Cinemablend: In 1984 Ronald Reagan was re-elected based on, so far as I can tell, two things: he was protecting us from the vicious Soviet armies abroad, and he was making us all rich back at home. That same year two different movies came forward to represent each of those 80s-era fears and desires. In Red Dawn, average high school kids took up arms for their country to fight off Soviet troops that, for some reason, were occupying a town in the middle of Colorado. In The Karate Kid, an average teenager landed himself in a suburb packed with upwardly mobile 80s types, and straddling the ever-widening gap between the middle and upper class, overcame it through martial arts.
