They just killed the franchise. I hope the few extra international dollars was worth it. It will need to last.

The movie industry has to be one of the most conceited industries in the history of, um well, industry.

For years the MPAA has been arguing that movies are making less money beause of piracy. This may be true to some extent, but I believe it has more to due with the fact that there is less talent in the writing pool and too much input from the higher-ups.

Superman, horribly written, had to change a tag-line, was a major departure in character memes (hello Lois Lane is supposed to be neurotic, not well together) and poorly cast.

Star Wars Ep 1-3, are proof that George Lucas has alzheimers disease and should never be allowed with in 100 meters of any script, anywhere.

Obi Wan (ep 5): "There goes our only hope." (Paraphrasing)

Yoda (ep 5): "No, there is another."

Obi Wan, should have said, "Oh yea, I held them both when they were born. Silly me, just forgot."

Luke: "Do you remember our mother, what was she like?"

Leah: "I barely remember her. She died when I was little."

That would be okay except Padme died right after giving birth. I'm also curious how the adopted daughter of a former Senator becomes a Princess.

Transformers...well, you don't want to get me started on that piece of excrement.

Now this. What is next Hollywood, a remake of Citizen Kane where Rosebud is a skateboard? I know, how about a remake of Mr. Smith Goest to Washington but he fights to defend partial-birth abortions.

<insert something clever>

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.  Tell me one devoted news event, a serial, or a movie that honors the fighting servicemen and women as heroes.     

This media, whether it is Hollyweird or New York, is shameful.  They should be shunned, ridiculed, and held up to scorn.

By the way, it is not that we don't have heroes during this time, or for that matter at any other time.  It is this drive by media cabal that refuses to recongize them as such. 

We are coming up on the sixth anniversary of 9/11.  And, still at home, we live in peace. We haven't had a single successful attack on our shores since 9/11.  This is in no small part because of the dedicated men and women that make up our armed forces and the leadership of our president, George Bush. 

Vote Republican in '08!

I lived in Europe for 8 years. Over there, Joe is called "Action Man".

Some rumors claim that the title "G.I. Joe" will even be dropped in the international release to be replaced by "Action Man" (the original name of the Joe series' British soldier) so that the name won't offend anyone outside the USA.

I wouldn't read too much into that.  "Action Man" vs. "G.I. Joe" is a simple marketing thing.  If the franchise has been known overseas as "Action Man," then it makes sense to market a movie under that name.

Really, the international title for the movie doesn't even bother me.  Movies are renamed for overseas markets all the time.  Don't ask me for an exhaustive list of examples, but at the very least movie titles are changed so that they translate more easily into other languages.

As for the transformation of G.I. Joe into an international co-ed counter-terrorist organization based in Brussels, well, that sort of thing has already been done:  La Femme Nikita (okay, they were based in Paris).  Talk about watching something with a new perspective in the post-9/11 & -Abu Ghraib world.  That show would never get made today.

Finally, as for Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry was a secular humanist who thought that man needed to evolve out of the need for "silly" things like nation-states, pursuit of wealth, religion, and other such nonsense.  See "The Omega Glory" for Star Trek's take on nationalism and any number of episodes for "religion is evil."  It's entertaining and I've been a lifelong fan, but I wouldn't want to live in the Federation, especially on earth (a "socialist utopia" as a friend of mine called it).

Boy, am I about to step in it.  G.I.Joe actually has a very long and strange history that most people aren't aware of.  The reason the story seems so unusual is that film makers are once again capitalizing on comic books. 

The Scottish arms dealer is a silver masked character from the 1980's named Destro(he also appeared in the cartoon series, but was decidedly NOT Scottish).  As messed up as the movie plotline might seem, it sticks pretty close to some of the comic book elements that the cartoon series abandoned.  The multi-national force was also introduced to both the cartoon and toy series(not sure about the comic books) and had a lot of characters with names like "Big Ben"(English obviously), "Red Star", and "Big Bear"(both Russian).

So I guess you guys are late to the party.  G.I.Joe has been in the process of being gutted for more than 20 years.  Most of the enemies fought were Scottish(the Iron Grenadiers), Australian(the Dreadnoks), or unspecified-never-unmasked-Asians(ninjas up the hoo-ha).  Oh, and robots.  They also took up environmentalism in the early 90's with a range of color change toys that were saving the planet from toxic waste and ozone depletion. 

 But up until now they at least retained the "Real American Hero" tagline....

I think that the folks behind this better watch out for Tom Clancy, because this sounds a lot like the premise of "Rainbow Six", just based in a different city (Brussels instead of London).