GI Joe To Now Work For The UN

SMH
Posted: 2007-10-31 00:01:03

Source: Blacklisted News

NEW YORK: America's battered international image has claimed a new casualty - the tough-talking comic book patriot GI Joe.

The muscular character was created as a comic strip for US military publications during World War II and has been fighting America's foes ever since.

But in a new film version, due to go into production next year, the all-American will no longer work for a covert US special forces unit.

Paramount Pictures and Hasbro, which makes GI Joe toys, have reportedly discussed the challenges of marketing a film about the US military at a time when the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have sunk America's standing in foreign opinion polls. In a move that has horrified an unlikely alliance of comic book fans and conservative commentators, GI Joe is now to become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity", with its star representing a multinational force. Paramount has even mooted basing GI Joe at a headquarters in Brussels.

While the character has traditionally battled the US's neo-Nazi enemies, Cobra, the evil terrorist organisation will now be an arms-dealing syndicate headed by a Scot.

Critics have been following the film's development with growing dismay. Some have suggested the producers may as well have put a blue United Nations peacekeeper's helmet on its star's crew cut head.

Under pressure, Paramount appears to have substituted Brussels for New York, but has not otherwise budged from its stance that naked displays of US military muscle will no longer play well at the international box office.

The film, which has yet to be cast, is not due to open until 2009.

Hasbro toned down the figure's army credentials after the Vietnam War but sales soared again amid the patriotic fervour of the first Gulf War.