After a slow start on Wednesday and Thursday, the domestic box office roared to life on Black Friday and ended with the highest five-day Thanksgiving frame of all time. Holdovers were the main course, with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, Skyfall and Lincoln claiming the top three spots. But audiences also made room for new arrivals, including Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, the long-delayed Red Dawn remake and the CGI-animated Rise of the Guardians.

Considering the 2012 election cycle is currently in full swing, I feel compelled to lend my endorsement to a truly worthy candidate: The Campaign. As someone who unashamedly enjoys a majority of Will Ferrell‘s manchild cinematic escapades, I expected to like the pic. That said, I’m now putting The Campaign just behind Anchorman, Step Brothers, and Elf in my personal “Ferrell Top 4″: something I didn’t expect to be writing the day after seeing it. Sure, the film borrows a ton from Talladega Nights and Ferrell’s take on President Bush. It also manages to combine relevance, irreverence, and humor in a way many mainstream comedies can only promise and ultimately fail to deliver on.

Political endorsements aside, this week’s Top 5 contains a considerable share of The Bourne Legacy coverage, Joss Whedon returning to write/direct The Avengers 2, The Campaign interviews with Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, and more, the first trailer and new poster for the Red Dawn remake, and the news that some of Bane’s backstory was left on The Dark Knight Rises‘ cutting room floor. A brief recap and link to each awaits after the jump.

The first trailer for the long-delayed Red Dawnremake has been released.  Watching this trailer, I’m reminded of why we now use aliens for all of our invasion movies.  Being a superpower, it’s tougher to imagine the U.S. getting invaded by almost any other country.  The original worked in 1984 because it preyed on Cold War fears, and those fears no longer exist.  Even when China was the foe for the remake (a post-production change was made so that we wouldn’t lose money from their bustling economy; now the baddie is North Korea, which is laughable since they can’t even get a working rocket let alone an invasion force), there wasn’t too much fear, although that would at least provide a credible war.  I will say that the rah-rah freedom on display is kind of cute, and it’s interesting that the remake focuses on the characters going on a mission rather than simply trying to survive like in the original.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Peck, Isabel Lucas, Edwin Hodge, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.  Red Dawn opens on November 21st.

A sneak peek at the upcoming trailer for the remake of Red Dawn has gone online.  For those unfamiliar with the film, it’s about a group of teenagers who decide to take up arms and fight against a foreign invasion.  In the original 1984 version, it was the Russians, and the remake wanted to update the invaders to the Chinese.  However, after they finished shooting, the producers discovered that this might hurt distribution in China, so they decided to do some CGI change-ups to the flags and turn the invaders into North Koreans (in the hopes that you don’t notice that Chinese people and Korean people don’t look the same).

If you forgot that there was a remake of Red Dawn, you’re not alone.  The film was completed years ago, but had to sit on the shelf while MGM went through a financial meltdown (a fate shared by The Cabin in the Woods).  The movie was picked up for distribution by Film District in September 2011, and it will finally hit theaters on November 21st.  The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Josh Peck, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Connor Cruise.  Hit the jump to check out a sneak peek at the trailer.

With debut director Dan Bradley’s Red Dawn remake finally being released later this year, two new images have cropped up online.  The 1984 original, starring Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Gray and C. Thomas Howell, became a cult classic, thanks in part to a group of American teenagers defending their town from invading forces from the Soviet Union.  Look for the remake to cast the villains as North Koreans this time around.  The surprisingly strong cast features Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Josh Peck, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Connor Cruise.  Red Dawn should finally be in theaters on November 21st of this year.  Hit the jump to see the newly released images and to read up on some choice quotes from the cast. Wolverines!

The remake of Red Dawn, the last of the MGM films stuck in limbo after the studio went into financial meltdown, has finally found a distributor.  24 Frames reports that FilmDistrict, the studio behind Drive and Soul Surfer, has acquired the distribution rights to the movie, which was made back in 2009.  John Milius’ 1984 movie centered on a group of small-town teenagers fighting off a Russian invasion. It’s a fear-mongering Red Scare film that seems painfully dated even though the collapse of the USSR was still seven years away from the time of the movie’s release.  Dan Bradley’s remake originally cast China as the communist threat, but upon discovery that China actually has money and could provide solid international box office, the villains were changed to the economically isolated North Koreans because apparently one Asian race is as good as another provided you are a racist.

Final details on the deal are still being worked out but the film will likely hit theaters in 2012.  The film stars a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Josh Peck, Isabel Lucas, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Earlier this week, we reported that the producers behind the remake of Red Dawn were digitally changing the film’s main villain to North Korea in order to secure international distribution to the remake’s original evil country, China.  For those unfamiliar with the plot, the story centers on a group of teenagers who defend their town from an invading communist force.

The film was set to be released last November, but was put on the shelf due to MGM’s bankruptcy.  Producers are now looking for a new distributor and they’re willing to change the villain in order to make the movie more appealing to international distributors who know that China has some serious spending power.  I found the change to be ludicrous and racially insensitive, but producer Tripp Vinson has let me know that the remake of Red Dawn isn’t for me and that top men have said North Korea is a viable threat.  Top men.  Hit the jump for Vinson’s angry missive and my response.

The upcoming remake of the 1984 action flick Red Dawn had changed the lead communist villain from Russia to China.  But MGM, the studio behind the remake, has concluded that China, commie as they may be, still offers the possibility of lucrative international box office.  With this in mind, the studio is making it so that the country who invades the U.S. this time around is…North Korea.  The LA Times reports:

The filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from “Red Dawn,” substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.

Hit the jump for more on this silly change.  The remake of Red Dawn stars Chris Hemsworth, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.