I believe this is on-topic enough to go here.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/11/op ... eedfetcher

Man's got a point. I don't want them to stop making them, rather I wish they would be, you know, closer to the source material. Yeah, I'm a fanboy.

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Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons. Check.

GIJoe is the codename for a daring, highly trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against MARS, a ruthless terrorist organization posing as a legitimate business determined to rule the world. Check.

What did you want, exactly? For them to just re-do More Than Meets The Eye and The MASS Device shot for shot in live-action?

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No, I just want the characters to have distinct personalities, like they did in the toons.

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ROC Scarlett has more personality than Sunbow Scarlett ever did. Unless you count "doing googly-eyes at Duke" as a personality.

Both Dukes are pretty much on par, maybe ROC Duke moreso because of his emotional baggage.

Snake-Eyes had more too, mainly thanks to the presence of his rivalry with Storm Shadow. I mean what personality did Snake-Eyes ever had in the toon?

ROC Breaker definitely beat "Nobody's perfect" Breaker.

Heavy Duty wasn't in Sunbow, but his mean trainer (without going to Beachhead or Slaughter levels) definitely beat "rhyming boob" Roadblock. I also liked the joy he had in describing the Accelerator Suits. This is a man who loves his weapons.

Ripcord likes to joke around much like a LOT of the Joes in the toon, but on top of that he had aspirations and dreams to be more than what he was (ie a pilot). When's the last time you saw a Sunbow Joe try to be more than he actually was?

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Don't really see the point in writing articles like these, since they're not going to change anything. Essentially, it's just more nerds being angry about something they have absolutely no control over, and really, the fanboys just need to get over it.

Okay. We know you hated Transformers 2/Indy 4/The Prequels/Superman Returns/X3. We get it. We don't need anymore diatribes about how movies based on a children's toyline or comic books are cinematic toxic waste, because, let's be honest here: How many of these properties, when boiled down to their core storylines, would make genuinely good movies?

Giant robots from outer space that beat each other up on Earth? Probably not going to win any Best Picture Oscars.

To be quite honest, I think angry fanboy writers could better spend their time writing something original and awesome instead of yet another rant about how the GI Joe movie ruined their life.

Honestly I think all of them would. Isn't that what Nolan essentially did with Batman? And his take was far far better than anything before.

I think a mythology like Transformers, Joe or even He-Man is on par with that of Batman.

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Really now.

Care to ellaborate on that?

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But Batman, at its core, is about a grown man who dresses up in a giant, bat-themed Halloween costume and beats people up.

The idea is ridiculous. It's all in the way you adapt it. You could end up with The Dark Knight, or, er, the 1960s Adam West Batman movie.

The trouble is, aside from guys like JJ Abrams, Guillermo Del Toro, and Peter Jackson, there aren't too many true-blue fans of the material that take their time and do the original material justice-- all the suits see (and will ever see) is dollar signs, and they'll "sacrifice the childhood" of fanboys everywhere if everyone else in the world sees the movie instead. And buys the toys. And the Happy Meals.

The fans just need to accept that, because it's the reality, and it doesn't look like it's going to change.

Hollywood still doesn't understand that, if they get creative teams that are knowledgable and passionate about the property, it usually yields better results, critical acclaim, AND big box office-- if they did, we wouldn't have ended up with something like GI Joe.

Huh?! Okay, I watched the old GI Joe cartoon pretty religiously as a kid, and I'm sorry, but Duke, Flint and Hawk were essentially the same character, as were Lady Jaye, Scarlett and Cover Girl, and all three dreadnoks. Even those with 'distinct' personalities were pretty flat, even by cartoon standards. I'm not saying the characters in RoC stepped right out of the works of William Faulkner, but they were head and shoulders above their cartoon counterparts.

Now, Transformers 2, yeah, that was utter crap. And I love the first one.

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Both Dukes are on par? Bull "LASER BLAST". Duke from the 80s was fairly cookie cutter good guy ass kicker. Duke from the comic showed up at Flaggs funeral called all the OG joes a bunch of pansies and announced that he was the new top shirt. Duke from the current film sounded off like a small pre pubescent girl, he exhibited no leadership quality what-so-ever. Other then that he was fairly cookie cutter too, angsty, for no major reason, angry yet still ultimately weak, oh and he was a smoldering heart throb. Yeah well guess what you see heavy combat your buddies die. "LASER BLAST" happens "Duke" move on or ride or desk till they separate you.

Now Scarlett, lets see strong and confident in both the toon and comic, RoC she was cocky, but easily broken down. needs a man to give her her confidence back, yeah that's some progress.

HD and breaker are both a given. but then neither got a lot or really any play in either the comics or the toon.

Now RoC really handled the bad guys fairly well. Well until baroness decided not to be one anymore....

Ripcord went the buffoon route something that lead to other notable buffoons being offed in future incarnations of Joe like say Bazooka.

I see alot of arguments going pro RoC versus the 80s toon, is that just an easier argument to make sense the comic blew the doors off of both other properties?

Is GI Joe Shakespeare? No. but then how many remakes of the great bards works have characters and themes altered for no reason other then "making it accessible to wider audiences" seriously I read a "LASER BLAST" ton of comics from various periods of comicdom, from the "great" writers to the Rob liefeilds, Hamas early joe comics particularly from about 10 to around 110 are some of the best books I've read in the genre. There is character depth and growth, even for characters that are barely in it. In the Joe movie where is the growth? did Scarlett grow as a character because of a pep talk? Did Ripcord realize that he needed to step up his game to run with the big dogs?

Now I am sitting here in Minot ND with a dual major in design and creative writing (worthless paper I know), I wrote two major theses one was on the adaptation of the graphic novel to modern cinema. Right off the bat I took issue with the parameters I was giving, you see graphic novel is the literary worlds way of hiding the fact that it is a comic book, but I digress. One of my main findings in researching my paper is that the film industries standard for making something "accessible to the masses" is that they use formulas to dumb things down. If you have X percentage of highbrow humor, add a fart or "LASER BLAST" joke, so the rubes will know when to laugh. Lets not forget to make everything ethnically diverse yet with no real ethnic backgrounds so we can all learn that everyone no matter what race or nationality is just as bland as everyone else. So I'd say the complaints that fans make about various films that get made due them being based on a hot marketable property are quite valid.

I would say now lets look at the X franchise, Spidey three, Ghost Rider, or Transformers two but really whats the point. We all know that the most well thought argument is often just ignored. Neither side will ever change their minds, and everyone will get dick hurt. Yay internet.

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No, I love me some Marvel Joe.

But the topic IS essentially about Cartoon vs Movie here, considering the linked article and the thread's title. So I'm going with that for my comparisons.

Heck, another one on the list of "sucky 80s cartoon movies" was TMNT. The first movie was based more on the Mirage comics than the animated cartoon, hence why the Foot were human and Splinter was formerly a rat and not a man.

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Um...I don't see anyone getting 'dick hurt' here...just a friendly discussion about action figure movies, so it would be pretty ridiculous to get offended by it. And I'm sitting here in Spokane, WA with one of those worthless creative writing degrees, too, by the by. And I think it makes more sense to compare the movie to the cartoon than the comic. The comic, which was definitely stronger (at least up until the end of the Marvel run), had a lot more time to develop characters and story lines. Hama didn't have to cram origin stories, exposition, main plot and resolution all into a signal issue. The cartoon didn't really either, mainly because it didn't bother with any of that and just became a series of self-contained, formulaic, half-hour stories (and, really, it was a cartoon for kids, so mission accomplished). The movie had to cram everything into its allotted time since, yes, it makes sense to not just market it to die-hard Joe fans, which means some things will get glossed over that the die-hards will consider integral (same thing happened with the X-men, Spiderman, and other series). Remember, hardcore Marvel fans raised torches and pitchforks over the new continuities that the X-men and Spidey movies created, too (no better way to get a Spiderman fanboy to vent spleen than to bring up organic webshooters). I also think the movie compares more accurately to the cartoon due to both sharing a similar tone and mood (light hearted and intentionally campy) as opposed to the more serious tone of the comic. The movie wasn't trying to be an adaptation of the comic (unlike X-men and Spidey), so qualms with it not matching that source material (which has always been significantly different than that of the cartoon) aren't necessarily valid. It was trying to be an homage (not a direct recreation, and thank God) to the cartoon series, which, in my opinion, it succeeded in doing.

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Seriously, Jinay? Batman may be a classic but its entire plot is a young orphan grows up to be a rich guy with neat weapons who takes on crime in revenge for the loss of his parents. After that its all action. Sure some drama has been woven in over the years but that's expected to keep the concept fresh. The initial plot is not very complex at all.

GI Joe and Transformers started off with more complex plots - interwoven storylines - beyond simple good guys versus bad guys, within the first 30 issues you have the relationship between snake eyes and storm shadow, the relationship between snake eyes and cobra commander, the complexities of a bureacracy run millitary unit (i.e. the jugglers) - the love stories like candy and ripcord, cobra commander and his son, destro and the baroness. You can't compare the two - taking into account the age difference -GI Joe is like Young & The Restless while Batman is a half hour sitcom. GI Joe has a much more developed mythology for its age, and so yes, it is on par with Batman.

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I think CJack is right.

I also think that over time, a property has the chance to gain fans...talented fans. These fans grow up to be the people in the driver's seat and the properties they loved as a child flourish as a result. I get really upset about this all the time at work (I work in a movie theater) where other properties are pitted against the ones that I enjoy.

I don't care that Batman made more money than G.I.Joe. That really isn't a point. Why is there the need to compare unlike things this way?

In some ways, G.I.Joe has enjoyed the grown-up-fan factor more than Transformers. Wasn't the entire 1982 line born from the enjoyment of 12" Joe?

The idea of an appealing concept is also one often lost on the more literary-minded people I have met. To me, entertainment has a surface value and a deeper value. Either of these can be cheap or well-developed. Sometimes, people get too caught up in interesting camera angles, technical achievements, literary techniques such as foreshadowing or paralleled scenes...and they forget to make the thing interesting in pure concept.

This is imo, why certain movies feel more timeless than others and can have plenty of re-watch value. And it is the same reason why I can always go back to Joes and Transformers. No matter how bad the execution may be on screen, on the page, or in plastic form, I still like the initial idea very much.

Snake Eyes danced. And dressed in drag.

OK come to think of it ROC Snake Eyes has him beat hands down.

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