G.I. Joe: Real American hero or not?
- Published August 4, 2009
- Politics, TV/Movies
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“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” opens this Friday, and here in the good ol’ US of A, Paramount Pictures has taken a rather unique approach to marketing the movie. Instead of letting the usual Left-Coast critics review (and turn their blue-blooded noses up at) the movie, the studio has taken it directly to patriotic Red State America: a preview at Andrews Air Force Base, promotion on CMT, and heavy marketing in places like Kansas City and Charlotte. Seems fitting. After all, G.I. Joe is a “Real American Hero”, right?
Or is he?
Outside of America, the marketing is much less, well, American:
[O]verseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well. So those references have vanished from the advertising.
European marketing, rather, focuses on action sequences set in Paris — where the Eiffel Tower collapses — Egypt and Tokyo, and emphasizes that G.I. Joe is an international team of crack operatives and not some Yankee soldier.
When it comes to selling “G.I. Joe” outside the U.S., the message is “this is not a George Bush movie — it’s an Obama world,” director Stephen Sommers said. “Right from the writing stage we said to ourselves, this can’t be about beefy guys on steroids who all met each other in the Vietnam War, but an elite organization that’s made up of the best of the best from around the world.”
So which is it? Is G.I. Joe still “fighting for freedom wherever there’s trouble”, or is he too busy apologizing to terrorists? I’d like to know.
Because after all, knowing is half the battle.
Previously:
Obama’s great apology
‘War on Terror’ over. Osama bin Laden approves
