We’re starting to hear some positive buzz about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Apparently it doesn’t rape or ruin your childhood; rather, it may make you feel like a kid again. This is what a toy/cartoon adaptation should do, we guess, but we still wish they’d made a Reagan-era-style war movie instead of a CG-heavy action blockbuster with too much comic relief. Because even when we were little we knew the property was a young person’s version of the conservative, Cold War-informed military pictures of the 1980s. And if Rambo could get his own Saturday morning animated series, why couldn’t we get a hard-R-rated G.I. Joe after all these years?

We know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re disappointed. See, while others might feel GIJTROC has ruined their childhood by being too unfaithful to the action figures and show, we feel it’s ruined our childhood because it isn’t the movie we dreamed of. So that’s how the following list of films was selected. Instead of going for all the obvious remakes and video game adaptations (we’ve never cared about games), we’re focusing on movies that really turned our beloved films, comics and cartoons of our youth into something we’re now almost embarrassed to ever admit we enjoyed.

10. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

It upset us enough when we discovered Judi and Ron Barrett had done a sequel to their book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs after 20 years. Pickles to Pittsburgh was too much a repeat of the first book and seemed a cash-grab. But at least it looked and felt like Cloudy. The film adaptation, which opens next month, has altered the plot and, more dreadfully, the entire aesthetic of Ron Barrett’s illustrations. In fact, the visuals of the Cloudy movie are the complete opposite of the book’s rich, detailed drawings. They’re bland, cartoony and make the food look totally unappetizing. Everything looks like bubblegum. The original book will remain one of our favorites of all time, but it’s already been difficult to convince people how great it is thanks to the new movie, and it’s certainly hard not to think of the Barretts as sell-outs now.

9. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

We’ve written enough complaints about this movie over the past year, so we’ll try to keep this short: we haven’t had the desire to watch any of the original three Indiana Jones movies since seeing this thing, because we fear that we’ll think less of the character now, as if he were to be no better than his lame rip-offs, such as Lara Croft, National Treasure’s Ben Gates and Flynn Carsen, aka The Librarian.

8. Enchanted (2007)

Growing up in the tri-state area, New York City was always a magical place, and the fantasy of the metropolis was a strong part of our childhood. Many films of our youth, including Ghostbusters, Splash, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Wiz, Gremlins 2, Scrooged and Big, propagated the myth for us, even if few examples actually depicted the city itself as being extraordinary. It was enough that this was a place where fantastical things happen. And we have maintained at least some of this fascination with NYC as magical kingdom long after we grew up and moved to the city. Until Enchanted came along and not only ripped off Splash but also made a mockery of our fantasy by going well over the top with its overly artificial fairy tale atmosphere. We still love New York, but it’s now difficult explaining our lifelong appreciation without someone picturing the Central Park or Times Square of Enchanted.

7. Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

We never played the role-playing game, but we did grow up big fans of the idea of D&D. We watched the cartoon, played with the toys and were otherwise really into fantasy worlds populated by wizards, elves, dragons, etc. Having primarily an appreciation for the fringe aspects of the property, we were probably more disappointed with this movie adaptation than most of the actual gamers. They at least had the role-playing to return to, while we were left with little reason for continuing our general interest in the genre, at least cinematically. We believe that Dungeons & Dragons, with its bad CGI and unwelcome comic relief (Marlon Wayans pretty much has the same gig in G.I. Joe), may have even hurt our ability to fully enjoy the first Lord of the Rings movie a year later.

6. X-Men (2000)

There were no superhero comics we followed or cared about more than the X-Men titles. We followed the characters religiously and knew them better than we knew our real family. And literally the first thing we ever did on the Internet was participating in a newsgroup thread dedicated to casting the eventual X-Men movie. So, while diehard fans of other heroes might have been more disappointed by the first Punisher movie or by Spawn or Daredevil, we were unavoidably most let down by the first X-Men movie, which technically and cinematically isn’t as bad as those others. It just isn’t the movie we envisioned. Although the casting is pretty terrific (Patrick Stewart was always the sole permissible Xavier), the plot is lame and so are the costumes. X2 would later come along and redeem our favorite superhero team for a bit, then The Last Stand would tarnish the brand even worse than the first film (X-Men Origins: Wolverine didn’t help either), but this is where it all started. And though we can’t recall exactly when we stopped reading the comics, we do know that it was hard appreciating them as much after the adaptation came into existence.

5. Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (1990)

Before we knew anything of The Uncanny X-Men, we were obsessed with Archie comics. And as young movie lovers, we couldn’t wait for Hollywood to bring our favorite teenagers to life on the big screen. John Hughes should direct it, we thought, since our top movie back then was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What we got instead was a cheesy TV movie. And worst of all, it was about the gang when they’re adults attending their high school reunion (a pre-fame Lauren Holly portrayed Betty). No kid needed to find out that Archie was engaged to someone named Pam rather than Betty or Veronica, nor did we need to learn that Jughead was a divorcee or that Big Ethel had turned into a supermodel. How could we possible be invested in these characters after such revalations?

4. The Cat in the Hat (2003)

For some, the earlier live-action raping of Dr. Seuss belongs on this list. But we didn’t hate How the Grinch Stole Christmas nearly as much as we wanted to kill everyone involved with The Cat in the Hat (save for Alec Baldwin, of course). At least we can still watch Chuck Jones’ animated version and read the original novel without thinking of Ron Howard’s blunder. The Cat in the Hat, on the other hand, pretty much made us think that the source material was stupid to begin with, and we haven’t been able to shake that idea since. Additionally, it made us truly despise director Bo Welch, and we’d been huge fans of his production design work for Tim Burton (Beetlejuice; Edward Scissorhands), even to the point of wanting to go into his field. So this movie killed two things having to do with our childhood.

3. Planet of the Apes (2001)

No, we didn’t grow up with the original Planet of the Apes movies, and this remake didn’t ruin them for us, either. What this film did ruin is our love for Tim Burton, the first director we really cared about. He was the perfect auteur for children of the 80s, or at least the ones who’d grow up a little off-kilter. And his films even seemed to mature with us, from the very childish Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to the darker immaturity of Beetlejuice to the comic-lover’s dream of Batman to the romantic fantasy of Edward Scissorhands to his best film still, Ed Wood. His next couple movies before this were at least decent for what they were, even if they didn’t show further growth for the filmmaker, but Planet of the Apes, with its total lack of intelligence and sophistication, really ruined Burton for good and we haven’t enjoyed any of his work since. Even the pre-POTA stuff is hard to appreciate as much as before.

2. Casper (1995)

We’re not positive, but we think Casper featured the first fully-computer-generated version of a beloved cartoon/comic character. We’re excluding the CG Dino from The Flintstones a year earlier on account he was initially created as and primarily consists of suits and puppets designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. While the first Casper movie wasn’t too terrible on its own, we credit it as being a gateway to Hell, as in that place where nearly unrecognizable CG versions of Garfield, Scooby-Doo, Alvin and the Chipmunks and others, many yet to arrive, are born. The title character in Casper wasn’t too unfaithful to the hand-drawn version, but he did end up making us feel worse about the concept of the character, because in the movie he looks like a dead kid, and that’s something we never had thought of him as before. Makes it all so much more depressing that way.

1. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope - Special Edition (1997)

By the time the Star Wars prequels arrived, George Lucas had already ruined our childhoods with his re-release of the original trilogy, each film updated with ill-fitting special effects, remastered soundtrack and some plot alterations in order that the trilogy could be “the way it was meant to be.” A New Hope came out first and featured the worst of the changes. In a matter of a few minutes, we had to watch Greedo shoot first and then gaze upon a truly awful-looking CGI Jabba the Hutt. Lucas’ fiddling with this movie gave way to similar annoying fixes for Lucas’ “Director’s Cut” of THX 1138 and Steven Spielberg’s 20th anniversary re-release of E.T., in which guns were replaced with walkie talkies. Even if we try to ignore the existence of Star Wars special editions (DVDs of the original versions were reluctantly released as few years ago) and even wear t-shirts stating Han shot first, our memories are forever marred by these unnecessary touch-ups.