G.I JOE and G.I. JOE 2, It's about to get geeky in here.

Tom - That post might be the single most concentrated dose of awesomeness I've seen around here in a while. Thanks!

"It's funny 'cuz it's true." But this was a kid-oriented after-school American cartoon of the late '80s, so it's a whole different ballgame. I'm amazed this stuff got past the suits.

Since this isn't verified or official, I'll refrain from an "I told ya so!"

But still, it's such a ridiculously obvious course of action for Stephen Sommers, that I would have been more shocked if he DIDN'T do it.

http://movies.ign.com/articles/862/862126p1.html

I had an old-school G.I. Joe, a real bad-ass that you youngins would call an "action figure" when they were still called, er, "dolls." Alas, I tossed him up into a tree. When we got him down, a few months (maybe a year) later, he fell apart in my hand; Joe was held together by shoelaces, it looked like.

I think I moved onto to my pogo stick after that. Did that for hours, or so it seemed. I'm sure the neighbors loved the sound reverberating through our neighborhood.

As far as the boxoffice prospects are concerned, I have four words for you: ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS. If that relic could gross $10 kajillion, there's nothing stoppin' Joe.

more character images released recently, for those that haven't seem them.

Duke


Hawk


Destro


Baroness


Storm Shadow


Breaker


Ripcord


Heavy Duty

Here we go:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=52443

Thank goodness for Dennis Quaid!

Well, that looks like edited-to-ribbons, CGI-fest crap, now, doesn't it? Quel surprise.

Seriously, is life really long enough that actors like Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt want to waste precious months working on something like this? I hope they were paid well, at least.

Wow, that looks awful. I'm sure it will make tons of money.

I will agree that the commercial is hyper edited, but beyond that? I think it's safe to say that I have a cautiously dissenting opinion.

It's hard to tell how the movie will be edited or will even play from that trailer, but the CG looks fine especially given that Sommers has a history of using it with complete abandon and without a lot of evident concern for how good it looks.

Quaid and Eccleston both seem to enjoy chewing on the scenery.

The hyper action sequences with Joes evading gunfire and heavy artillery by doing crazy, superhuman gymnastics comes right from the cartoon. Even though I prefer the comics, I'm sure I'm not alone in having a kind of nostalgic affection for how hyper the cheaply animated actions scenes could get.

Sommers blew his short-lived cache with VAN HELSING. That was his last film and it was 5 years ago. He has something to prove so I'm not surprised that he's latched onto the military thriller/global terror comic/sci-fi action elements of this property to make the ultimate career reboot demo reel.

What that commercial shows is that he largely made the movie I (and a lot of others) expected him to make, but I sense a newfound sense of slickness that was missing from his CG monster mashes and a wee bit of earnestness to go with the soullessness of his technique.

Plus, Quaid and Eccleston seem genuinely cool. I have no doubt that Eccleston was self-consciously slumming, but he does it rather well and Quaid seems like he's actually cozy in the role of General Hawk. I know that additional shooting beefed up his slim role, so here's hoping that this one does well enough to warrant a sequel with Quaid as the central character.[B][U]

This post has been edited by Tom Kessler on Feb 1 2009, 02:57 PM

In the script I read, flying pygmy monster babies attack G.I. JOE. Sommers insists on one of those scenes in all his movies, which is why he was turned down for JUNO, THE READER, and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, among others.

Wow! He's a fan of SARS WARS too.

Wow. G.I. JOE: RISE OF THE COBRA really does look awful!

http://www.collider.com/2009/05/31/mtv-mov...tter-and-gi-joe

Oh, Stephen Sommers.

I've given up hope that this will be a good movie, but I hold out hope that it will be delicious trash. It looks like Sommers was trying to see if he could out-Wachowski the Wachowskis, but it looks as if he went too far in the wrong direction. Judging from this clip, I'd say that Timur Bekmambetov did it better in WANTED.

Imagine if Bekmambetov had done G.I. JOE. I have my qualms about a forty-something Hollywood director with no personal stake in the characters handling this property, but a forty-something Russian director who grew up in The Soviet Union directing a movie based on a Cold War era American toyline? That I would've loved to have seen!

This post has been edited by Tom Kessler on Jun 1 2009, 11:54 AM

Stephen Sondheim's G.I. JOE???

I'm feeling a little jet-laggy.

If they'd replaced Dennis Quaid and his whole GI Joe team with Jason Statham as Chev Chelios and shot this same film with the exact budget they'd given CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, and put Bai Ling in there somewhere as well, I would soooo want to see this movie.

(Movies like this should not have anywhere near a decent budget--it kind of defeats the purpose. Can you imagine how awful THE GREEN SLIME would be if MGM had decided to give it the same budget and resources that it gave to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY? You just don't do stuff like that.)

It's okay, Bob. I first read the thread title "Dog Soldiers on Blu-Ray" as "Dog Soldiers on Broadway", wondering if some musical producers had lost their damn fool minds. And I hadn't flown anywhere.

The plot thickens:

http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/06/11/rum...-through-gi-joe

Phew!

It's almost time. Would anyone like to say a few words?

I've gone from dubious to dubiously hopeful to hopeful to despairing back to cautiously optimistic again. The anticipation for this movie has probably been more of a roller coaster ride than the movie itself will be.

I have to say that the handful of reviews on RottenTomatoes are encouraging.

Yo Joe?

This is heartening.

http://www.collider.com/2009/08/03/exclusi...e-rise-of-cobra

When even the actors who appear in it (Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller) badmouth it, I can't imagine that bodes well for the film's quality.

G.I Joe deemed too good to screen for critics

http://www.avclub.com/articles/gi-joe-deem...-critics,31255/

Well, I'll admit to seeing this on opening day. GI Joe is about the only thing I get all "fanboy" about; grew up on the cartoon, had all the toys, later got into the Marvel series. All in all, I did enjoy the film, actually a lot more than I thought I would. I think I would've liked it a lot more if Marvel's name was in the credits instead of Hasbro, but it is what it is.


more detail and SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!






- I didn't like how the character interactions seemed to change for no real purpose. Ripcord and Scarlett? I don't think so, it's always been Snake Eyes and Scarlett, with a later love triangle involving Duke.

- Going along with that, Snake Eyes never took a vow of silence, he lost his voice cords while saving Scarlett. I guess the vow of silence adds something to the whole Hard Master murder plot line, but even that was a little screwed up.

- I loved the Baroness, until the end. I know a lot of the Cobra guys were involved with brainwashing, but the Baroness was just about the only one who was always at Cobra Commanders side. So she's only bad because of these nano thingys? I don't like that.

- Its almost like the writers got just enough info to write the script but then they changed all this stuff just to "update" it. I liked that they kept a lot of things like M.A.R.S. and the Destro backstory, but with zero details it was more like throwing bones at the fans.

- Those accelerator suits were pretty terrible. And the CGI of the suits was by far the worst part of the Paris sequence, which in itself was pretty cool.

- I didn't hate Cobra Commander as much as I thought I would. But again, calling him Rex, a bone thrown to the comic fans...but for what reason other than to have it there? The suit was alright, but the voice sounded a little more like Destro than the Commander.

- I thought they made the Commander and Dr. Mindbender one character, so I really liked when Mindbender showed up in the flashback.

- And Storm Shadow can't really be dead right? I mean, he's one of the central and most interesting, most conflicted characters in the whole series.

- Lips on the Snake Eyes suit? Umm...no, thank you.





END SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I could go on, but I feel like enough of a nerd for one night. I did have fun with the movie and I guess that's all that really matters. I hope a sequel gets made just to see where they might take it and how they might deal with the loose ends. It was really uneven the more I think about it, but it was still a decent summer action flick.