Okay, so I wasn’t in love with Stephen Sommer’s G.I. JOE: RISE OF COBRA. I actually spent most of my time laughing. Please don’t tell me to go and watch MY LITTLE PONY or something. If I need to give it a second chance, I will.
On the flip side, I am getting interested in G.I. JOE 2: RETALIATION since The Rock is on board and Bruce Willis is in talks. It’s also a plus that Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (ZOMBIELAND) have penned the script. So I’m not a complete and total lost cause.
Wanna know more about the Joe’s you’ll be seeing in the sequel? Sure you do. io9.com says that these are descriptions of the characters are straight from the casting call. I would take them lightly if I were you. They amuse me, so I kept them in.
The new Joes- Walker, Brock and Robyn:
Walker is the wise-cracker of the bunch, who’s always making jokes about other guys’ moms. Robyn is a gun-loving weapons expert, who talks lovingly about her latest ultra-high-tech rifle. (Which prompts Walker to say that he loves “girls with guns.”) Brock is from the ‘hood and he listens to a lot of Cypress Hill on his boombox while looking at pictures of his eight-year-old twin girls. (When he takes the picture out of a Ziploc bag, Walker hopes he’s bringing out some of his famous pistachio cheese balls.)
At one point, when Robyn, Brock and another Joe named Sam are on the run, they take refuge in Brock’s old neighborhood, where one of the homies, a tattooed stone-cold badass named Stacks, promises to help him any way he can. Stacks and Brock are like brothers from another mother, and Stacks tells Brock they can hide out in the old rec center. He can even hook Brock up with a new set of wheels, which are pimped out but “on the low.” (The joke is that the wheels are clearly not on the low, because they’re too fancy and loud.)
Mouse- played by Joseph Mazzello (Timmy from JURASSIC PARK!!! He’s more mellow now, guys.)
The newest recruit on the team … He’s a Southern boy, “18 going on 11.” He’s got no real combat experience, but he’s played a lot of Call of Duty. And when he goes up against one of the top Joes in a test to see who can pull a hand grenade out of a big pool out of water with their teeth, Mouse wins. He raises his arms in victory, and spits out the grenade, saying “Bang.” The crowd of soldiers watching this goes nuts.
The Young Storm Shadow- Grown-up Storm Shadow will be played again by Byung-hun Lee, but there’s going to be childhood flashbacks.
Blind Master (played by RZA!) talks to Storm Shadow about his early mistakes in voice-over, while we watch the young Storm Shadow fleeing the Dojo. Blind Master asks who had the most to gain from driving Storm Shadow from the Dojo: the rival who drove Storm away, or the “man into whose arms you were chased.” We see that Storm Shadow took refuge with a “burly peasant” who gave him a blanket and cooked for him by a fire. And later, we see the burly peasant, who’s really a super-ninja in disguise, killing a ninja master.
World Leaders-
There’s some kind of summit, in which everybody is agreeing on reducing their nuclear missiles, and it all goes horribly wrong. Of course. The U.S. has launched all of its birds in the air, and everybody is trying to decide whether to retaliate and cause World War III. People say awesome shit like, “Let history record who was responsible for this madness.” And “There can be no winners!”
And then Zartan — the master of disguise who replaced the U.S. President in the first movie — basically tells everybody that their countries can serve him or die. He totally wants it all, man. Zartan tells the French muckety muck that from now on “You’re reporting to moi.” But at least Russia is defiant, telling Zartan “You’ve only succeeded in uniting us… against you.” Separately, we see the Pakistani President, who is standing by his decision to harbor terrorists, suddenly getting assassinated with a titanium blade.
Lecter- the new villain in the Joe camp
Lecter has been busted out of prison, so he can develop every high-tech weapon the baddies can possibly imagine… and some they can’t. Lecter and his friends Smith and Jones are holding a U.S. Senator prisoner and interrogating him. “It’s called a water board… but I never get bored,” gloats Jones.