This is not your father's Red Dawn. It's not our 80s nostalgia Red Dawn either. Ironically, it seems to fit the 80s stereotypes a little better than the original. Where the badassery of the original Wolverines was based on their nerve and guts and possibly even their inability to comprehend the scope of the fight they are picking, the badass quality of their newer analogs stems from balls and brawn and defiance of the odds. This film is not a war story/coming of age drama, but an action movie. It is more swagger than slaughter.

While the American names are the same, there are differences. Tanner is not a downed Air Force pilot the Wolverines stumble over, but a Marines commando sent by the powers that be to enlist the aid of the kids in a war-winning gambit. Jed Eckert is a Marine himself, on leave (and technically speaking, a deserter for the majority of the movie) when the invasion occurs, and so right off the bat, the Wolverines have access to military skills, which in turn inspires that most 80s of cinematic cliches, the Training Montage. Also the grand old Minorities Die First trope resurrects after what seems active efforts to avoid it in the 21st century.

The film is also more optimistic and bright-eyed. The Wolverines' body count isn't nearly as high, and the deaths are not as questionable or futile as in '84. Though Daryl's collaborationist father and his conflict with that issue are touched on, there is little follow-through. Danny has a significantly reduced role, there is no Aardvark, being replaced with Greg & Julie, a Hispanic couple (or sibling pair, relationships are unclear in this version) who pad out the cast and whose names are mentioned maybe once each, and have little or no face time. Erica & Toni's relationship is also unclear, seemingly close, but Toni's claim to be an only child negates their relationship from the original, and anyway, they are just in the film to be love interests for the Eckert brothers. And of course, do their part in combat to prove that grrls are just as tough as boys, though Adrianne Palicki & Isabel Lucas are somewhat easier on the eyes than Lea Thompson and the Nose That Dirty Dances.

Another appropriate contrast between the films is that while the original featured actors from The Outsiders, a film about the futility of violence, this one teams up the actors who played Thor and Wonder Woman. That pretty much sums up the attitude of each film towards violence, I think.

Where the 1984 version featured a much more bleak ending, with the only two survivors of the group doing so because they quit the fight and fled to the free portion of the country, this one ends on a scene that could be viewed either as a triumphant coda or a "Butch & Sundance vs the Bolivian Army" ending. Though the rousing speech immediately preceding that scene argues the opposite, IMO, unless the viewer is obstinately cynical.

2012 hardly touches on the horrors of life in a communist-occupied America, or the rigors of partisan warfare (at the most there is a brief conversation about how much they miss pizza and flush toilets). It is also rather non-topical, as '84 was pretty much the culmination of decades of Cold War fears, and this one is the culmination of Hollywood running out of new ideas for action movies. While I have heard that the adversary was originally supposed to be China, in the actual release it is North Korea. The question of how North Korea is able to invade the US when we have a significant military force right across their border, hosted by their much larger arch-enemy nation, is handwaved by a mention that their allies are invading other parts of the country, with only the Pacific Northwest being PRoK's AOR. The truth of course, is that they'll probably sell more DVDs in China this way, whereas anything that gets released in PRoK would probably be re-dubbed and edited to transform the story into the heroic efforts of Captain Cho to bring order to the decadent capitalist American hellhole, in spite of the vicious juvenile delinquent terrorists inspired by their fast food and MTV rock & roll, so why worry about Korean sensibilities?

Fans of the 1984 version will enjoy spotting little homages to the first film besides the names & roles of the characters, such as the "the chair is against the wall" radio message and the trap-door rope-a-dope ambush.

All that aside, Red Dawn 2012 is still a pretty good action movie, if you ignore the greater scope and larger issues. It's probably even a smarter play to avoid direct topicality given the contemporary alignment of the target audience vis a vis local partisan/guerrilla warfare. While the message of the first film was "What if it happened here?" the current version is just an excuse for action and gun fights. But those are good things, too, and pretty much the best reason to watch movies.