10 Things You Didn't Know About RedDawn

[Music] released in 1984 Red Dawn shows a terrifying parallel reality of what the world might look like if World War II suddenly broke out as seen through the eyes of young teenagers who must grow up and take a stand and battle their oppressors after a small Colorado town gets invaded by Soviets a band of high-school students must head out into the wilderness in order to survive where they form a resistance army with both devastating and heroic consequences with an all-star cast led by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen so today get ready to yell out Wolverines as we look at the 10 things you didn't know about Red Dawn the what if teenage action movie from the 80s sorry let's do this [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] number ten before the dawn Red Dawn was the brainchild of director and screenwriter Kevin Reynolds who wrote the script while he was studying at USC and MGM got wind of the script and wanted to produce a movie based on the what-if World War three script but the studio wanted some changes to be made the original title of the movie was ten soldiers which apparently took more of a Lord of the Flies approach which showed the young teenagers turning on each other MGM wanted to make it more of a teenage Rambo movie so the project was given to John Milius to rework the script and direct the film Milius had a history of working on war and action movies having written the scripts for the first two Dirty Harry movies and Apocalypse Now as well as directing Conan the Barbarian so the project took off from now and original script writer Kevin Reynolds would incidentally go on to direct Robin Hood and Waterworld number nine filming locations despite being set in Colorado filming Red Dawn primarily took place around Las Vegas and the New Mexico desert before filming actually took place the cast of the take part in an 8 week military training course to prepare themselves physically and mentally for their roles and to know exactly how to use their prop weapons an old run-down Safeways grocery store was discovered on location where the store was reconstructed to house sound stages and even some scenes from the movie were filmed there yeah in safe ways that's pretty cool they turned Safeways into an action movie the only thing my Safeways got turned into was Woolworths right Luke number 8 CIA confusion most of the military vehicles seen in the movie were actually built and designed for Red Dawn by the movies production which resulted in actually creating replica Russian tanks this also resulted in what looked like Russian army takes roaming around the place yeah during the time of the Cold War might I add apparently when the CIA found out about these tanks they wanted to know where they came from and why they were there and after seeing them being transported through LA they followed the mysterious tanks back to the studio where they no doubt would have very quickly realized they were just movie prop tanks and then no doubt probably felt quite silly about the whole ordeal [Music] number seven filming wise the movie starts off with 36 paratroopers falling from the sky and attacking a high school however when filming this scene the stunt didn't go too well for five of the paratrooper stuntmen who were taken off course from the deject area of where they were meant to land of which one of them got stuck in a tree we're in a situation that could have been written for a South Park episode the helpless stuntman had to convince the surrounding locals that he was in fact not an enemy soldier while filming actor Patrick Swayze suffered frostbite tease fingers he recalled that the pain felt like having toothpicks shoved down his fingernails but thankfully the frostbite he suffered wasn't too severe heck otherwise we would not be able to have the famous sexy pottery scene and ghost Charlie Sheen was terrified of his co-star William Smith who played a Russian Colonel Sheen said they even while not filming when Smith was on the set he was still terrifying and not someone he felt that he could talk to and put it down to him probably staying in character the whole time however despite all this and the grueling training for the movie actress Lea Thompson said it was the most fun she ever had working on a film well at least she had a good time can't say the same about Patrick Swayze and his mr. freeze fingers [Music] number six deleted scenes [Music] one trailer for Red Dawn revealed a scene of enemy soldiers approaching a McDonald's a scene that was actually cut from the final film it was said that the scene was cut due to a real-life murder that took place at a McDonald's in California which occurred several weeks before Red Dawn was set to be released there was also going to be more of a romantic subplot between Leah Thompson's Erica character and the lieutenant colonel Andy character played by powers Boothe which was scrapped due to the character's age gap Lea Thompson said the love affair between the characters is why she accepted the movie in the first place but that said I can understand why it was removed number 5 Red Dawn made movie rating history Red Dawn was the first movie to ever be classified with the pg-13 rating where movies could be aimed at young teens but also have a little extra violent sex and profanity thrown into the film but just not enough to make it an R despite the fact that Red Dawn was the first pg-13 film it was actually a rating proposed by Steven Spielberg where in 1984 he found himself in hot water over the amount of violence used in gremlins and Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom two movies that were advertised as kids films it's here that Spielberg pitched the rating to the classification board where on July the 1st the new pg-13 rating was introduced which meant that Red Dawn which came out in August the temp of that year could utilize the new rating rather than be rated R which would have ensured the sale of more cinema tickets although pg-13 does seem to be neutered in modern years and I can't help but think that if Red Dawn 1984 came out now then it would without a doubt be given in our rating number four movie posters red dawns movie poster was illustrated by John Alvin who designed many memorable posters such as Blazing Saddles ET Blade Runner The Goonies and many more and despite the fact that Red Dawn is heavy on the action he takes a more subtle approach with the poster as we literally see a beautifully illustrated dawn with paratroopers approaching an otherwise mundane sleepy town it's both soothing and terrifying and I really loved it then there is this really weird German poster and I can't put my finger on it but the animation isn't right and maybe even looks a little too cartoony to me it gives Red Dawn a Goonies Phil then there is this slick stylish one that came from Italy as we see silhouettes of the main team standing in front of a red sky it's not as good as the original one but it's still pretty cool and effective and remove the guns and weaponry and it can almost be an album cover number three the body casting method [Music] the two main female leads in Red Dawn were played by Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey both of whom would go on to have huge successes after Red Dawn with Thompson appearing in Back to the Future and gray appearing in dirty dancing however the methods used to cast the female parts were somewhat interesting as during the casting process while talking to the potential actresses for the film director John Milius would pitch to them a scenario what if you were in the wilderness and was starving and saw a bunny could you kill it skinned it and eat it and those who were appalled by the idea were immediately turned down from starring in the movie only those who said hell yeah eat that bunny rabbit it is dues day for that little bunny rabbit were considered for the roles so if there's a lesson to be learned here that is keep your body rabbits away from Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey number two dawn of the box office Red Dawn was made on a budget of seventeen million dollars and brought in thirty-eight million dollars upon its release so it doubled its budget along with making an extra four million dollars but it wasn't exactly a knockout runaway success Eva it was the 20th highest-grossing movie of 1984 of which was a year with a lot of competition with the likes of Ghostbusters Beverly Hills Cop and the Karate Kid to name but just a few several movie critics felt like the movie glorified war and turned what could have been a realistic observation into what World War II could look like into a hollow action movie but director John Milius maintains that Red Dawn is in fact an anti-war movie and further stated that many of the events and scenarios seen in Red Dawn actually happened during World War two but despite all this Red Dawn has become a cult classic with a huge adoring fan base so before we get to number one here are some bonus facts bonus number one real life mission when the u.s. set up a task force to capture Saddam Hussein the code name given to the mission was Red Dawn named after the movie with some of the unit's within the mission even being named Wolverines once again Iraq Princeton Red Dawn - number two unfortunate reunion Red Dawn stars both Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey who three years later would play the romantic leads in the romance drama movie Dirty Dancing however what makes this awkward is that word has it apparently while making Red Dawn they really didn't get along so we can only hope that by the time Dirty Dancing came along they managed to patch things up - number three director cameo see that photo of Genghis Khan in the classroom yeah well that poster was actually illustrated after red Dawn's director John Milius weird huh number one most violent movie ever made [Music] despite being granted with a pg-13 rating Red Dawn was still considered the most violent movie made for its time so much so it even made it to the Guinness World Records now I know what you're all thinking how can Red Dawn be the most violent movie ever made when also in 1984 Freddy Krueger was running around killing teenagers with his knife Club along with the Terminator brutally murdering everyone why do those films get a free pass whereas red door and is labeled the most violent movie ever how does that work well this is on the account that the movie contains 134 acts of violence per hour and 2.23 per minute meaning Red Dawn doesn't hold back and delivers a punch the claim of Red Dawn being the most violent movie was even backed up by the National Coalition of television violence the movie had a kill count of 118 once again as mentioned before if the movie came out today like as in this version not the 2012 one that everyone's already forgotten about then there is probably no way it would not have been given an hour rating putting the political critiquing of Red Dawn aside especially when comparing it to the modern world Red Dawn is an interesting and terrifying look into what might happen if war suddenly broke out no matter what nations are involved the scenario would be a bleak and devastating one Red Dawn is one part dumb 80s action movie and one part a more serious horrors of war story and I can understand why some people have problems with that tonal clash but just enjoy Red Dawn for what it is a fictional action movie which poses interesting questions from a movie perspective it is entertaining it does its job it has plenty of action good acting while also asking some serious questions while going about it anyway I'm minty I don't know that everyone is expecting me to yell out Wolverines to it the video web but I'm not gonna do it yeah [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Minty Comedic Arts

Views: 658,047

Rating: 4.8342218 out of 5

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Id: W4xpOUEndNA

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019