G.I. Joe Spoilers

For boys, it was the first thing you flipped on after racing home from school. For girls, it was what was on right before things got truly outrageous with Jem. Twenty years ago, no matter who you were, G.I. Joe was a part of everyone's after-school ritual. And whether you're a die hard fan who's just as well-versed in the comics as you are in the animated series or just a casual viewer who needs no more info than Joes=Good, Cobra=Bad, the time of the first film adaptation is upon us. For those of you who just can't wait until August 2009, here's some of the rumors of what we can expect on the screen next year that you all should know. Because, remember - knowing is half the battle!

Starring: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Byeong-Heon Lee, Sienna Miller, Rachel Nichols, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce, Dennis Quaid, Saïd Taghmaoui, Channing Tatum, Arnold Vosloo, Marlon Wayans
Screenplay: Stuart Beattie, Skip Woods
Director: Stephen Sommers

Confirmed:

• Anyone who's been online at all in the last few months knows by now that the main G.I.Joe's that made the cut for this film adaptation are:










• The main villains of the movie will be Destro and Baroness, with Cobra Commander playing a puppet-master type role. (SuperheroFlix.com)





• One major action sequence in the film involves Snake Eyes on top of a black Hummer. Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) and Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) are involved in the set piece as well. (slashfilm)


• Brendan Fraser appears in the film as Gung Ho. He recently told UGO that his role is "classified - but it's gonna be cool." (imdb)
  
• According to the comic book adaptation of the film, Both Destro and Cobra Commander do not make appearances with those names until the very end of the film.

Rumored:

• The Joe team, while still an international team, will be based in the United States. (iesb)


• The Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow story arch will be a main focal point and the soul of the film. (iesb)


• Although Cobra Commander is in the film, the Joes will be mainly facing Destro and the Baroness. (iesb)


• Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character is Duke’s best friend... and he also happens to be Cobra Commander. It seems that the character was a former Joe who went to the dark side. (CHUD.com via BeyondHollywood.com)


• Helping Cobra will be one of the coolest groups of characters from the G.I. Joe comics and cartoons...the Dreadnoks. (iesb)


• The mercenaries known as Dreadnoks lead by Zartan (played by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo!) including his brother and sister Zarana and Zandar will be the hired muscle that Cobra will use in its day to day operations. Zartan is known for his martial arts ability as well as his mastery of disguise. Additionally, through genetic manipulation, Zartan is able to change the color of his skin to blend in with his surroundings. (iesb)



A script review from The Latino Review offered many more spoilerific insights as to the plot of the film...

• The Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow rivalry is a big part of the film leading up to a major showdown in the third act.


• Strom Shadow has a cool back-story. In the script, he is considered the greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the world. When we first meet him, he is training Mercs and is wearing black canvas pants and has no shirt on and is covered in warrior tattoos.


• Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were trained by the same master and were rumored to have fought once. They fought for two days before a single blade landed. Storm Shadow made a mistake and was defeated. However, the rage induced by Storm’s disgrace and has fueled ten years of further study in South America under a different master, under a weapons-free discipline of Brazilian Jujitsu.


• Snake Eyes and Scarlett are in a relationship in this draft and are in therapy because well, Snake Eyes doesn't talk and has taken a vow of silence as a way of furthering his martial arts training and discipline.


• There is a COBRA in this draft. He is not COBRA COMMANDER, he is simply COBRA and he is a former G.I. JOE named REX. This story is a Cobra origin story of sorts.


• At the opening we meet DUKE and REX as 14-year-old best friends and army brats getting into trouble together. We then cut to the present when they are in their thirties wearing thick extreme weather scuba gear. They swim out of a submarine dock into the deep ocean out in Northern Greenland. They are in front of a highly sophisticated research outpost consisting of a massive ice dome and a dozen yellow steel buildings built to withstand the extreme weather.


• Back in Washington D.C., in a military intelligence building, amongst high-ranking military and Intel officials, LT. GENERAL HAWK quarterbacks the operation on remote satellite feed. Greenland houses the newest incarnation of Destro Labs, a highly sophisticated, highly illegal, bio-weapons facility. Final clearance just came down from NATO and the Joint Chiefs. The operation has been given a green light.


• The stated mission objectives? One: Find and remove Destro’s two top scientists – both of whom have found their way onto the INC and UN’s list of wanted war criminals. Two: Completely eliminate the facility's capacity to operate. A congressman is concerned that how does Hawk know that the lab is Destro’s and not some tree hugger from Harvard studying global warming? Hawk replies that his team has spent the last decade combating Destro’s ambitions.


• Destro is a true global threat. A shrewd billionaire with something of an Alexander the Great/Genghis Khan complex. The weapons facility fits Destro’s operating profile to a tee: the remote location to avoid oversight from the local authorities; SAT imagery shows troop barracks, machine gun sentry positions, and state of the art radar and comm. dishes. A six-man extraction team is sufficient for the operation.


• REX was the second in command behind Duke.


• The Joes carry out the mission and something goes horribly wrong. Rex is horribly scarred as a result and I mean bad. He makes a recovery at a hospital and then disappears. Apparently, the Baroness was sneaking into his hospital room and shooting up Rex with steroids to speed his recovery.


• The six Joes track Rex down to Paraguay and they go after him. Destro is injecting a testosterone/growth hormone gene doping cocktail into Rex made by a DR. BENDER in turn making Rex into a chemically enhanced super soldier.


• The hormone is also screwing with Rex’s head. Rex is reborn as Cobra. Destro wants Cobra to lead his army of super soldiers. The super soldiers are the best mercenaries from around the world that are also being injected with the same juice as Rex is. So basically that is what G.I. JOE is about - Duke and the Joes must stop Destro, Cobra and the chemically enhanced super soldiers.


• Cobra and the super soldiers are the weapons. Like the Baroness explains, in society's relentless quest for more technologically advanced weapons, people seem to have forgotten the greatest weapon ever made: the human body.


• The relationship of Duke and Rex is like that of Anakin and Obi-wan - Duke and Rex are tight and Duke is trying to save his friend from turning to the dark side.

Previously Rumored:

• The characters of General Flagg and Wild Bill make appearances in the film.