With thanks to Machinima, we have a brand spanking new G.I. Joe: Retaliation trailer! Boo YA!
We knew it was coming, we were ready for it…but could we really be totally prepared for the awesomeness it would bestow upon us? HISS Tanks rolling upon Washington, DC? Firefly, Cobra Commander, Roadblock, and Snake Eyes oozing awesomeness from every pore?
June 29th, I’m ready and waiting for you! Let’s do this.
As you may have guessed from the flood of content all hitting simultaneously, there have been some G.I. Joe: Retaliation footage screening events over the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be in contact with a few people who got a chance to attend these events. The only hitch? Any talking about these events was embargoed until 8:00am Greenwich Mean Time. That’s 3:00am Eastern and 12:00 midnight Pacific to us over here in the United States.
Now not only did the always awesome Russ Sheath and Dave Tree write up some very detailed and very extensive reports on these screenings, but Dave also stayed up until all hours of the UK night to talk to us on What’s on Joe Mind about what he saw! He gets into full details, and lets us interrogate him in true What’s on Joe Mind fashion to get to the bottom of G.I. Joe: Retaliation as we come within two months of the film’s release.
Gary, being the consummate professional that he is, got the editing turned around in lightning fast time and we have a very Special Edition of the What’s on Joe Mind podcast in the can and ready to go! Check it out as always on our Podbean page, or hit up the embedded player below.
I absolutely cannot say enough for my site visitors. I have a couple of guys in the UK who absolutely went above and beyond to bring us these reports. Dave Tree talked about the footage he saw a little over a week ago, and now Russ Sheath has taken considerable time and effort to do this write up for GeneralsJoes as well. They get no payment for this, they do it because they enjoy the site and they want G.I. Joe fans to get an idea of what to expect when June 29th comes.
I feel extremely honored that they would choose GeneralsJoes as a place to post this information, and cannot thank them enough. Fantastic, fantastic coverage.
Russ is a regular contributor to Aint it Cool News, and he sent them one screening report, and then wrote up a specific post geared towards Joe fans for GeneralsJoes as well. Awesome. Russ and Dave, you guys are both awesome.
This screening report encompasses about 10 minutes of footage, and could be considered rich spoiler material, so tread forward with caution. There is a LOT of detail here, and Russ went through a ton of work, so hopefully folks can read it through, enjoy it, and get a good idea of what to expect come June 29th. I know I am extremely excited.
The full post is after the jump.
Good morning, G.I. Joe fans! Well for folks who are eager to know what all the little details are for the upcoming G.I. Joe: Retaliation film, I have got a treat for you today. Paramount did some footage screening for some very select individuals over the past week or two, and GeneralsJoes is lucky enough to have a few reports of that footage for you today!
A big friend of GeneralsJoes and the What’s on Joe Mind podcast Dave Tree from Roll Out Roll Call got to see this footage live and in person, and he did some fantastic work getting this intel dissected and reported to us.
Please keep in mind that some of the footage descriptions you read below could be considered spoilers! If you are looking to go into the film clean and pure, you may want to avoid reading this post. If you want to know as much as humanly possible, click the Read the Rest of the Story link below to read the full details!
Yes, he is not a myth. He is not a fairy tale. Finally after almost 30 years, the engimatic Eskimo known only as Kwinn is finally on the precipice of release…and you can get your first look at in house pictures right now over on JoeDeclassified.com!
It seemed to take forever for Kwinn to finally get his plastic due in his most familiar jungle khaki look, but when he debuted a JoeCon last year it seemed to be worth the wait. He was friggen perfect. Then, suddenly he wasn’t. Delays. Nobody was entirely sure how or when the figure would see release. There were rampant rumors of convention exclusives and even *gasp* cancellation.
Well, there is still no concrete word about the fate of Kwinn the Eskimo, but evidently the figure is in some stage of production, because Gyre-Viper has got some test shots, baby, and he’s posted them RIGHT HERE. I am mirroring all of these images below because Kwinn deserves all the attention he gets. A day like today I absolutely love the irony…on a day where we’re all waiting with baited breath to see the 21st Century iteration of G.I. Joe in trailer form, a dated 25 year old legend gets his time in the spotlight.
It is as it should be. Hopefully we’ll all be able to get him at retail sooner rather than later, but until then, live vicariously through Gyre-Viper.
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First of all, I apologize for the delay in getting this posted. I am in Kansas City on business and every once in a while, the job’s gotta come first. 😉
Now that my belly is full and our corporate visions for the next year are decided, time for G.I. Joe! The guys over at HissTank.com not only got screen grabs, but also uploaded the ET Footage to YouTube, and holy hell is it awesome.
We get Cobra Commander firing from some cool looking Cobra helicopter, we have Zartan wounding himself and healing (with trademark blue skin!!) and we have mutha fuggin HISS Tanks. HISS. TANKS. Woah. If I’m getting this geeked out over the footage from ET, how is the trailer going to hit me? Anyway, check out the ET footage embedded below, courtesy of HissTank.com.
Curse me and my business trip taking me half way across the country with no access to my DVR! The Entertainment Tonight footage has aired, and HissTank.com has a bevy of new screen grabs from it!
Check them out right here.
Now I’m being dragged off to a business dinner, but I will be back to fully digest the ET footage and get roaring for the NEW TRAILER!
Oh boy. Gyre-Viper took the world by storm last week when he broke the news about the Dollar Store exclusive figures with a great vintage aesthetic. Well, he’s about the blow the doors off again on JoeDeclassified.com.
Apparently these Dollar Store exclusive figures won’t just be appearing in one paint scheme… check out this amazing new gallery below of fully repainted variant figures for the exclusive line! We’ve got what almost looks like a T’Ginzu repaint Storm Shadow, a dark gray Duke, black Cobra Commander, comic deco Cobra Troopers, a green Shipwreck, and a pseudo Heavy Artillery Snake Eyes (from an old school Toys “R” Us Exclusive set).
Mind. Blown.
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And hey…look at those last few pictures. Looks like ole Gyre-Viper has something else in the wings for us. And if it’s in that stage of completion, I’d say release is almost guaranteed.
Ohhhhh yeeeeeeaah.
It’s official. This is the week of G.I. Joe.
Now didn’t I tell you all that it would be a big week for G.I. Joe: Retaliation news? 😉
I haven’t been able to dig up a specific source as of yet, but a fellow G.I. Joe fan who works within the television industry as I understand it, has revealed that Entertainment Tonight will be showing some unseen footage from G.I. Joe: Retaliation tonight in advance of the trailer.
I am working to confirm this information, but I wanted readers to make sure they turn on the TV tonight in time for ET. More information as it develops.
Unfortunately I will be at a business dinner tonight, but I will be logging on very shortly after the footage launch to soak in the Retaliation greatness. I can’t WAIT.
As part of the press blitz over the next couple of days, we should be seeing more and more of these interviews posted. The Hollywood Reporter’s blog site “Heat Vision” spoke with Jon Chu a bit about G.I. Joe: Retaliation and specifically about casting Bruce Willis and the process of reinventing the film property for the sequel.
A couple of very interesting insights to me. First and foremost, the decision to re-cast much of the film:
“THR: What prompted the decision to reboot the cast and everything? Was it really unavailability or was that a choice you and/ or the studio came to?
Chu: Part me, part not me. And by the time I came in they had a script already — but not fully there, and we added a lot of things. Like Joe Colton wasn’t in the movie. We added that and Roadblock and things like that that weren’t just in there yet, but we knew we wanted to create a different world. You can’t discount the first movie at all — it was a huge and people loved it — but for me what I love about Joe is that everybody has interpreted theirs different ways. The comic book interprets it in one way. Even in the cartoon series, they switched theme songs in the middle, and so everybody interprets it in a different way. So for me I was like, let’s jump to a different part of the Joe world. It’s the same world, but at a different point. So when I pitched it, that was the idea — let’s pay homage to the old stuff, but also do new stuff. G.I. Joe was ultimate mash-up before mash-up ever existed, so that’s perfect right now. And all the kids who don’t know anything about G.I. Joe, who only know Call of Duty, who stole all their stuff from G.I. Joe, let’s reclaim it and do it better.”
I cannot properly express how much I love the above paragraph. To a lot of people, G.I. Joe = Call of Duty, and I really don’t think that’s accurate. There is so much more to the G.I. Joe mythology than simple “dark and gritty military”. It sounds to me, like Chu gets that. He understands it. The whole “mash-up” concept is brilliant. Throughout the years there have been space properties, ninja properties, disguise properties, cops n robbers properties, etc… over the past 30 years, G.I. Joe has been all of that. It’s been outlandish super hero laser-fights, it’s been dark and realistic military, it’s been aliens and super-powered clones. It does it all. I think it really takes the right mindset to figure out how to tie that all in together. Obviously we won’t know if Jon Chu has that mindset until somewhere on the night of June 29th, but the above paragraph is a great start.
Secondly, the following quote interested me as well:
“THR: Do you fully address getting rid of the guys from the previous film at the beginning of the movie, or how does that sort of work?
Chu: Yes and no. We address a little bit, but also leave some of it up in the air. But in my mind the movie was never about them, the movie is about our characters that you introduced from the beginning. We wanted people to come into this movie, and if you haven’t seen the first movie, be totally okay, which is actually pretty tough, because Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are hard to explain to somebody who had never seen G.I. Joe. But we leave some of it open, so you’ll see.”
I think this is great, too. It’s the whole “reboot without a reboot” process, which I’ve been clamoring for since day one with the film sequel. They can build on what happened in the first film without being 110% accurate to it. Just gloss over the stuff you don’t like, write off some of the weirdness, but don’t forget about it. I think that concept works. The idea that the fate of previous characters is left “in the air” is also good, too. It would be tough to imagine a G.I. Joe without Duke and Scarlett, so now, even though they are expanding the film universe and moving on without those characters, that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good.
Check out the full interview on The Hollywood Reporter, and stick right here at GeneralsJoes for the next 48 hours of G.I. Joe assault. Yo Joe!