first film, you could have a great movie, rather than 2 guilty pleasures. Honestly, I feel these movies are almost equal, and depend on personal preference, personally I prefer good characters to good stories, so I liked the remake a bit more. That and the acting seemed better in the remake, made me enjoy it a bit more. So in this case I feel the better movie is the Remake. So ignore what the critics say, this movie did what it set out to do and was exactly what you would expect going in. It was entertaining and enjoyable, way better than some of the other crap that spawned franchises, I'm looking at you Twilight and Hunger Games. If your interested the original is available on Netflix, and chances are the remake will end up there as well.
If you have any thoughts on this topic, feel free to post comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment