C. Thomas Howell Calls New Red Dawn Bad Guys “Ridiculous”

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Leave it up to Robert to tell it like it is.

The 1984 classic, Red Dawn, had the children of America pretending to be “Wolverines” before it was cool to be the adamantium-laced Marvel Comics super hero.

The opening of the movie set the stage with the Cubans and Russians parachuting in to a small town and killing the teacher who went out to greet them. From there, our young heroes would make their way to the mountains spilling the red blood of the red invading army.

“Wolverines!” – cue music – Robert would yell as he took on a modified Puma/Hind helicopter all on his lonesome.

This week sees the new Red Dawn reboot starring the likes of Thor 2‘s Chris Hemsworth and G.I. Joe 2‘s  Adrianne Palicki as well as Nickelodeon’s Josh Hutcherson. 

From the get-go fans of the original were turned off as the new movie was a much different take  — the bad guys has already won!

The Red Dawn reboot was initially set to have the Chinese be the new bad buys of the movie, which makes the most sense; however, MGM, the studio behind the movie, chickened-out like a Daryl Bates in the original, and sold out to the Chinese. Seems MGM either didn’t want to tick off the Chinese, who have become the new power-house in filming across the globe as of late, or they thought the Chinese market would reject the movie seeing as they were the bad guys. Regardless, MGM spent over $1,000,000 digitally altering all the flags to change them into a new enemy for our Wolverines — the North Koreans?

Yeah, the North Koreans who “we all know cannot afford to invade (itself)” says original Red Dawn cast member, C. Thomas Howell.

Howell tells USA Today, “How is that going to happen? That’s already stupid in my book.”

He continues mentioning how he feels about the differences between the two movies and offers his opinions similar to how his character in the original liked to offer his bullets to the enemy.

“There are already some fundamental differences that are a little funky. Maybe there’s good acting, maybe there’s some great dialogue so we can all overlook that giant leap that any Asian can play any Asian and it doesn’t matter — just (change by computer) any flag on there and get the movie out. I think it’s pretty ridiculous. if you really want to know the truth,” Howell says.

While Howell notes the “easy way out” the studio seems to have taken, he’s not all the bad guy that the Chinese – or MGM – might make him out to be after reading his comments.

“I don’t know how it’s going to hold up,” says Howell. “But I’m going to go see it and I’m looking forward to seeing it. And I hope it’s awesome.”

“Red Dawn” is currently in theaters.