2. Channing Tatum with facial scars = hawt

Quaker Oats; Rise of Brown Sugar

Captain Chrunch and the Kingdom of the Crunch Berries

Sugur Smacks: Smackdown

(starring Paul Reiser)

Because they make decisions on the quality of a movies based on the facts (and there is a lot) they receive?

Why are you here if you are not interested in news about movies and are going to watch the movie anyway?

If you want to spend your hard earned money on this (so you can make your informed decision. Because you know, previews are for snobs.) that's all your prerogative but don't arrogantly tell people they don't know what they are talking about.

Why not do something novel and respect someones opinions based on what they've been given? We don't all think the same way. Some of us are fans of the comic and some are of the cartoon and some could care less about either.

We can't all be saints like you and give the benefit of doubt. Also please do me a favor and stop responding to me. You're not going to agree with me and I'm not going to agree with you so go focus your attention on the other people you are trolling.

So, really, GI Joe was all about blowing the shit out of each other's equipment. How, in the name of God's balls, is that a 'war'? How do you win a 'war' if no one gets killed? Who supplied the gear for the fodder? Haliburton? And what was up with that one guy that turned purple in daylight (or was it water?)? Is this guy in the movie?

And Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Cobra Commander? Really? Why? Can he do that gargling magma voice and no one else can? We all know Cobra Commander wears that face cloth (or is he the silver-glassed blue motorcycle helmet wearing guy? Are they the same guy in different climates?) so his kinda "hobbit" look won't screw up the menace of CC from behind a veil (what the hell else is it then?). But seriuously, wasn't this guy on Roseanne or something? Can we get someone over the fucking age of 30 for the leader of a world-wide terrorist organization? Sure, it's possible for a 27 year old to run a what? A fucking Burger King maybe but a world-wide Terrorist organization not specifically tied to any wealth or monarchy? I call bollocks! That said! I'm not trying to pick on the movie as I don't care about it's origins in terms of informing my judgment; and some of the promo shots don't look like ass at all. The casting sounds a little dumb, though. Even then, I'll watch it and then decide like all good things.

No, not the movie at all; I'm specifically picking on the original cartoon (not the toys; everybody died when we played with the toys, even figures from other movies were killed in our epic GIJOE battles, my friend's pet beagle was a giant mutant Rancor monster and even he was killed by a strafing attack from Snake-Eyes (me) piloting an X-Wing and Duke (my friend) piloting the GIJOE F-16). But not in the cartoon. No death. Oh and will they also have those ending freeze-frame CHiPs-like endings where everybody starts laughing and they freeze frame the frivolity? Besides, freeze-framing in animation is totally awesome. Totally. Having to draw the same fram like 40 or 50 times and having it be exact from one frame to the next. That's why Hanna-Barberra was the best. The guy who ran the background track had to spin it perfectly and that Barney Rubble...what an actor!!! (Ok, full disclosure, I hated the god damn Flintstones...not hated like Hitler or a ketchup enema but still. Hated.)

I remember when Transformers came out, and everyone was bitching and moaning about how the 'bots looked different, and about how it wasn't going to fit in with the 'classic' original show.
And don't get me wrong, I love the old Transformers, but the show's writing and continuity are ultimately shit...but that's okay because when we were five years old we glossed over that stuff and it was an awesome action adventure about cool-ass robots.

Its easier to make a serious movie with the purely comic book based movies because its easy to take the archtypes of the characters and extract their mythic qualities or social messages and create a fairly serious drama about them. Those stories have developed enough over the last four or five decades that there is a lot of depth there to plumb, and happily the writers have injected just enough humor about guys running around in tights as to coax our suspension of disbelief rather than hinder it. Iron Man is the most recent and possibly best example of a serious comic story with lots of laughs in it to remind us not to take it TOO seriously.

The cartoon-based movies are harder to qualify into a best/worst case scenario because there is little drama that was ever present in the original series. The energy that remains in them is purely nostalgic, but strong enough so that Optimus Prime's death in the animated Transformers film still brings some fans to tears. Its not that the scene is that well done, surely viewers from that generation who see it for the first time today will be unmoved by the sequence, but memories of how that bright red truck-man was once our greatest childhood champion make it a tragedy to see him fall.
This being the case, the Transformers live action movie was probably about as good as it could have gotten; just close enough to the original, just far enough to attract people who couldn't have given a damn about the cartoon, action, laughs, not too shabby.

GI Joe might be a little harder to do, since the cartoon's biggest attempt at drama, again in the animated movie, ended up a very campy melodrama, even compared to the Transformers. But Larry Hama's work on the GI Joe comic book has proven that the characters can be put into a somewhat more real, grittier setting and still be made to work.
There will still always be SOME level of camp to even the comic though, as we have to remember that GI Joe always comes back to a bunch of guys in themed costumes fighting a guy in a hood and dude in a gold snake suit...and there are ninjas everywhere.

If the directors can remember to put a few laughs in an otherwise bad-ass film, it'll be great. But that is a difficult task for many writers/directors, and I'll be surprised if they can pull it off.

But with so many fanboy writers out there these days, who knows? Maybe they will surprise me after all.