G.I. Joe Leaps From the Toy Box and Comic Books to the Silver Screen… A Good Thing or Not?

In advance of expiring contracts between the major movie studios and the various guilds that make them -- speculation is rampant all over fandom and Hollyweird, particularly in the LA Times, about Warner's real chances of launching a Justice League of America movie -- over the next 10 months, at least one comics-inspired project will make the deadline in addition to Watchmen for the summer of 2009.

On the heels of its success with another toy-themed movie this summer, Paramount put G.I. Joe on the fast track, with Stephen Sommers, director of the financially successful Mummy films and Van Helsing, getting the nod, according to Variety.

Sommers' G.I. Joe plans mirror those of the Paramount's successful push for Hasbro's other toy to comic book to feature film in Transformers, including a trailer ready by 2009's Super Bowl XLIII to pump up the interest, Variety says. Also, the emphasis of G.I. Joe who was known for many years in the comics world under the tagline A Real American Hero has been broadened to take on a more international look these days.

Don't know if a pending movie will do anything for the fiduciary future of G.I. Joe at Devil's Due Publishing. That said, filmmakers agree Marvel's 155-issue comics run was as instrumental for creating much of the pending movie's backstory as it was for Transformers.

It's one thing to have 40-story-high robots from another planet beating the tar out of each other on Earth. It's quite another, however, to sanitize the depiction of war with clearly all-good heroes and all-bad villains to grease the palms of movie studios and toymakers. Full disclosure: My oldest son is a former Marine reservist who served in Iraq four years ago, made it back home in one piece and now serves in the National Guard.

All that said, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the G.I. Joe movie celebrating war thing, especially since American soldiers may not be pulling out of of Iraq in great numbers by then. Does it bother you? And, should it?