"I got some roots of Retaliation right here..."

Okay, the weirdness surrounding GI Joe: Retaliation continues to grow.  One of the reasons released for pushing the movie back to next March is that the relationship between Roadblock and Duke (The Rock and Channing Tatum) tested so well with audiences that the studio wanted to add more of it in.  (It was also assumed this meant revising the script so Duke doesn't die.)

But...

Channing Tatum says he hasn't been contacted and knows nothing about any reshoots

"I don't know. Truly, I haven't seen the movie. I did my part and then all this stuff is going on, so they haven't come to talk to me about anything. They talk about a lot of stuff; who knows if it's the industry or the actual studio? You never know."

GI Joe: Retaliation release date is now...

I know better than anyone that GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was a "disappointment" to the fans.  But rather than dwell on the downside (Can anyone really explain to me the purpose of putting the nanobot warheads in the particle accelerator was?), I chose to focus on the positive: Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow had an epic duel, and Sienna Miller looked hot as a brunette with glasses.

I was more than a little surprised to learn they were pressing ahead with a sequel/reboot, but I rejoiced that one of the most influential franchises of my childhood was being given a second chance.

I even got excited when the movie actually didn't look half-bad.  Bruce Willis was in it.  The Rock was in an action role I was interested in seeing.  (Please, Rock, don't ever dress up as the Tooth Fairy again...)  They got Ray Park and the Korean Guy who's name I can't spell to come back as Snak Eyes and Storm Shadow.  Ray Stevenson was playing Firefly.

This looked like fun to me.  I even had people who didn't bother with the first iteration tell me this looked like a GI Joe movie they would go see.

But all that was before The Avengers released.  Three weeks on top of the box office, in May, plus good reviews is huge.  I mean it won't win an Oscar, but it has raked in the cash and that's THE most important thing in Hollywood.

So if you're a studio with a team-based franchise movie about to be released, you can't be blamed for looking at that success and trying to figure out how to capture a little of that lightning.  But at this point, what can you do?

Convert your movie to 3D, of course.  Obviously that was the secret to The Avengers' success.  (To be fair, an honest case can be made that The Avengers made $1B partly because 3D and IMAX tickets are more expensive)  So that's what's being done to GI Joe.  But conversion takes time, and that means we need to bump the release date of the movie just a teensy bit.

GI Joe: Retaliation will now hit screens in March, 2013.

You read that correctly, folks.  I couldn't believe it either.  Here's some proof:

http://www.deadline.com/2012/05/g-i-joe-retaliation-moving-to-march-2012-to-add-3d-for-bigger-foreign-box-office/

http://io9.com/5912819/gi-joe-retaliation-pushed-back-to-march-2013-for-3d-conversion-cripes


It's not the 3D.  It's the fact that this Summer has become obviously crowded: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, Brave, even The Expendables 2.  Assuming for the moment that GI Joe is good (and I know that's a big assumption) it was not going to pull in the kinds of numbers those movies will.  John Carter tanked, Dark Shadows bombed, the numbers look horrible for Battleship...  This Summer people are still going to the movies, but they will go to the quality product and they will do it over and over again.

There's also the fact that Channing Tatum is starring in a movie about male strippers called Magic Mike that will be released this Summer too.  I'm sure that unintentional cross-promotion didn't help.  Nor the news that Tatum was a stripper in an earlier career.

Of course, it's also likely the movie sucks...

Make the pain stop!

GI Joe: Retaliation

So while I am eagerly awaiting the release of The Avengers, there is another classic comic book team I can't wait to see this summer.

I'm talking, of course, of the reboot/sequel GI Joe movie.  I hope this one manages to strike the balance a little more on the gritty side than the last one did.  I made peace with the fact that the GI Joe franchise was always more than the comic book and the cartoon was silly (e.g. Cobra-La?  Cold Slither?).  Why shouldn't the movie play both ends?  But the first movie was a little too silly for my taste.  And it messed with some of the relationships between the characters.  That...  I had serious problems with.

Anyway, this movie seems to go back to what made GI Joe so great: action; big, honkin' guns; and hot ninja-on-ninja action.  It also adds heaping amounts of The Rock and Bruce Willis.

Please, for the love of God: Don't suck, GI Joe: Retaliation.

The best parts from GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There. I just saved you $8.50 and the cost of a soda and popcorn... Not to mention at least an hour and a half of your time. You can thank me later.