[firefly069]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkLordMordred

The G.I. Joe films haven't been successful, because they aren't similar enough to the source material. They are indistinguishable from random action movies. Just because you call someone "Duke" or "Snake Eyes" or "Cobra Commander" doesn't mean people will get excited if the characters bear little, to no, resemblance to their comic/cartoon/toy counterparts. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were the only good parts of the first two films and then they ruined Snake Eyes for the Origins movie.

Agreed it was like the two reacher movies vs the amazin series. The Amazon series nailed it. I felt I was reading a Lee child?s book. The movies were great and Tom cruise is a decent actor but he was poorly cast for that role.

[Dirtbag]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Broca

Live action JOE projects aren't successful for the following two reasons. As noted in this month's "I WANT TO ARGUE! Pt. XIII, About the Next JOE Movie and the Billion Dollar Barbie," Lorenzo di Bonaventura simply lacks the requisite talent and skill needed to put together competent creative team that is needed to tell a good G.I. JOE story.

The JOE movies have had three, (going on four,) directors in Stephen Sommers, John Chu and Robert Schwentke. While Stuart Beattie, David Elliot, Paul Lovett wrote the screenplay for R.O.C. and Michael B. Gordon with Stuart Beattie, and Stephen Sommers came up with the idea.
Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick, (who wrote Zombieland and the Deadpool movies,) wrote Retaliation and Evan Spiliotopoulos, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse wrote the screenplay for the S.E. movie. Steven Caple, Jr. is directing the Transformers/G.I. JOE and the screenplay hasn't been written yet.

After working on R.O.C. Stephen Sommers career seemed to have plateaued with The Mummy flicks. Stuart Beattie went on to win awards for Tomorrow, When the War Began and Deadline Gallipoli for his screenplays. Michael B. Gordon, (according to IMDb,) isn't in the film industry anymore. It's interesting to note that he helped write 300 and a Robotech project that never came out. Post Retaliation John Chu has seen success with Rich Crazy Asians. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote Deadpool, (Nuff said.)

Before working on the S.E. Evan Spiliotopoulos helped write the live action version of Beauty and the Beast, (which was the second highest film of 2017,) Hercules was also successful at the box office. However, Beauty and the Beast and Hercules seem to be the only noteworthy bullet points on his resume which mainly consists of projects that were bricks at the box office or medicore at best.

The interesting thing to note is that Snake Eyes: G.I. JOE Origins was the biggest project that Shrapnel and Waterhouse worked on. They're also a writing team who have a total of 11 writing credits between them before being tasked with writing the Snake Eyes.

Now I'm all for giving muthafuckas a chance, but considering that Snake Eyes was supposed to be the film that was supposed to lay the foundation down for a JOE franchise why didn't di Bonaventura pick some screenwriters with more experience in writing these types of movies? I'm inclined to believe that di Bonaventura was "up against it," time wise and he needed to get out a JOE movie in order to fulfill his contractual obligations in order to maintain the film and t.v. rights to the JOE i.p.

I'm also starting to believe that di Bonaventura is having a "Loren Michaels/Saturday Night Live," effect on the talent he hires for these JOE projects.

The "Loren Michaels//Saturday Night Live," effect is in short executives stifling creative people's ability put out their best work. After watching 30 Rock and laughing my ass off for 22 minutes, (I watched it on a DVD box set,) I realized that Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan were some funny muthafuckas. I was trippin' because as I was thinkin' to myself, "Okay. Why is that Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan are funny as hell on 30 Rock and they were obviously funny enough to get a spot on SNL Why is it that when they get on SNL they're suddenly not funny? Ohhh, I get it. Saturday Night Live, (in this case Loren Michaels,) has a way of making funny muthafuckas unfunny."

The same holds true with Lorenzo di Bonaventura. LdiB had the dudes who wrote Deadpool, but when they were fuckin' with di Bonaventura the best we got was Retaliation, (which was a "meh," movie at best.)

So it brings us back to your question concerning the problem with the JOE films. The common dominator is LdiB. He doesn't have the eye to put together a good creative and when he does have a good creative team he doesn't get their best work because he doesn't know what to do with them. (Kinda like Nolan Ryan when he played with the Mets and Steve Young when he played for the Bucs.)

Also, playing a part in JOEs lack of success is Hasbro's laissez-faire attitude that they seemingly have towards LdiB and these bullshit movies that he's putting out. Muthafuckas think that just because Transformers is a multi-billion film franchise G.I. JOE should be one too just as a matter of principle. The issue is the people at Hasbro don't seem to realize that the thing that gets the Transformers movies over is the fact that audiences enjoy the spectacle of seeing giant robots fight on scene and G.I. JOE needs a good story behind it to drive ticket sales.

What Hasbro needs to do is became more involved with the JOE movie like Mattel was with Barbie. Hasbro needs to exercise its veto power over the scripts and have somebody (other than Larry Hama,) who's familiar with G.I. JOE take a look at the script and decide on whether or not that particular script would be a good idea to go with.

At the end of the day Lorenzo di Bonaventura is causing harm to the G.I. JOE brand with these lackluster movies. Hasbro needs to end its relationship with Di Bonaventura Pictures, negotiate a fee agreeable to both parties in order to get the film and t.v. rights back and find their version of Kevin Feige in order to have G. I. JOE reach it's potential and be the billion film franchise that it's supposed to be.

Preach!

[Dirtbag]

Quote:

Originally Posted by awol

lol

[popcorn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J James

I know the Barbie movie is making money but that doesn't mean Barbie is a more popular property than GiJoe at all.

Approaching 1.2 billion. I prefer GI Joe myself but I'm not living in denial that it is as popular as Barbie. At least people are watching Barbie content.

[sevenlima]

Bad decisions.

[Saboteur]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J James

This is really all that needs to be said about them. The writers and producers don't understand what GiJoe is.

Sommers did not. But Johm Chu did. Which is why we got a 10 min silent battle between SE and SS that mirrored the very popular Marvel comic issue #21.

Nevermind the fact that they redid the cast, and added the Rock and Bruce Willis.

What's more likely is that ROC did so much damage and brought so much negativity to the brand, that it killed any chances for Retaliation to even have a chance.

Sitting on the brand with no film for about 10 years, and plenty of time to reflect on why the two former films failed in their mission, it's far unlikely that di Bonaventura had no clue about the character of Snale Eyes, especially since he's been around for 40 years.

Don't know? Doubt it. Don't care? Likely.

This is the same dude who said we dont need the existing fanbase to be successful while giving the middle finger.

As is usually the case with Hollywood, it's not about not knowing, or not having a wealth of source material to draw upon (an actual quote from Kathleen Kennedy regarding the expanded universe for SW), but rather appealing to a small, vocal minority because it makes them (the film studios, producers, etc appear as if they are current and relevant.

But history has shown, those people to whom they cater, don't support films. Don't buy product. Don't stick around for the long haul. Usually not even fans. They just want something to reflect their world views, because these same kinds of people seem to have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that others have differing views about things in life.

And that's not a bad thing.

Do we really think that Kathleen Kennedy didn't have anything to draw from to create a new era of SW before losing almost 6 billion dollars for Disney.

Should we believe that recent Indiana Jones film bombed, because no one understood the source material? Kennedy herself has been there since the beginning.

We can all be different. Experiences and things like where we come from affect that. One of us can enjoy a film like ROC, while another dislike it.

But decisions have real life consequences. There are very real reasons why people decide not see a film, buy a toy or support a brand any longer.

We shouldn't be afraid to call a spade a spade.

[Saboteur]

I should add that the Snake Eyes film tanked for the reasons listed above in my former post. ROC really did hurt the brand.

While I'm sure there are some out there who dislike the race change to make Snake Eyes Asian, a large percentage of existing fans had more of an issue with his character.

Which was a huge part of why people liked him to begin with.

[AWOL]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saboteur

I should add that the Snake Eyes film tanked for the reasons listed above in my former post.

I wanna say Snake Eyes shouldn't talk... but who knows what's gonna happen in issue #301.

That aside, SE in that Origins movie was not a likable protagonist.

[Saboteur]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AWOL

That aside, SE in that Origins movie was not a likable protagonist.

Exactly.

[MammothFan]

There was not one single, likeable character in the Snake-eyes movie. It's remarkable how little I cared about any of the characters and how little I cared about what was going on.

Whoever greenlit that script should be fired.