Cheer for COBRA! GI JOE is working for the UN

Apparently the world is tired of heroic Americans coming in to save the day. GI JOE is now working for the UN. You know, the same UN that, in the real world, is run by the type of people that GI JOE is supposed to save us from.....

Paramount opened its premiere in America's heartland with flags awaving. However, they forgot to tell their audience that this GI JOE isn't a Government Issued Joe. Isn't marketing wonderful.

"Our starting point for this movie is not Hollywood and Manhattan but rather mid-America," Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said. "There are a group of people we think are going to respond to the movie who are normally not the first priority. But we're making them a priority."

Yet overseas, 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."

Paramount is an American company. Why not present an AMERICAN classic in a way that promotes America and improves its image? Isn't that what all this "Change" is about?