film: gi joe movie

[warpedmind]

i used to watch these cartoons when i was younger. and i cant wait till this comes out, scarlett johansen, mark wahlberg, are involved so far, so hopefully they dont keep it true to the original comics and cartoons

 

[supertrav77]

I ask you, what is the slogan of G.I. Joe? I ask, what is it?
G.I. Joe: A REAL AMERICAN HERO!!!
Now I've heard that in this movie, they make G.I. Joe some United Nations strike force based out of Belgium or some shit.
If that's the case...
Fuck. This. Movie.

 

[TALLY]

^Thats some bullshit.

Now I know this movie will suck and knowing is half the battle.

 

[bRoken&foRgoTTen]

Synopsis

Stephen Sommers will direct (here's hoping he reigns in the CG), from a script by Stuart Beattie. The story is set at Brussels-based GIJOE, an acronym for the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, and revolves around an international co-ed force of operatives who use high-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil org headed by a Scottish arms dealer. --Real Movie News 11/20/07

cast

Say it ain't so, G.I. Joe.

The popular all-American comic-book military man and action figure dating back to the 1940s is undergoing a significant transformation for the Paramount Pictures-distributed "G.I. Joe" film, which begins production in February and is scheduled for release in summer 2009.

No longer will G.I. Joe be a U.S. Special Forces soldier, the "Real American Hero" who, in his glory days, single-handedly won World War II.

In the politically correct new millennium, G.I. Joe bears no resemblance to the original.

Paramount has confirmed that in the movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.

The studio won't elaborate, saying filming hasn't begun and details are still in the works, but the behind-the-scenes rumblings are that the producers have decided to change the nature of G.I. Joe in order to appeal to a wider, more international audience.

The word is that in the current political climate, they're afraid that a heroic U.S. soldier won't fly.

Joe's transformation, however, isn't sitting well with diehard fans and military types.

"I find it outrageous that they'd want to drop everything American" from the character, said conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston, who wrote about the rumors this week on Newsbusters.org and his own blog. "That's nuts."

Retired Army Col. David W. Hunt, a FOX News military and terrorism analyst, called the scheme to make a whole new Joe "a shame."

"G.I. Joe is a U.S. guy," Hunt said. "What are we going to call it — Global Joe? International Joe? It's kind of stupid. It's ridiculous that they're doing that."

Paramount wouldn't say whether an American would be part of the new "global entity," nor would it offer specifics about the storyline or the characters.

"It is too early to tell about plots. We just don't know that," Jessica Rovins, a marketing executive at Paramount, told FOXNews.com.

But she did confirm the accuracy of an article that ran in the film trade publication Variety, which reported last week that G.I. Joe the soldier is being transformed into G.I.J.O.E. the task force.

A Navy spokeswoman said the studio and film's writers have already approached people at the Pentagon for input.

"They had talked about what would be the best way forward, but without seeing a treatment we don’t know yet which way it’s going to go," Lt. Stephanie Murdock, a project officer in the Navy Office of Information West, told FOXNews.com. "We're definitely open to assisting them when they get around to asking us."

But with no script in hand, she said, it's hard to gauge how the military feels about the characterization of G.I. Joe.

The comic-book character and toy line have already undergone an evolution of sorts since Joe first won the hearts of American little boys — and some little girls — beginning in 1942 with the comic strip and in the early 1960s with the action figure.

In the 1940s, he debuted as a comic-book hero in a strip that ran in U.S. military magazines during World War II.

In the 1960s, G.I. Joe was a burly U.S. Special Forces soldier, the "Real American Hero" of both comic book and action figure fame. The doll had various versions and counterparts of different races and ethnicities, but he was clearly an American male soldier.

In the post-Vietnam War era in the 1970s, Hasbro decided to downplay G.I. Joe's military theme by renaming the line "The Adventures of G.I. Joe" and recasting Joe as the leader of an adventure team charged with espionage missions and fighting evil.

But in the 1980s, the toy company Hasbro made G.I. Joe more of a superhero and added a host of other action figures, expanding the line to include characters that made up a team of international operatives.

Now some critics say the globalization of G.I. Joe has gone too far.

"G.I. Joe is not an international hero. That's crap," said Col. Hunt. "They don't have to water it down. That doesn't make sense."

For blogger Huston, who played with G.I. Joe as a boy, transforming the entire character into an amorphous task force in the movie feels like a hit to his childhood memories.

"I certainly understand that it's for international audiences, but these things are American icons," he said. "Why even pretend it's G.I. Joe then? I am a little bit upset about the whole thing."

Huston believes it's the latest example of Hollywood's hostility toward all things American, and he said he probably won't go to see the film if the existing plans are executed.

"It's the last spit in the face of our military," Huston said. "The doll was G.I. Joe, the government-issued guy who was a hero and American. It was celebrating this one heroic soldier. They want to take even that away."

But in order to be a true success these days, a film has to play well to foreign markets as well as stateside in everything from box-office to DVD sales.

For some citizens of other countries — where sentiments against the Iraq war and the American government are strong — a U.S. soldier might not be the easiest character to get viewers to identify with.

Paramount's Rob Moore, a high-level marketing executive, recently told AdAge.com that it was too soon to know what the global response would be to the film.

"Until there's a [locked] script, I don't think you can really comment on what the international reaction will be," he said. "There are parts of the world where [the negative perception of the American government] is an issue, like Western Europe, and parts where it isn't, like the U.K., Australia and Asia."

Hasbro, the maker of the G.I. Joe action figure line, declined to comment about what's in store for its line of G.I. Joe toys and action figures.

But the toy company's chief operating officer, Brian Goldner, has previously spoken to the media about plans for the movie and brand.

"There are always challenges ... G.I. Joe is not just a brand that represents the military, it also represents great characters," he told AdAge.com. "We'll weigh our options. Clearly we do a lot of work on consumer insight."

The film will be directed by Stephen Sommers, produced by Di Bonaventura Films — which just did the highly successful "Transformers" movie — and written by Stuart Beattie and Skip Woods.

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[panic_the_digital]

Fuck this shit! If this won't be a serious retread of Team America, then fuck it.

 

[supertrav77]

Fuck this shit! If this won't be a serious retread of Team America, then fuck it.

I'm not saying that every movie has to be about America. But the thing is that G.I. Joe is a part of American culture. Making G.I. Joe a U.N. group is like making James Bond American. Or Zorro Canadian.

Here's Mark Steyn's take on it from a few months ago.

G. I wonder why the revamp, Joe
In the Hollywood version, the iconic soldier has lost all connection to the U.S. military
MARK STEYN | September 24, 2007 |

It's been a while since I played with G.I. Joe. At my age, it tends to attract stares from the playground security guard. Nevertheless, I vaguely recall two details about the prototype "action figure": 1)he was something to do with -- if you'll pardon the expression -- the U.S. military; and 2)he had no private parts.
Flash forward to 2007 and this news item in Variety about the forthcoming live-action G.I. Joe movie:
"While some remember the character from its gung-ho fighting man '60s incarnation, he's evolved. G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international coed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. The property is closer in tone to X-Men and James Bond than a war film."
Golly. So much for my two childhood memories: 1)he's no longer anything to do with the U.S. military; and 2)the guys with no private parts are the execs at Paramount and Hasbro who concluded that an American serviceman would be too tough a sell in the global marketplace. "G.I. Joe is not just a brand that represents the military," says Brian Goldner, Hasbro's chief operating officer. "It also represents great characters." And who says you can't have great characters based in Belgium?
The "evolution" of G.I. Joe is an instructive one. The term "G.I." stands for "Galvanized Iron"(which so much army stuff was made of that the initials became a routine speed bump in military bookkeeping)and not, as many assume, for "General Infantry." But it was certainly the poor bloody infantry who embraced the abbreviation, initially for the stuff they were on the receiving end of: in the Great War, U.S. troops used to refer to incoming German artillery shells as "G.I. cans." By the next global conflict, it was firmly established as an instantly recognizable shorthand for the regular enlisted man, as in Johnny Mercer's hit song:

This is the G. I. Jive
Man alive
It starts with the bugler blowin' reveille over your bed when you arrive
Jack, that's the G. I. Jive
Roodley-toot
Jump in your suit
Make a salute
Boot!

Who wouldn't love the American G.I.? He was the citizen soldier -- the hapless farmer, the befuddled accountant, the amiable grease monkey, pressed into service to save places like Belgium from the depredations of darker forces. It was the cartoonist David Breger who made him the formal embodiment of the men in uniform. "G.I. Joe" debuted in Yank, The Army Weekly in 1942 and planted a phrase in the language:

When the war was over
There were jobs galore
For the G.I. Josephs
Who were in the war ...

That's Bing singing Irving Berlin in White Christmas, a big Hollywood smash in 1954, with a score that also included the slyly titled Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army. Now here's another movie, from 2006 -- Oliver Stone's World Trade Center -- as discussed in these pages by my colleague Brian D. Johnson:
"Karnes comes across as a vigilante G.I. Joe action figure -- a born-again Christian soldier who says things like 'We're going to need some good men out there to avenge this.' "
Whoa! That's quite the etymological trip, from shorthand for the little guy to psychotic Christofascist mercenary in a mere half-century. What happened? Well, there was Vietnam, after which Hasbro decided the army was a bummer and relaunched Joe as the head of the "Super Joe Adventure Team." But, when that sputtered and died, he returned as "G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero."
Question: Can "A Real American Hero" be based in Belgium?

The article then gets pretty political and this isn't the forum for that. but you can read the rest of it here.
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/entertainment/article.jsp?content=20070924_109262_109262&page=1

 

[supertrav77]

I'm sure in your mind that quip was a biting comeback but put in context it's just nonsensical.
As I've stated, the term "G.I. Joe" originates from WWII to describe a typical American infantryman. The British equivalent would be Tommy Atkins or Jack Tar.
If you were going to have a movie called Tommy Atkins, you would at least expect him to be British and serving Queen and Country. Not some corrupt bureaucratic sham institution designed to give legitimacy to totalitarian mass-murders.
Now, I could understand if you wanted to make the case that the term G.I. Joe had already been corrupted by having a saturday morning cartoon that co-opted the name. I would disagree but I could have a morsel of respect for that point.
I really don't care if the movie is totally true to the series. But the United Nations is a blatantly anti-American institute and exists almost soley to check American influence.
Why would you make a movie where a group called "G.I. Joe" bows down to some corrupt kleptocracy like U.N. where Japan's vote can be cancelled out by Fidel Castro. Not "Cuba", mind you, but Fidel fuckin' Castro.

 

[panic_the_digital]

Maybe this movie is more about the New World Order. Maybe the Christian Right are on to something...

 

[supertrav77]

Maybe this movie is more about the New World Order. Maybe the Christian Right are on to something...

Next up... "Uncle Sam: WTO Lobbyist"

 

[L2R]

stephen sommers is another blockbuster director to whom i have an aversion. he relies far too heavily on cg.

poll added

 

[dshock]

This has since changed due to overwhelimg negative response from fans and even servicemen.

GiJoe is once again "A real american hero", not an international UN type organization according to Hasbro-

 

[dshock]

i used to watch these cartoons when i was younger. and i cant wait till this comes out, scarlett johansen, mark wahlberg, are involved so far, so hopefully they dont keep it true to the original comics and cartoons

Scarlett johansen and mark wahlberg are not involved.

Oh, and by the way, photos are out!