I remember when Rise of Cobra came out. A friend at work said "Oh, man! It's awesome! It's exactly like the comic books. You'll love it!"
Last time I ever took movie advice from a chick.
I'm reminded of Kevin Smith's story about how he was asked to write a script for a new Superman movie, and he got a barrage of shit from the producers like, Why does he have a cape? Lose the cape, it's dumb. He gets his energy from the sun? No, no, that's no good. Put thrusters on his boots. He can get his ability to fly that way. It's almost like these guys spent their whole lives under a rock and never actually heard of Superman.
I assume the same thing happened with G.I. Joe. Someone wrote an awesome script, based in the early 1980's with a bad-ass team put together from all branches of the AMERICAN military, based in AMERICA, with the older and more experienced members being Vietnam vets (or change it to modern times, I can live with that). The mission, of course, is to defeat this new terrorist organization called Cobra that's running around fucking shit up and making relations more tense between east and west.
And then, the people who actually decide how movies are made got involved. The result was a piece of shit that I walked out of about 2/3rds through. I understand that you can't please all the old school die-hard fans, and nobody will ever be completely happy with your final product, but God damn, at least fucking TRY!!!!! And I can't watch Retaliation.
The only advice I can give... as much as I hate to say it, and hate to see it happen... Reboot.
And this time, make an actual G.I. Joe movie.
Maybe I'm just a grouch