by Reymundo Salao
Bad news to those looking forward to the movie GI JOE: RETALIATION.
This movie which is originally set for a June 29, 2012 release has now been moved to March 29, 2013! Just 3 months short of an entire year! The reason for this, as a Paramount exec says:
“We’re going to do a conscientious 3D job because we’ve seen how it can better box office internationally,”
The studio exec also noted that the blockbuster performance of The Hunger Games shows that March can be a prime time of the year to release movies. That's bullshit. Uhhhh but THAT'S THE Hunger Games, and it has a huge number of fans and followers, the book's popularity is currently on its peak; Any Hunger Games movie would be successful anytime of the year.
Something must have been seriously wrong here for the company to pick and throw GI Joe 2 to a very distant nine months away. Paramount had already begun its massive promotions for GI JOE: RETALIATION; Super Bowl ads in the US, outdoor ads, international posters, even action figures. Now they have to pull it all out, alter the ads containing its release date, and recall all the unsold action figures and other merchandise. Changes of great magnitude.
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| Terry Crews should have been Roadblock! |
Well the sad part about this is that the movie looks really good (from the trailers, at least). I hated the first GI JOE movie. It was purely just copying all the other current gimmick and trends in sci-fi action adventure cinema, to the point that it does NOT look like a GI Joe movie anymore (it looked like something copied from Iron Man and Transformers). I was not looking forward to a GI JOE 2, nor did I have the smallest interest to see it. Not until I saw the trailer. And then I realized that this new movie was starting to look more military-action-based, although inevitably injected with some degree of sci-fi fantasy. It looked like what a GI JOE movie should look like. I was sold, sooner or later, I was as excited to see GI JOE 2 in a slightly similar degree to my excitement for The Dark Knight Rises. The trailer is really awesome; Firefly is around, Snake Eyes' costume is now properly modified to look exactly like what does look like in the comics and the series, The Cobra Commander costume looks great, the government take-over plot seems genius, the action appears stunning, and of course Dwayne Johnson is always a charismatic action hero (although actually I was wishing they gave the Roadblock role to Terry Crews; Dwayne Johnson actually looks like Gung Ho instead). There are many people out there who are as excited as I am. Can that excitement hold out for 9 months more?
REASONS
One of the major speculations running around was that the studios became nervous after BATTLESHIP sunk. The movie BATTLESHIP which is also a Hasbro property, same as GI Joe is, has recently suffered a great big FAILURE at the box office and have been severely maligned by critics. It's possible that GI JOE 2 has been taking Battleship as its post-mortem subject to study, and realized that they should make serious improvements unless they want to share the same fate.
Another reason that has come out of the Slashfilm podcast is that GI JOE 2 had a test screening, and it received negative reactions, which caused the studio to alarm.
Injecting 3D could not be the only reason for the re-scheduling of the release. It's possible that they could be remaking a major percentage of the movie. Obviously, there would be re-shoots. And these re-shoots could not just merely be for the 3-D aspect, but in order to make the story better as well.
FEARS
My only fear is that the movie would divert from what many of us were positively expecting; a GI Joe movie that looks like a GI Joe movie. No big robots, no big monsters, no aliens! I certainly didn’t want it to look like the first GI Joe movie which looked like one of the Star Wars prequels. If worse comes to worst, anyway at least there's THE EXPENDABLES 2 to look forward to.
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