Cooperative Modern and Future History Lists Thread

[Comrade Izaac]

hey y'all, this is an offshoot of the original and now unused AH Cooperative Lists Thread and will essentially be used for the same purpose, the primary divergence from the original being that the POD of lists should begin only after 1980, but can begin in the 70s if the scenario requires it; Nevertheless, try to keep it post-76' in order to keep up the general Modern/Future theme.

The Rules are fairly simple

1. Like I said, the standard minimum date for PODs is 1980, with a few exceptions made for lists that start in the mid/late 70s

2. Wait before one list is finished before starting a new one, as to prevent congestion and confusion

and that it's

 

[Charles EP M.]

THE SEVEN BEST ADAPTIONS AND REMAKES OF THE 21st CENTURY

1) When Willie Comes Marching Home (2013, dir. Spike Lee)

There had been a few films about the bloody US-Iran War but these were predominantly grim prestige dramas or direct-to-DVD shoot-em-ups. So there was extreme controversy when Spike Lee did a comedy film about it - his industry relationships were damaged, there was outcry across America (and Iran as well), and a few death threats. Some of the cast and crew dropped out. All of this was on the assumption that Lee was making fun of the numerous dead and injured soldiers or the nature of the war. Instead, in this adaptation of the 1950 WW2 comedy, Lee produced an aggressive satire of what the public and government both demanded from its soldiers and especially from African-American soldiers.

As in the original, Private Willie Kluggs (Donald Glover) is assumed to be a coward and shirker when he's forced to be a gunnery trainer instead of sent to war, but it has a vicious edge - he's not just shunned, his family's landlord turfs them out in moral indignation and the state TV news starts demonising him as a defeatist. When Willie is sent over, he's involved in increasingly absurd and heroic battles - he even finds Iran's WMDs - but nobody believes him. The ending has Willie being clapped at the airport and thanked for his service as long as he's in uniform, only to be booed as "the fucker on the news" when he's changed clothes. Up until the very end, when he finally shows disgust and swears, Willie has been the abnormally well-behaved standard bearer of the American military and unthreatening black masculinity, which gains him nothing.

While it played well in foreign markets, it did poorly in America until time moved on and DVD & streaming allowed Americans to rediscover the film. It's now having a 30th anniversary theatrical run, with Lee doing a Q&A about it - a final victory after the film forced him into low-budget D2DVD's for several years.