Aug 28 2007
G.I. Joe: A Real American Sellout?
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The live-action release G.I. Joe, tentatively scheduled for 2009, is ret-conning G.I. Joe to take out, uhh, the American part. The GI Joe unit will be an international peacekeeping outfit.
That makes sense. I mean, who would want to watch an action movie about a special forces unit that was rough around the edges? Hollywood has its finger on the pulse here. What we were begging for was a special forces unit that has to go through six layers of bureaucratic red tape to curtly ask the Cobra Command terrorists international arms dealers to lay off. Hopefully the UN will allow GI Joe to carry weapons. Most peacekeepers don’t.
Especially perverse is G.I. Joe’s new acronym, the “Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity.”
It’s fairly clear that the studio is trying to pay for a major release by hedging on international ticket sales. But there seems to be a disconnect there. Why would you buy the rights to G.I. Joe if you were skittish about selling an explicitly American product to international audiences?
Hell, roughly 10% a third of my audience is non-American. Admittedly, a small blog on the edge of nowhere isn’t the best analogy to a movie that will probably have a nine digit budget (in US dollars, of course!) But let’s ignore that detail for a moment. ;-) My story is so explicitly about the American experience that it’s called Superhero Nation. I think the concepts of superheroes and villains are pretty uniquely American. That all hinges on the freedom of individuals to achieve their destiny, for better or worse. Plus, pretty much all globally significant superheroes are Americans, anyway.
(No, Wolverine doesn’t count as a Canadian: most of his scenes and authors are American. This seems to correlate with the New-York-centered-universes that dominate most comic books. Even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live there. I love Tin-Tin, Captain Canuck, and the Silver Samurai as much as anyone, but they aren’t really significant.