If you played Homefront, the new trailer for the remake of 1984's Red Dawn is going to seem like déjà vu all over again.
When THQ's ambitious but shallow 2011 first-person shooter first started its hype machine, the comparisons to the 1980s Cold War action movie rampant. Part of that is because the movie and the game shared the same core premise, where a foreign power invades and occupies American soil.
The two projects shared a creative contributor, too, in the form of John Milius, who wrote the screenplay for Red Dawn. Milius helped Kaos Studios shape the dramatic scenario for Homefront, which also had an ordinary town torn to shreds by the army of another country.
In Homefront, the invaders were from a unified Korean army. The villains in the new Red Dawn trailer are Korean, too, led by Will Yun Lee, who voices the lead character in the upcoming Sleeping Dogs game. The remake, like the game, has America invaded by the Koreans (who were, as with the game, supposed to be Chinese). The remake was in the works before the game, though.
Not surprisingly, you'll see some motifs repeating in the trailers for Homefront and the new and old Red Dawn films. Armies marching down suburban streets, swarms of enemy aircraft hovering ominously overhead, a ragtag rebel force fighting back… all of those plot points get trotted out in game and movie teasers.
The new Red Dawn comes out in November. We'll see if they go as far as Homefront did in its depiction of an American occupation.