Stephen Sommers Drops Out of G.I. Joe 2

Posted by on January 6th, 2011   Filed under: Action, Sci-fi, TV
Source: L.A. Times

After the success of Michael Bay’s Transformers back in 2007, it looked like we were about to get hit by an all out assault of Hollywood movies based ’80s cartoons. However, over the past few years, that scenario hasn’t really come to pass. Movies based on properties like Voltron, He-Man and Thundercats never panned out, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra wasn’t nearly as big as Transformers. In fact, it seems a little unclear right now if a G.I. Joe sequel will happen at all. Last year it was reported that Zombieland writers Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick would be penning the script for part 2 and Stephen Sommers would be returning to direct. This week, however, we have learned that Paramount is now search of a new director. Can we just cross our fingers and hope that this movie franchise will slowly fade away?

Although there has been no official word from Paramount thus far, Steven Zeitchik of the L.A. Times recently heard that a couple of directors had been approached about replacing Stephen Sommers on the G.I. Joe sequel. It is believed that Sommers has simply left the project in order to focus on his upcoming Tarzan movie, although there were previous reports that he and Paramount didn’t see eye to eye on the first G.I. Joe flick. The question is, will this end up being good news or bad news for G.I. Joe 2?

Personally, I’d love to see what another director could do with G.I. Joe, but the fact that they’d have to follow what Sommers already did with the first film is kind of disheartening. This is one case where I’d be completely in favour of a reboot, although that doesn’t seem to be a possibility at the moment. Were you a fan of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? Are you glad to see Stephen Sommers leave the sequel, and if so, who would you like to see replace him?



  • I love this as a movie adaptation and hope they will find a replacement that will reboot it back to something good…like the Dreadknocks.

  • Mashugina

    Doug Limam seems to do a great job mixing action, comedy and pathos, as he did with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I would recommend him or GoldenEye and Casino Royal director Martin Campbell. And for a personally favorite choice: Paul Verhoeven. Robocop and The Black Book are resume enough to show he has the chops for this.

    The upside to Sommer’s G.I. Joe movie (if there indeed is one) is that it’s an origin movie. The sequel could conceivably go anywhere; preferably in an upward direction.

    Though a reboot would be nice too. It would be great to get an origin story where Duke and Snake Eyes vie for Scarlet’s affections, see exactly how Destro and The Baroness fell for each other and how exactly a disgruntled used car salesman started an international terrorist organization…

  • Alaris

    Stephen Sommers has made nothing but crap lately, but that’s not all that was wrong with GI Joe: Rise of Cobra. They should reboot the series once it becomes popular again to love the United States of America (if it ever does.) GI Joe: A real International Hero was a disgrace not only to the license but to our country as well. If you want to market GI Joe to an international audience, then have them team up with some UN soldiers.

    Perhaps you would have more comments if you didn’t have an endless loop of annoying ads and didn’t require an email address – just saying.

  • Ken

    Rise of Cobra was ok. Not great but certainly better than either of the Transformers movies. But when you look at what Christopher Nolan’s done with Batman or what J.J. Abrams has done with Star Trek it’s really disappointing to see how Rise of Cobra turned out knowing that other directors like Nolan and Abrams, have shown that they can do much better.

    Personally, I’d prefer if they put the franchise on hold for a while and see if they can get a better director, hopefully Nolan or Abrams (but I doubt that either would want anything to do with G.I. Joe), and then reboot the franchise.

    They need to get Larry Hama to write the script and just have someone else massage it to fit a 90 minute movie instead of having people that have no idea what the franchise is about write the script with little input from Larry like the way Rise of Cobra was done. As disappointing as RoC was, just remember that that was actually the 3rd script that they came up with. The first two were much worse. So I would hope that someone would be smart enough to get Larry to write the script.

    And if they do reboot it then I hope they ditch the origin stuff. I never understood what the obsession was with origin stories in action movies. Franchises like G.I. Joe and Transformers are known well enough that people don’t need to go through all the origin stuff. And if they don’t know then they’ll figure out all they need to know throughout the course of the movie without any emphasis on origins. It’s not hard to figure out that G.I. Joe are the good guys and that Hawk is the top guy, Duke is number 2, Snake is a mute ninja, etc. etc. or that Cobra is the terrorist group and that C.C. is the head of Cobra. There’s no need to explain all that stuff or how that all came to be.

    That style worked great in other action movies like Die Hard and Predator and Terminator for example. We didn’t need an entire movie telling us the origins of how John McClane became a cop and how Hans Gruber became a terrorist or how Dutch and his crew got together and the Predator came to earth or how exactly it was that the T-800 was made. Those movies just skipped all that stuff and got right to the action and they were very successful because of that and even managed to produce sequels.

    Origin movies are ok when you’re just focusing on the origin of one character like Batman or Spider-man but when you’re doing an origin movie about an entire group of people or multiple groups, like in the case of G.I. Joe and Transformers, then it’s really tricky. Abrams did a great job with Star Trek but I don’t think that’s the norm. The norm is closer to G.I. Joe and Transformers.

    So any ways, my point is that I would like to see them reboot G.I. Joe without doing another origin movie. Just skip the origin stuff and just focus on the action and the movie will be much better.

  • Sid

    Reboot the franchise. Start with a team of Iraq/Afghanistan vets (the orginal team were Vietnam era vets) that form the core of GI JOE. Give Cobra Commander back his iconic chrome-plated helmet. Have him lead a rag-tag army with mercenaries, like Major Bludd and Firefly. Get rid of the the stupid Neo-Vipers. The Cobra soldier uniform is classic. Have him team up with his main arms dealer and go from there. Simple.

  • jason

    I would love another GI joe, I have been a fan since I was like 7. Call me a dork, I have the cobra symbol tattood on me. I think the first Transformers was great, hell I thought the second was ok (not as good as the first, far from it) just not as captivating, why not get Bay on a new Joe? Scrap that story line though. I dont think Sommers ever watched an episode of GI Joe in his life. Oh, and for god sake re-cast those characters! Id say Baroness was fair, Ray Park ok, Storm Shadow was good, outside of that, let em go.

  • Jeff

    Uh, Jason, Baroness sucked. So did ‘Cobra Commander’ if you can even call him that.

  • Jeff

    And I like Sid’s idea best.