Snake Eyes TALKING? ‘G.I. Joe’ creator Larry Hama fought against the idea
11:43 AM PT, Aug 4 2009
Ben Fritz, who covers the business of Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times, caught up with Larry Hama, the creator of the “G.I. Joe” commando team mythology, and put together this interesting Hero Complex report on “the real American hero” as a film property….
On Friday, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” opens and fanboys have some reason to be nervous. Though Aint-It-Cool’s Harry Knowles gave it a good review, Paramounthasn’t exactly embraced devotees of the toys and ’80s cartoon.
Fred Meyer, owner of the website JoeBattleLines.com, said he was one of several fan community leaders invited to a meeting by Paramount and Hasbro at a G.I. Joe fan convention two years ago to discuss what they wanted to see in the film.
“That was the last time we had any involvement,” he noted. “They’re not taking advantage of the fact that they have this free army of PR people out there.”
Perhaps more notably, Paramount didn’t bring the movie to Comic-Con International, even though there was a panel for Hasbro’s new toy line based on the movie. The movie’s producer was rather blunt when asked about the decision.
“You can never win with those guys,” Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, producer of both “Transformers” films and “G.I. Joe,” said of the San Diego convention. “They feel they’re the keepers of the fanboys flag and have a deep childhood association with many of these properties. And we know the hard-core fans are already coming to see the movie.”
As my story in The Times business section explained, Paramount has a different agenda with the new “G.I. Joe” film. It’s aggressively marketing the film to military, blue collar and red state audiences. In fact, the movie’s premiere on Friday wasn’t in Hollywood or New York, but at Andrews Air Force Base, the home of Air Force One.
All hope isn’t lost for old school G.I. Joe fans, however. The studio hired as a consultant a man who’s very familiar to them: Larry Hama, the writer of the comic books that originated the “Real American Hero” revival of the brand in the 1980s. Hama also wrote the file cards that came with the ’80s toy line and gave shape to the characters who populated the after-school cartoon and, in somewhat different form, the new movie.
I interviewed Hama for the story and, while we managed to fit only one quote in the piece, saved the best of the rest for Hero Complex readers.
Continue reading →