Dangerous Toys: Terrible film adaptations that are nothing more than child’s play

G.I. Joe: Retaliation [2013]

If you had told us in 2009 that we’d be knocking the sequel to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra for not having enough Channing Tatum in it, we would have called you crazy. Tatum’s weird performance aside, the first G.I. Joe movie had enough scope and a budget behind it to succeed in its campy and fun ambitions, but the latter movie suffered from both a lack of budget and a weird diagnosis that Tatum was the problem with the franchise, which led to his character being killed off early on in Retaliation. They figured they could easily replace him with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and nobody would complain about that. Problem was, he’d finally found an audience and a venue to show off his skills as an actor in Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street, so Paramount rightly realized they’d shot themselves in the foot and pulled the movie from its scheduled 2012 date right and pushed it into 2013 as the toys from the film were hitting the shelves. Citing a wish to release the movie in 3D, the crew also covertly filmed more banter between The Rock and Tatum so that people wouldn’t feel ripped off by the lack of the latter. The delay really hurt, and aside from the movie being an incoherent mess, it flopped at the box office. This is also the first of two John M. Chu movies on this list, so keep him away from your toy franchises, people.