OK. All this talk made me go out and pull my box of G.I. Joes and vehicles out of storage. Looking back, I had forgotten about Gung Ho. I honestly think that after Snake Eyes, he was my favorite. Zartan had a cool gimmick, but hey--Snake Eyes was, as Tessius said, a ninja before ninjas were cool and Gung Ho? Man! Not only top in his class at Parris Island (I had just done a school project on Parris Island, I recall) he went everywhere without a shirt on...just his vest. I mean, the Arctic without a shirt?!? WTH? How cool is that?!?! He was much cooler and a bigger bad@$$ than that sissy-boy Duke!
Now that they've seen them, I'm gonna have to let my boys play with my G.I. Joes...both my '80s versions as well as my '60s & '70s versions. It's sad to think how much better built toys were even just 20 years ago! This new crap breaks if you look at it wrong. (but that's another thread.)
At one time I thought that Jesse Ventura would make a good live-action Gung Ho. I could never pick a good Snake Eyes--a young Jackie Chan perhaps? (I'm thinking back to the '80s...nowadays, there'd be a half-dozen good candidates. Of course, Hollywood would screw up the costume somehow-- maybe so that you could see his face, or some such rot.)
Ahhh... But Hollywood doesn't have to do much work to pop those bubbles.
Spend enough time with Cartoon Network, and you are left wondering "did I really enjoy these when I was younger?" And "how the hell did I watch this crap?"
Easy - you spent 30 minutes absorbing 10-12 minutes of commercials to go with 18-20 minutes of badly done animation, then spent 4 hours or so outside recreating with your devious childhood imagination the pseudo-carnage wrought on the idiot box that afternoon after school. Given how it might well have wrapped up just before the parent(s) came home from work, you were good to go until mess call.
Of course, that was then, in the waning days of broadcast TV, during the heydey of the war between Beta and VHS ... when MTV actually showed music videos and CDs were not known to exist ... and ATARI actually made computers instead of video games that may or may not suck.
I used to take the screw out of the back and mix and match heads and bodies. Is that playing dress up?....
Not so much dress up as the homegrown He-Man action figure assembly strategy. Though, with more innovation and variety.
|
Well I think my inner child died just alittle:
The "G.I. Joe" team now has a fearless leader, and he'll be played by ... Marlon Wayans? Yes, Variety is reporting that the star of "Little Man" and "White Chicks" is set to play Ripcord in the movie version of the popular toy. And while he has diversified his resume with roles in "Requiem for a Dream" and "The Ladykillers," you have to wonder if director Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy") and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura ("Transformers") are hunting for a little too much comic relief with this selection.
Set 10 years in the future, the war-themed, potential blockbuster is based on Hasbro's popular line of American soldier action figures that most moviegoers, similarly to "Transformers," will remember from a popular '80s animated series. The big-screen version is set at Brussels-based GIJOE, or the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, which revolves around an international force of operatives who use advanced technology to battle Cobra, an evil terrorist organization headed by a Scottish arms dealer (yet to be cast). Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("The Lookout") is also in negotiations to join the cast, which already includes Sienna Miller playing an unnamed, raven-haired femme fatale, Rachel Nichols ("P2") as Shana "Scarlett" O'Hara, Said Taghmaoui ("The Kite Runner") as Breaker, Ray Park as Snake Eyes and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje ("Lost") as Heavy Duty.
Production is expected to begin next month in Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures will release the flick Aug. 7, 2009. And, of course, knowing is half the battle.
To clarify for those who so erroneously posted earlier in this thread:
They're not dolls. They're action figures. Action figures!
I knew this guy....he had a couple of G.I. Joes, he would tie them up and leave them in the lawn, then his dad would come by with the lawn mower....it was tragic.
|
I knew this guy....he had a couple of G.I. Joes, he would tie them up and leave them in the lawn, then his dad would come by with the lawn mower....it was tragic.
after the driveway get plowed I used to play with the artic ones in the snow piles... it made the danger of "avalanches" all the more realistic looking - there was more than once i had to wait til spring to find an accessory lost in an "avalanche" or joe "slipping down the mountain" (usually due to the dog wanting attention)
edit per the movie news above: how is a reserve member of the team going to be the team's leader? and its wrong to have the real American hero home base overseas (Edit Rotten tomatoes has an interview that says this isn't the case at least not Brussels, and that Duke is going to be "the embodiment of G.I.Joe Pre '83) .