I’ve mentioned in the past few days that I’m a little worried about the G.I. Joe movie. It almost feels like the producers are trying too hard to appeal to fans of the franchise by cramming as many characters in they can. We’ve got Joes, we’ve got Cobra, we’ve got ninjas, we’ve got random additional mercenaries thrown in for good measure. And now, we have an old-hand at the G.I. Joe game coming in to help out.
Latino Review reports that the man behind many of the characters we associate with G.I. Joe, Larry Hama, is coming aboard the movie in some capacity, most likely as a creative consultant. Hama is responsible for creating many of the Joes’ filecards, as well as the original Marvel comic book storylines. If there’s a professional expert on all things G.I. Joe, Hama would be the guy.
Somehow, I’m not comforted with the announcement that the creator of the characters may serve as creative consultant. Sure he knows the characters, and sure he knows how to write an ongoing comic book series (which lasted for 155 issues over 12 years). The question is, will Hama know how to trim out all the excess characters, plot concepts, and background information in order to make a two-hour movie work?
I really do hope I’m over-thinking this and that the final product will pay honor to the toys of my childhood the same way Transformers served its long-time fans. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing anything that supports this movie being anything other than an overstuffed tribute. Anyone have access to a script they’d like to leak to me to prove otherwise?
