Word: cobras
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...looking for the late-summer special-effects action fantasy with big franchise potential, forget about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. (You already forgot? Fine.) Instead, proceed directly to District 9, a grimy little scare-fi thriller from South Africa, hitherto unknown as a production center for really cool movies. The picture bears the imprimatur of another gifted outsider, Peter Jackson, who with The Lord of the Rings made New Zealand his own little Hollywood. But the real star is director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp, 29, who proves with his first feature that no genre is so tarnished...
...members of an élite force of the best, the brightest and the hottest. G.I. Joe is not a man but an international paramilitary force, kind of like Blackwater but without all that messy scandal. The cadre is up against an arms dealer whose organization will eventually spawn Cobra, reminiscent of the SPECTRE cartel of the early James Bond films. They're the sort of well-bred terrorists who, just before firing the weapons that will bring the world to its knees, invite a hero into their lair to explain their evil plans and allow him to thwart them...
...seen a lot of action over his 45 years. The soldier has been a toy, a comic book, a cartoon, another toy and several videogames. But on Aug. 7, G.I. Joe gets his most challenging mission yet: anchoring his own live-action film. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra hopes it can emulate Transformers and turn nostalgia for the 1980s toys and cartoons into success at the box office. (See pictures of ninja warriors: from myth to movies...
...Hasbro reintroduced a scaled-down line of G.I. Joes to try and capitalize on the trend. Instead of a single character, there was an entire battalion of G.I. Joes, each given signature weapons, backstories and code names like Scarlett and Snake Eyes. Joe also got a new enemy, Cobra -"a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world," as described in the intro to the 1980s TV cartoon G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. (Cobra operatives got action figures, too.) G.I. Joe was also made into video games for early Atari and Commodore game platforms and as a comic-book...
...what's perhaps most unique about G.I. Joe is his staying power. In an era when toy companies completely overhaul their product lines every few years, G.I. Joe has managed to avoid another hiatus. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra might not set any box-office records, but it's a fair bet the movie's namesake will still be a mainstay on toy-store shelves long after the movie is forgotten...