Poats Written By Actual Adults
Apr 28, 2021 18:50:13 GMT
Post by Norman ‘Whiplash’ Mailer on Apr 28, 2021 18:50:13 GMT
forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/movies-that-killed-careers.1078944/page-10
JediJones
JediJones
I was a huge G.I. Joe fan in the 1980s. What the movies desperately need is a true fan who grew up on the franchise to produce the movies, like Spider-Man had with Raimi, Superman had with Donner, the MCU has with Kevin Feige and DCU had with Zack Snyder (admittedly Snyder's films had trouble with the mainstream but they're gold for people who love the grim and gritty DC graphic novels).
G.I. Joe was so poorly imagined in the movies as a high-tech thriller like Mission: Impossible. G.I. Joe is supposed to be just as comic-booky as the MCU. The team is supposed to be a huge mishmash of completely different, clashing characters with different personalities, specialties and costumes. They aren't serious and stone-faced, they crack one-liners on a par with any 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And there are just as many top-flight soldiers on the team as there are bumbling new recruits. Leading G.I. Joe is supposed to be like herding cats, because every team member is such an individual with their own ideas.
And whatever's true about G.I. Joe being a chaotic outfit goes ten times as much for their enemy Cobra. Cobra is in constant disarray with the leaders continually at each other's throats. They have vastly different personalities from each other, don't trust each other and are always backstabbing each other. Cobra Commander is one of the favorite characters because he was hilariously and ridiculously over-the-top, closer to Dr. Evil than a normal James Bond villain. He was a mustache-twirling type you loved to hate.
The overwhelming feeling you get from the G.I. Joe movies is that the characters have no personality. But the whole reason the franchise took off in the '80s was because the characters had such big, quirky, larger-than-life personalities.
I would say the movie True Lies came closest to capturing the exact tone of 1980s G.I. Joe. The franchise is supposed to have a lot of comedy. And a super soldier like Arnold working with a clumsier type like Tom...Arnold, against some real insane, cartoonish villains. Captain America: Winter Soldier was also in the right zone, especially the opening scene with the raid on the ship.
G.I. Joe was so poorly imagined in the movies as a high-tech thriller like Mission: Impossible. G.I. Joe is supposed to be just as comic-booky as the MCU. The team is supposed to be a huge mishmash of completely different, clashing characters with different personalities, specialties and costumes. They aren't serious and stone-faced, they crack one-liners on a par with any 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And there are just as many top-flight soldiers on the team as there are bumbling new recruits. Leading G.I. Joe is supposed to be like herding cats, because every team member is such an individual with their own ideas.
And whatever's true about G.I. Joe being a chaotic outfit goes ten times as much for their enemy Cobra. Cobra is in constant disarray with the leaders continually at each other's throats. They have vastly different personalities from each other, don't trust each other and are always backstabbing each other. Cobra Commander is one of the favorite characters because he was hilariously and ridiculously over-the-top, closer to Dr. Evil than a normal James Bond villain. He was a mustache-twirling type you loved to hate.
The overwhelming feeling you get from the G.I. Joe movies is that the characters have no personality. But the whole reason the franchise took off in the '80s was because the characters had such big, quirky, larger-than-life personalities.
I would say the movie True Lies came closest to capturing the exact tone of 1980s G.I. Joe. The franchise is supposed to have a lot of comedy. And a super soldier like Arnold working with a clumsier type like Tom...Arnold, against some real insane, cartoonish villains. Captain America: Winter Soldier was also in the right zone, especially the opening scene with the raid on the ship.
Yes, Marvel was heavily involved in the 1980s G.I. Joe relaunch. Hasbro basically hired Marvel to be a consultant to create the storyline for the 1980s toy line. Hasbro designed what the characters looked like, but Marvel's people named them and wrote their biographies. The main part of the deal was that Hasbro would run commercials advertising Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, to get around regulations on when they could run ads for the toys. It worked for both of them, Joe became a bestselling comic, at one time #1 in subscription sales, and the Joe toy line was around #1 in boys' toys a couple years after they launched it. And this is at a time when "war" comic books were a completely dead genre. No one was asking for them. There was even less interest then in military adventure stories than there is today. So it's very important to figure out what they did right for anyone who wants Joe to be a hit today. The comic book kept one writer for its entire run (Larry Hama) and that helped it develop an intricate, soap-opera like plot with a lot of secrets that were revealed at the right times.
The Marvel cartoon division was a completely separate division from the comics division. They basically took the characters from Hasbro after Marvel co-created them and put their own spin on it, with a little more sci-fi elements and humor. The cartoon also focused more heavily on certain characters than the comic did, and vice versa. The cartoon was mostly run by a former Marvel Comics writer (Steve Gerber, who created the Howard the Duck comic book and had a unique sense of satiric, camp humor that he sprinkled into the Joe cartoon too). Because Hasbro made like 20 new characters a year, I remember reading that the G.I. Joe cartoon series had the most *recurring* characters of any TV show up to that point in history, and was only dethroned later by The Simpsons.
What was really good about the Joe cartoon is that you truly could describe the personality of almost every single character in it. They had extremely efficient character development, distinctive dialogue and voice actors with a lot of energy and diverse, recognizable voices. It was also as action-packed as an Indiana Jones movie. It was the poster boy for being hated by parents groups for being too violent, but loved by us kids.
Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time tells the stories of how the 1980s G.I. Joe and Transformers were created here:
The Secret Parts of the Origin of G.I. JOE – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 1 – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 2 – JimShooter.com
This cross-promotion was a big deal to Marvel at the time, because, also according to their editor-in-chief, licensing Star Wars for comic books in 1977 probably saved the company from going out of business. Most of the actual comics writers and artists hated the licensed material though and only wanted to work on Marvel's core characters:
Roy Thomas Saved Marvel – JimShooter.com
The G.I. Joe movies are still primarily based on the 1980s characters, because in the two decades that Joe existed before that it was just a straight military doll with few multiple characters or villains. But the movies did a poor job updating the designs, capturing the tone and developing the characters' personalities. The movies don't feel like they have a core understanding of 1980s G.I. Joe and why it worked for its fans. Stephen Sommers was 20 when 1980s G.I. Joe came out, too old to have grown up with it. Compare to Sam Raimi who was 3 when the Spider-Man comic debuted. His movies feel like he was reading Spider-Man all his life. Richard Donner was 8 when Superman's comic debuted. Kevin Feige and the Russos were born in the early '70s, and could've been reading lots of the comics their movies were based on as kids.
The first G.I. Joe movie actually kind of killed the toy franchise. The toy line had been revamped a couple years prior with 1980s-style designs and they were selling very well. Then they loaded the toy shelves with the first movie figures, with their more boring designs (almost every figure in black armor or blue camo) and those toys ended up on clearance. Some upcoming releases were cancelled. The stores cut orders, far less product was ordered for the second movie, then in a couple of years the toy line was exclusive to Toys "R" Us only. A couple years after that they didn't sell them in stores at all, only online. All the old toys based on the 1980s designs have been going up in value in recent years, and they just finally relaunched a new version of the toy line in 2020 using designs close to the '80s figures which is selling very well.
The Marvel cartoon division was a completely separate division from the comics division. They basically took the characters from Hasbro after Marvel co-created them and put their own spin on it, with a little more sci-fi elements and humor. The cartoon also focused more heavily on certain characters than the comic did, and vice versa. The cartoon was mostly run by a former Marvel Comics writer (Steve Gerber, who created the Howard the Duck comic book and had a unique sense of satiric, camp humor that he sprinkled into the Joe cartoon too). Because Hasbro made like 20 new characters a year, I remember reading that the G.I. Joe cartoon series had the most *recurring* characters of any TV show up to that point in history, and was only dethroned later by The Simpsons.
What was really good about the Joe cartoon is that you truly could describe the personality of almost every single character in it. They had extremely efficient character development, distinctive dialogue and voice actors with a lot of energy and diverse, recognizable voices. It was also as action-packed as an Indiana Jones movie. It was the poster boy for being hated by parents groups for being too violent, but loved by us kids.
Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time tells the stories of how the 1980s G.I. Joe and Transformers were created here:
The Secret Parts of the Origin of G.I. JOE – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 1 – JimShooter.com
The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 2 – JimShooter.com
This cross-promotion was a big deal to Marvel at the time, because, also according to their editor-in-chief, licensing Star Wars for comic books in 1977 probably saved the company from going out of business. Most of the actual comics writers and artists hated the licensed material though and only wanted to work on Marvel's core characters:
Roy Thomas Saved Marvel – JimShooter.com
The G.I. Joe movies are still primarily based on the 1980s characters, because in the two decades that Joe existed before that it was just a straight military doll with few multiple characters or villains. But the movies did a poor job updating the designs, capturing the tone and developing the characters' personalities. The movies don't feel like they have a core understanding of 1980s G.I. Joe and why it worked for its fans. Stephen Sommers was 20 when 1980s G.I. Joe came out, too old to have grown up with it. Compare to Sam Raimi who was 3 when the Spider-Man comic debuted. His movies feel like he was reading Spider-Man all his life. Richard Donner was 8 when Superman's comic debuted. Kevin Feige and the Russos were born in the early '70s, and could've been reading lots of the comics their movies were based on as kids.
The first G.I. Joe movie actually kind of killed the toy franchise. The toy line had been revamped a couple years prior with 1980s-style designs and they were selling very well. Then they loaded the toy shelves with the first movie figures, with their more boring designs (almost every figure in black armor or blue camo) and those toys ended up on clearance. Some upcoming releases were cancelled. The stores cut orders, far less product was ordered for the second movie, then in a couple of years the toy line was exclusive to Toys "R" Us only. A couple years after that they didn't sell them in stores at all, only online. All the old toys based on the 1980s designs have been going up in value in recent years, and they just finally relaunched a new version of the toy line in 2020 using designs close to the '80s figures which is selling very well.