G.I. Joe Classified - News & Updates

[canprime]

Actual military hardware is non-trademarked and considered public domain. You can put all the F-14s and Abrams tanks you want in your movie, as long as you're making them yourself (either mock-ups or CGI).

It's the markings and insignias you can't use without military involvement. Like, Duke can't wear an actual parachutist pin, but you could likely get close enough without anybody noticing. And since Hasbro has been using their own insignias since Day 1, it'd actually be even *more* source accurate.


As an aside, I'm a pretty pro-military guy. I did 20 years in the Navy and some of the best people I know are sailors and Marines. I'm also an older Joe fan, so my formative years with the toys was more military-themed and less ninja and eco-warrior, so my idealized version of a G.I. Joe movie is very grounded military (for the Joes, at least.) But if there's one thing I learned from the movie 'Battleship,' it's that I represent a very small potential audience. While I would *love* a boots-on-the-ground, forward deployed, military action assault on Cobra Island Joe movie, I know that's not going to make any money at the box office.

There will always be a large audience for pro-military, "RAH-RAH" type of action movies. Independence Day, Pearl Harbor, etc. etc. are more modern examples of just such types of movies. Hell let's not dance around the obvious elephant in the room......Michael Bay.

Love him, or hate him, he does military, 'RAH-RAH" type action/popcorn movies pretty well. I mean his first Transformers movie is a clear example of what he can do in modern movies, and what he could do for Joe. The problem is that McBride's statements make it seem like he would want a smaller movie without the big set showpieces and all the military equipment that would entail (which is where Michael likes to live).

 

[Chooch555]

I had a teacher in college say every war movie is an anti-war movie. I think that's close to true for the filmmakers, but as an 80s kid I definitely looked up to the military.

 

[Chooch555]

The other thing to keep in mind for Danny's movie is it will probably have a modest budget given the performance of genre films lately.

 

[Fletch]

Right, I'm talking more about lower budgets or the days before everything was heavily CG and they needed access to the actual vehicles, such as with Black Hawk Down. Then you have ID4 where they had more F-16 models than I think actual F-18s existed, heh.

Oh, for sure. Pentagon-washing was notorious. I remember when the movie 'Annapolis' started production and the Navy tried to shut it down because it wasn't pro-Navy enough. So they just took their production somewhere else. I never actually saw it, but it was a bit of gossip at the time.

There will always be a large audience for pro-military, "RAH-RAH" type of action movies. Independence Day, Pearl Harbor, etc. etc. are more modern examples of just such types of movies.

Hopefully there's something more modern than 'Independence Day.'

I've heard 'The Outpost' was good, but I haven't seen it. That's maybe the most recent US Army movie I can think of. 'Fury' is a little older than that, but I liked it quite a bit. My oldest son loves war movies, so 'Primitive War' are still on the "wait until I'm free to watch it with you" list.

You guys ever see 'Act of Valor'? It's a movie about some Navy SEALs and, somehow they wound up using actual, active duty operators in the lead roles. I guess it gives it a more accurate tactics and weapons handling, but I still think it's easier to teach an actor to shoot than a shooter to act.

I had a teacher in college say every war movie is an anti-war movie.

That can't be true. 'Battleship' is so pro-Navy I almost re-enlisted.

 

[Chooch555]

Battleship was anti-alien. Grid not understanding motherfuckers.

 

[Damien]

Hopefully there's something more modern than 'Independence Day.'

Independence Day was 1996.

2001 had Black Hawk Down
2008 had The Hurt Locker
2012 had Act of Valor, which you mentioned and was originally written as a recruitment ad before becoming a movie
2012 also had Zero Dark Thirty
2013 had Lone Survivor
2014 had American Sniper
2014 also had Fury
2016 had Hacksaw Ridge
2022 had Top Gun: Maverick

Had to look up dates, but those movies were just off the top of my head. Whether glorifying the US specifically, or just presenting US soldiers as ultra-badass near-superhumans is never far from the box office.



To the earlier conversation about the appropriateness or off-putting nature of all the more realistic (or semi-realistic) guns and stuff; it actually doesn't bother me at all. It did for a while, but I've sort of revised how I feel about it. I've mentioned before that I play games like Ghost Recon and, hey, I'm a G.I. Joe fan. To me, they all exist in the same fantasy scenario as King Arthur - something I also enjoy: What if the things that are bad were actually good? I enjoy the fantasy of a US military protecting the world and doing the right thing in the same way that I enjoy the fantasy of a good king that wants what is best for his people and the world. At the end of the day, it's ALL fantasy. And it's all underpinned by actual violence and suffering.

The mutilation of human beings by gunfire is no worse than the mutilation of human beings by arrows, axes, and swords. One is not safer or more sanitized than the other except through the distance of time. Which is not something I, personally, see as significant.

 

[AceofKnaves]

There’s a point of divergence for sure;

I do not now, nor have I ever enjoyed the military, US or otherwise, as a power fantasy, benevolent or otherwise. Like the idea of the U.S. military “protecting the world” always read as creepy rather than aspirational to me. Even as a super little kid in the 80s. GI Joe “stuck” for me as a fandom when I locked into the comics where while the *soldiers* might be good guys, the *military* (as represented by The Jugglers) were absolutely THE BAD GUYS. See also: my hatred for Sunbow Duke.

I’m also very much a King Arthur fan by way of The Once and Future King, so I’m actually not into the “benevolent king” power fantasy either, but rather want to deconstruct it.

G.I. Joe and the Punisher are really the only areas of interest I have that heavily feature guns, and I’m not at peace with it really, except in that I perceive the Punisher as a psychopathic serial killer with character depth rather than a “hero”, and the only real “hero” I recognize in Joe is Snake-Eyes, with the rest being supporting characters and/or villains that don’t require me being “OK” with their methods and proclivities. Although of course Snake-Eyes does use guns, but that’s not what draws me to him.

Hmm, I don’t know. I’ve weird to think about how I want Joe “handled” in media, since enjoying it in the first place would be pretty out of character for me if not for the “action figures” of it all. I do know that at the end of the day, I am uncomfortable glorifying current-use military violence. It does hit differently than historical violence for me, largely because of the implied propaganda of it all. One cannot be coerced by media into becoming a samurai nor a medieval knight, by one can easily be coerced by media into being sucked into military service or simply into glorifying the use of firearms. Perhaps I’d feel less strongly about it if I didn’t watch school shootings go from “so rare it’s nearly unthinkable” to “meh, it’s just a regular Tuesday and also shut up with your woke liberal Dumb-o-crat anti-gun whining” just in my adult lifetime.

 

[Ru1977]

Red Dog and Taurus in stock at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH7BBPZD?lv=shuf&tag=enewsi-20&channelId=1&plpRedirect=mhFallback

 

[Chooch555]

One cannot be coerced by media into becoming a samurai nor a medieval knight

Challenge accepted.

 

[Fletch]

while the *soldiers* might be good guys, the *military* (as represented by The Jugglers) were absolutely THE BAD GUYS.

I had to look the term up; I didn't remember the name "Jugglers" at all.

I also remember the generals as just being bureaucratic obstacles more than actual bad guys, but since my memory is obviously weak here, I don't have much of an argument.

I *do* like the perspective of how a more distasteful version of the main anti-hero makes the main characters more palatable. It's basically what got us Carnage over in Spider-Man.

Here, it's a clever idea that would surely broaden the Joes' appeal. I think someone mentioned something similar earlier, but i didn't recognize it at the time.

 

[Red Ogre]

God and guns. Destructive devices that belong in fiction, and nowhere else.

 

[docsilence]

I had a teacher in college say every war movie is an anti-war movie. I think that's close to true for the filmmakers, but as an 80s kid I definitely looked up to the military.

I think at one point movies were inherently anti-war - hard to look at a lot of old movies as pro-war, particularly by folks who lived through WWII and Vietnam. There's a DISTINCT shift post 9/11 (and arguably earlier) where instead of exploring the brutality of countries sending men and boys to kill each other over pointless reasons, it became about how fuckin' cool those badass solders are. We're worse for it. (One of the reasons I LOVED the Netflix Punisher series is while it's filled with guns, the central theme is: violence fucked all of these men up and we've done nothing to help them heal. Which, staying in theme with the thread we're in, is PROBABLY way too heavy for a GI Joe movie.)

The mutilation of human beings by gunfire is no worse than the mutilation of human beings by arrows, axes, and swords. One is not safer or more sanitized than the other except through the distance of time. Which is not something I, personally, see as significant.

Not disagreeing that the atrocities committed on the human body by any weapon one of us monkeys picks up and uses to try to kill another monkey are all awful, but there's something about the casualness of modern gun culture that makes arrows and swords seem less malignant when put on screen. (Arrow injuries, FUCK, those are VILE). I think back to when I was doing more medical writing and talking with ER doctors about gunshot injuries. A lot of them were like "we should post pictures of the devastation wrought on every patient who is wheeled in with a gunshot wound to try to get people to take this shit seriously."

There was a fantastic, if horrifying piece in... maybe the Atlantic? Years ago, where a team of emergency room docs were permitted to share the photographs of people Frankensteined back together after gunshot wounds. It was riveting and horrifying. If we had 3-5 mass-arrow attacks a day in this country we'd be having a different conversation, I reckon. I mean, let's face it, we arguably have better laws in the US about walking around with a functional sword or hand-axe than we do with guns. I can't walk around the state of Massachusetts with half the knives I own. And the media plays a big part in that in how they portray weapons of war.

I used to track mass shootings better when I was doing more of that kind of work, but after a while I realized nobody really gives a fuck, so I've tried to just, y'know. Know where the exits are when I work a comic con and stuff.

Anyway, I have complicated feelings about how much I like GI Joe. Probably why I was like one of three people who didn't care that they shipped the first wave with cartoon laser guns instead of industry accurate rifles and pistols.

 

[AceofKnaves]

There's a DISTINCT shift post 9/11 (and arguably earlier) where instead of exploring the brutality of countries sending men and boys to kill each other over pointless reasons, it became about how fuckin' cool those badass solders are. We're worse for it.

Yup.
I realized looking at that list of 21st century films above, I haven’t actually been able to sit through the whole runtime of *any* of them, except Too Gun: Maverick. And I’m *definitely* ooorer for having done that

Not disagreeing that the atrocities committed on the human body by any weapon one of us monkeys picks up and uses to try to kill another monkey are all awful, but there's something about the casualness of modern gun culture that makes arrows and swords seem less malignant when put on screen

Also yes.

Anyway, I have complicated feelings about how much I like GI Joe. Probably why I was like one of three people who didn't care that they shipped the first wave with cartoon laser guns instead of industry accurate rifles and pistols.

We should track down the third guy.

 

[docsilence]

We should track down the third guy.

So much rage at the lack of military accuracy that first year and I'm like "this Snake Eyes is so cool my pupils dilated opening his packaging, laser guns are FINE"

 

[yojoebro82]

If you asked me how to make a GI Joe movie in modern Hollywood I would have punted. I have no clue. I'm fine with it staying in the past with my Marvel back issues and Sunbow DVDs. But.....hearing McBride's pitch about it taking place in Springfield where everyone is secretly a Cobra.......sounds interesting. Does that premise lend itself to a "big budget" spectacular? Who knows. (How have those movies done so far this summer with MOTU and Supergirl?). What if it's lower budget and really interesting and fun?

I don't know who Danny McBride is. What else has he done? I know he is up on his Larry Hama GI Joe lore and that he originally pitched a Dreadnok movie, so he's a fan at least.