“They are Coming for US.”

I had been writing a reaction to the newly released movie trailer for the remake of the 1984 classic Red Dawn, when this morning I saw the trailer for Peter Navarro’s new documentary Death By China. Like a song that you can’t get out of your head, Death By China hijacked my thinking about Red Dawn. I couldn’t go on writing because whenever I wanted to think about Red Dawn, Death By China was already there. The films fused into a single film in my brain that I have named Red Dawn: Death By China.  

As an exercise, I went through the trailers for both films and jotted down a list of events, images, and quotations that summarize each. I was surprised to discover how similarly the two trailers were structured.

Since I still hope to finish the Red Dawn post at some point, I am not eager to describe all of the similarities in an entirely new post. So, I thought I’d try something new, innovative and interactive. I have prepared a quiz followed by the two trailers. I think it would be fascinating to see how people respond to the quiz before seeing the trailer.

So, here it is. Half of the list is from the documentary, Death By China and the other half is from the fictional Hollywood film, Red Dawn. Try taking the quiz and then watch the two trailers and see how you did. No cheating!

OK, now that you have taken the quiz, here are the trailers for the film remake and the documentary: