Well, its roughly 40 days before GI Joe Retaliation debuts. Its scheduled for a June 20 release here in the Philippines.
Do you think it'll be a big box office draw?
I think it'll be in the Top 5 for its week. It may be a hit because of having Bruce Willis in the cast as General Joe Colton. And script/story concerns aside, Retaliation doesn't have any real competition in its week of release. Its roughly 2-3 weeks ahead of Spider Man 4 and Dark Knight Rises. So it may have a chance to establish a beach head at the box office. The wild cards I can think of is that: a 'sleeper' hit movie may debut at the same period. And there's the 'legs' of the Avengers at the box office to deal with. (It currently has made $776 Million dollars according to Wikipedia)
Still, its anybody's guess if it'll be a home run.
What do you think?

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"In war, there can be no sustitute for victory."
-General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
"Speak your mind. After all, it's a free country."
-Captain America
"Risk is our business."
-Captain James T. Kirk

It will burn pretty bright and hot when it first comes out (first weekend/week) and then fade fast, like the last one. It was a fun watch in the theater, but I have yet to watch the dvd of it.

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TheDoctor: "Restricted access, no unauthorized personnel." Hmmm... [opens lock with sonic screwdriver]
Amy: That's breaking and entering!
TheDoctor: What did I break? Sonic-ing and entering,totally different
DoctorWho-The Hungry Earth

The Rock will be more of a draw than Bruce Willis in it. And I sure hope it does well, it looks pretty good!

I agree with this. They both will draw for the movie, but the millions, AND MILLIONS of the Rocks fans, will bring the biggest draw.

Yes.

The positive acclaim has been on full blast since the 1st trailer, and has only gotten stronger.

And love em or hate em (tough to do the latter though), the Rock and Bruce Willis are major stars who have their own audiences that bring in lots of numbers, and have done so with much lesser movies/unknown entities than GI JOE.

I don't expect an opening take like AVENGERS or even DARK KNIGHT RISES, but it will do very well - and I dare say, with little risk, it will do much better than RISE OF COBRA (which kinda cracked $100mil).

The pre-July 4th Weekend opening day will probably add at lease 20 mill more than if it was later in the summer like the original.

My guess is around 150mill or maybe a little more. US. But international over 400mil, both just beating original by a little bit.

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GI Joe comic fan since 1982

The YO Joe Comic Book Section
&
The YO Joe International Comic Book Section

After seeing the different trailers and reading about it, I am more excited to watch Retaliation than I am to see Avengers. I've never been much into the superhero genre though. With Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis headlining this, not to mention having non-striking writers and a director that actually read the MARVEL run instead of DDP's craptastic Sigma Six, I am confident this movie will do well. The only thing going against it is the previous incarnation that left a bad taste in many a mouth.

Another thing that has me excited about this movie is a recent interview that Chu had:

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/gi_joe/news/?a=59833

Q: "Is this more of a hardcore version than the last one?"

Chu: "Ummm, yeah I mean I would say we are more on the ground, we're more you can feel the punches, you can feel the scratches, you can feel that these people are really fighting and that they are real human beings. There's not a lot of the laser guns things or futuristic...ummmm we have some really fantasy elements, really cool technology...ummmm but we really tried to keep it within reach of our reality."

Great stuff! About the only thing I'm not thrilled about was Chu's decision to align Retaliation with RoC. He could have kept all the elements in place (Zartan in the WH, etc.), but kept the characters true to their Marvel form. Would have made for a movie that most fans could relate to.

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"He is a legend - his name whispered under the breath of a thousand enemies: SNAKE-EYES"

I predict that this movie will outsell both Avatar and Avengers combined on its opening weekend...

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"The first rule about Punisher Club:
nobody talks about Punisher Club..."

We will finally get that in GI Joe 3 when the film makers realize the closer to the original the better which equals more money.

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GI Joe comic fan since 1982

The YO Joe Comic Book Section
&
The YO Joe International Comic Book Section

Despite what we think of RoC, I think it'd hurt if Retaliation ignored it completely. In the eyes of the regular non-fanbase viewer, a move like that could be detrimental.

It's basically admitting defeat to remake/ignore Rise of Cobra. Better to show people that you've built up and improved the JOE formula, rather than just ignoring the last movie and starting from scratch again.

Then you don't have a better sequel, you've just got a remake. And these days, people seem to get ticked off at remakes - "they just made the last one a little while ago, why make another one already?!" - even when the original might not have been that good.

You can look at Hulk and then The Incredible Hulk as an example of doing this idea the right way.

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It will be a "box office hit" only if it starts out with a scene of The Rock & Dennis Quaid escorting an ambassador to an overun US embassy and The Rock stops one of the looters from burning an American flag by saying "Nobody ever died for a Ipad."

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"The scriveners and scribblers are not the keepers of the canon, the audience is. If the public doesn't like it, they blot it out of the collective consciousness, and make it go away"

Larry Hama, Snake Eyes Deconstructed (March, 2006)

I admit I agree with Shanecdavis here. Better to reboot the GI Joe movie franchise from scratch with a fresh pre credit scene of the President getting replaced by Zartan and just ignore ROC altogheter.
While Rise of Cobra made money, its status was more like the first Star Trek film in '79: A commercial hit, but lacking in the eyes of the fanbase and the critics.
A total reboot of GI Joe would've kept it truer in spirit to the comics. Face it and admit it: DO YOU LIKE the idea of Snake Eyes as a street rat instead of a Viet Nam vet with ties to the CIA? or how about Duke with an affair with The Baroness? or Scarlett a college grad at 12 and lacking confidence? And Rip Cord being a smartmouth jerk? Forget it. The ROC cast would have been lucky to fight either The A-Team, Soldier of Fortune, INC or Rainbow, let alone SHIELD to a standstill.
Craptastic also applies to the 1980s cartoon since it also influenced ROC with its take on the Greenshirts/expendables.
One good thing implied in the trailer is with the GI Joe Team reduced to a smaller unit (Joe Colton, Snake Eyes, Jinx, Roadblock, Flint, and Lady Jaye), hopefully it means it'll be re structured as an All American Army unit. I never liked the notion of making it an international team because GI Joe is too American in concept.
In fact, GI Joe Retaliation will have (hopefully) had enough time to learn from the errors of ROC and took time to produce a better movie, one more closer to the Marvel/IDW version of GI Joe.
I do admit, it'll be interesting to see if the film can present Cobra's Space Platform in a way that makes it different from the Goldeneye and Icarus Satellite weapons seen in the 007 films Goldeneye and Die Another Die.
All we can do now is hope and pray for the best.

_________________
"In war, there can be no sustitute for victory."
-General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
"Speak your mind. After all, it's a free country."
-Captain America
"Risk is our business."
-Captain James T. Kirk

Looking at the upcoming release (FINALLY), I have a fear about RETALIATION.....

And that comes in the form of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman), which comes out the weekend before, and is basically terrorists vs. the USA on the soil of Washington DC. From the look of the trailers I've seen, it really looks like GI JOE vs. Cobra gone COMPLETELY WILD.

I think RETALIATION is different enough (Bruce Willis, the Rock and ninjas, oh my!) in the eyes of the mainstream audience, but I also dread that certain elements of the audience may get a kick out of OLYMPUS first and then not really bother to come back the following weekend for more "terrorists in Washington" fun.

However, it is interesting to note that OLYMPUS seems to be doing the big screen knock down/drag out action/adventure thing - the stereotypical kind of action that GI JOE is associated with more in the eyes of the mainstream public, while the actual GI Joe movie is taking a more subversive action/adventure approach; very much more like the Hama comics.

Maybe people will finally get that GI Joe is more than just s*** blowing up and wacky muscle men soldiers in sailor hats.

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"The first rule about Punisher Club:
nobody talks about Punisher Club..."