Danny Elfman! Henry Jackman! Jacob Groth! They're all in here...
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a sequel to G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, yet it functions as a reboot, almost completely wiping the slate clean for future adventures and distancing itself from the heightened tone of the original film that turned off so many audience members.
Do you have what it takes to be a Cobra?
Do you like ninjas? What am I saying? Of course you like ninjas. Well, this G.I. Joe: Retaliation video has ninjas. It has lots and lots of ninjas.
By now, G.I. Joe: Retaliation should be gearing up for its Blu-Ray/DVD release, but the powers that be at Paramount decided they did not want to make money this year and shelved the title to allegedly fine-tune the picture for 3D. Or to add more Channing Tatum in re-shoots, whichever take you find more plausible.
A new international trailer has been released for G.I. Joe: Retaliation, probably to remind us all that the film still exists.
Come on, admit it, we were all kind of surprised to see that the trailers for the sequel to G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, namely G.I. JOE: RETALIATION, actually looked pretty promising. Sure, the film will never win awards for being high art, but the mix of tongue-in-cheek action and actual character peril the trailers suggested meant that a sizeable audience was getting pretty damn interested in seeing it.
Now comes the news that Paramount have shifted the release date by NINE MONTHS in order to give the film a 3D conversion. Please pardon me while I sigh. It's far too late to be doing this, Paramount! Not all that many people care about 3D. It's not all that great. It darkens everything. It takes you out of the story and the moment. It makes for expensive tickets and annoyed customers.
The G.I. Joe: Retaliation marketing carried an air of confidence about it. It basically told us, "Yes, this movie is going to be silly but there's no shame in silly." You don't position a ninja-rappel-battle as the punchline to your trailers if you are not defiantly proud of your stupid movie.
I love silly, I love stupid, my heart was ready to love G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Paramount have decided to take that away from me, moving the release date from June 2012 (August in the UK) to March 2013.
Now that marketing for The Avengers/Avengers Assemble is winding down and marketing for The Dark Knight Rises has yet to really begin, it's time for G.I. Joe: Retaliation to sneak in get some awareness going.
With all the hype this year around a certain superhero collective, the reappearance of the bat-attired vigilante and a return trip to Middle Earth amongst others, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that there is a G.I. Joe sequel on its way. But there is, and we have lots of pictures and character posters from G.I. Joe: Retaliation to prove it.
