G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

[Khaldun]

Broadly speaking, you've got three options when you do this:

1) Make it shitty in a way that perfectly captures the shittiness of the source material. This will not even please the nostalgia fans, because most of us rework Saturday Morning as an experience into something better than the source material at the heart of it. We don't want to have to watch, a la Clockwork Orange, the shittiness perfectly intact only with contemporary CGI. It's like seeing your parents naked.

2) Make it postmodernly self-knowledgeable about the nostalgic pastiche that we're seeing. See "Brady Bunch". Works, but it's ultimately not that satisfying. You feel like someone is laughing *at you* rather than *with you*.

3) Make it genuinely good while sticking in a lot of grace-note nods to the original material. Maybe you take the original premise seriously (see remake of "Battlestar Galactica") or you just translate 70s-80s pop culture cheese into 2000s pop culture cheese in some imaginative way.

OR

You can just make a sucky film that has no particular philosophy to its suck. See tons and tons of films that dug some old license out of the cultural grave.

[Velorath]

I don't understand the need for either the G.I. Joe or Transformer movies.  I grew up with the cartoons like a lot of other people here, but I understand that they were little more than half-hour commercials for the toys.  I'm not sure why seeing them turned into live action movies is supposed to appeal to me.

[Merusk]

Nostalgia.  Just like the reissues of the 80's toys.  What, you think the preteen boys are buying those?

[Velorath]

Nostalgia.  Just like the reissues of the 80's toys.  What, you think the preteen boys are buying those?

I'm all for nostalgia in many cases, but some things are ok to outgrow.

[Venkman]

I don't understand the need for either the G.I. Joe or Transformer movies.  I grew up with the cartoons like a lot of other people here, but I understand that they were little more than half-hour commercials for the toys.  I'm not sure why seeing them turned into live action movies is supposed to appeal to me.

While all the ranting here about Transformers has been done by adults, a lot of kids saw Transformers too. And enjoyed the heck out of it.

Of course, these same kids also enjoyed SW:Ep1

Cartoon Network broke the Saturday Morning paradigm and then the DVR finishing-moved it. Timeshifted Transformers, Clone Wars, etc, your audience is not based on their prime viewing opportunities. Many points of consumer engagement blah blah blah...

[Slyfeind]

That trailer did indeed look awesome. So did this one!

[Ironwood]

Oh, knock it off.

[WindupAtheist]

We non-Americans love American movies with American cultural imperialism stamped all over them. "Independence Day" was a laugh riot.

Apparently. Independence Day made about 2/3 of it's money outside the United States, a greater proportion of overseas revenue than... say... Dark Knight or any Star Wars. You guys can quit paying money for our cultural imperialism anytime you want, you know?

[UnSub]

You guys can quit paying money for our cultural imperialism anytime you want, you know?

We liked seeing the symbol of the US cultural oppression destroyed, so saw it multiple times. 

[LK]

You know what, you're all going to see it. You're going to turn your brains off, step into the theater, and enjoy yourselves.

That's my goal. A pleasant experience. I'm not expecting this movie to change the world. I'm expecting some entertainment. There are enough quality people involved that I don't expect a clusterfuck.

But your perceptions will be colored if you were a huge fan of the original IP.

[stray]

You know what, you're all going to see it.

You don't understand how much I dislike Channing Tatum. I'd rather watch a marathon of Jeff Fahey films.

[Velorath]

You know what, you're all going to see it. You're going to turn your brains off, step into the theater, and enjoy yourselves.

I didn't watch Transformers and I'm not watching this either.  The trailer looked like bland shit, the Director sucks, and Christopher Eccleston is the only actor in it worth watching.  Also it looks like they kidnapped the costume designer from the X-men movies.  If I have to see a movie with Channing Tatum in it this coming summer, it'll be Public Enemies.

[Musashi]

All I ask is that it's an American organization. They could make up all their own characters, ditch Cobra, and make them fight the aliens from Indy 4, and I would eat it up as long as they were American instead of this weird multi-national thingie.

We non-Americans love American movies with American cultural imperialism stamped all over them. "Independence Day" was a laugh riot.

Well, while this is a good point, GI Joe was created to sell to American children and said right on the package "A Real American Hero!" It'd be like taking some book or toy or whatever from wherever you are that is basically wrapped up in your country and changing it just to make more money off of it.

Oh, I completely understand that the US would never take an existing IP from another country, Americanise it up and then sell it into the world market.

Oh just shut the fuck up and eat your McNuggets already.

I kid.

Also.  Am I seeing that Eccleston quit being Doctor Who to pursue serious roles like this movie?  Huh.

And finally.  I wish they would stop fagging up my childhood with live action remakes.  Sometimes the medium is part of the success.

[Bandit]

And finally.  I wish they would stop fagging up my childhood with live action remakes.  Sometimes the medium is part of the success.

[Musashi]

touche

[Merusk]

Looking back it amazes me how little detail was in the animation itself, but they'd always draw that Marine tatoo in excruciating detail.

[stray]

I used to watch it a ton, but oddly, I don't remember a damn thing about it.

Also, fuck childhood. What I do specifically remember is playing with a few friends, like we tended to do, fighting with our action figures and shit -- and me having the sudden realization to stand up and say "Fuck this", walking away, and looking for a girl to hang out with. I was 10. A good age for childhood to die.

[Oban]

I always wondered why they ran away from large rolling boulders/objects by running directly in front of them instead of going right or left.

It was probably just a way to cut down on the amount of animation required, but it used to drive me (more) nuts as a kid.

Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atXIKI2XHj4

[dusematic]

lol.  "respect the source." 

[Nevermore]

[UnSub]

Cobra Commander or Voldo? You decide!

(On the topic of Voldo, I hadn't seen this Dance Voldo Dance clip before. Clever, and then it goes exactly where you think it would at about 2:20.)

[Broughden]

"Its our new accelerator suit"

"What does it accelerate?"

"You."


That shit was awesome on the big screen.
And it has fucking ninjas!

[Lakov_Sanite]

"Its our new accelerator suit"

"What does it accelerate?"

"You."


That shit was awesome on the big screen.
And it has fucking ninjas!

G.I. joe as master chief style cyber super-soldiers is beyond retarded.  It's like they saw how much money iron man made and just decided real people aren't interesting.  It could have been a great movie if hollywood wasn't so deathly afraid of showing kids guns.  How much do you want to bet that the joes don't even get anything resembling guns in this movie?  Oh sure in the cartoon all the guns shot lasers but they still looked like guns, kids weren't fooled. 

I'm not saying this should be rambo but there was a lot of potential for john woo style coolness with real actors but instead all the cool stuff we'll see if going to be people in cgi battlesuits.  They could have just named this movie "the centurians" and been more faithful to that cartoon instead of G.I. Joe

[WindupAtheist]

G.I. Joe was hysterically ridiculous and as source material deserves no particular respect. Tell me it was good, tell me it was worthless shit, but don't tell me it "wasn't faithful enough" to it's dumbass badly-animated toy commerical roots.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't give a good god damn about the source material but god dammit there's much better things they could have done with this than HALO:the movie.

[dusematic]

G.I. Joe was hysterically ridiculous and as source material deserves no particular respect. Tell me it was good, tell me it was worthless shit, but don't tell me it "wasn't faithful enough" to it's dumbass badly-animated toy commerical roots.

Hauntingly, intensely true.

[Ingmar]

G.I. Joe was hysterically ridiculous and as source material deserves no particular respect. Tell me it was good, tell me it was worthless shit, but don't tell me it "wasn't faithful enough" to it's dumbass badly-animated toy commerical roots.

Whatever man, if it doesn't have Shipwreck in his little sailor hat, it ain't G.I. Joe. It would be like He-Man without Man-at-Arms.

[UnSub]

G.I. joe

real people

 
 

[Ratman_tf]

Nostalgia.  Just like the reissues of the 80's toys.  What, you think the preteen boys are buying those?

I'm all for nostalgia in many cases, but some things are ok to outgrow.

And are you setting yourself up as the nostalgia police? I go to work, I pay my bills, I interact with people on a (semi  ) adult level. If I wanna get nostalgic about something from my childhood that I was fond of, I feel like it's my own damn business.

[Nebu]

The only way I'd see this movie were if it were done as a Robot Chicken-esque, stop motion animation film using real action figures.   Bonus points for using the 12" figures from the 1960's.  

Now I'm having flashbacks of that Michael Richards skit from Fridays!

[Ratman_tf]

I used to watch it a ton, but oddly, I don't remember a damn thing about it.

Also, fuck childhood. What I do specifically remember is playing with a few friends, like we tended to do, fighting with our action figures and shit -- and me having the sudden realization to stand up and say "Fuck this", walking away, and looking for a girl to hang out with. I was 10. A good age for childhood to die.

I gotcha beat. At 2 years old I was hooked on coke and had to fight for my fix in the illegal child fighting pits of Mexico.  I never even had the luxury of childhood toys. I had a rough childhood, eating gruel and sleeping with diseased hookers until I fought my way out of the seedy streets and crawled over the desert sands to freedom.
It may have made me a hard and bitter man, but I've still got a heart of gold.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Fine, laugh now but when you guys get a shitty watered-down iron man movie with marlon wayans....don't say I didn't warn you.

[Velorath]

Nostalgia.  Just like the reissues of the 80's toys.  What, you think the preteen boys are buying those?

I'm all for nostalgia in many cases, but some things are ok to outgrow.

And are you setting yourself up as the nostalgia police? I go to work, I pay my bills, I interact with people on a (semi  ) adult level. If I wanna get nostalgic about something from my childhood that I was fond of, I feel like it's my own damn business.

By all means, spend your hard earned money on the Hollywood blockbuster movie that's kinda loosely based on the half-hour long toy commercial we used to enjoy as kids, from the director of the Mummy franchise and Van Helsing.  It's just like the cartoon you knew and loved, except with exo-suits and some relationship drama between Duke and the Baroness.

[Riggswolfe]

Fine, laugh now but when you guys get a shitty watered-down iron man movie with marlon wayans....don't say I didn't warn you.

Like I posted in the Transformers 2 thread this is why I have no plans to see this movie. GI Joe wasn't art, but this is totally shitting all over the stuff that made it interesting. (What little there was to be blunt.) Hell, if they wanted to make a decent movie they should have used the Marvel comics as a base. It took the ridiculous GI Joe and made it kind of believable and cool. (for awhile, it eventually went off the rails.)

[Jain Zar]

I used to watch it a ton, but oddly, I don't remember a damn thing about it.

Also, fuck childhood. What I do specifically remember is playing with a few friends, like we tended to do, fighting with our action figures and shit -- and me having the sudden realization to stand up and say "Fuck this", walking away, and looking for a girl to hang out with. I was 10. A good age for childhood to die.

I gotcha beat. At 2 years old I was hooked on coke and had to fight for my fix in the illegal child fighting pits of Mexico.  I never even had the luxury of childhood toys. I had a rough childhood, eating gruel and sleeping with diseased hookers until I fought my way out of the seedy streets and crawled over the desert sands to freedom.
It may have made me a hard and bitter man, but I've still got a heart of gold.

This is beautiful.