Whoa, don’t worry. This isn’t an article at HISSTANK accidentally ending up here.
Director Jon M. Chu recently had a chat with Collider about his upcoming project; G. I. Joe 3. At the interview, the director of G. I. Joe: Retaliation expressed his interest in directing a G. I. Joe/Transformers Crossover.
“[Jokingly] I got to get rid of Michael Bay first” said Mr. Chu. “We got to get there. We got to evolve to something like that. I would love to. As a kid I would combine my toys. If the realities of their worlds match, I think you are okay to do that. I’d love to. I’d be totally ok to do something like that”For more information about G. I. Joe 3, you can visit our Sister Site; HISSTANK.
unicronic
Well given how much GIJOE2 stunk I'd hate to have this guy do a crossover. Admittedly the TF movies are hardly masterpieces but JOE2 made them look like an oscar winner.
mirageandjazz11
hey i am a bronie and that idea is stupid for the movieverse
not transformers just the movieverse.
Ra88
Yeah. Imagine that. Open to a boy line of toys that fit theme wise well with another instead of a girl's line of magic horsies. Completely baffling.
Minh’T
G.I.Joe and TF in the same movie would be a good idea. But it is impossible since there hasn't been any connection between the 2 film so a share universe can't be made
The621
At Chu putting that bitch Bay in his place. "Michael Bay, that mother fucker… Hahaha!"
EpicTransformer
good for him I guess…
mirageandjazz11
i dont know if this is true bu the first gi joe film took place 20 years after the 2007 transformers time.
SMOG
I'm kind of stuck between worlds, really. I used to manage an independent video store, but I'm also in a film studies grad program. I find myself arguing against extremes of both elitism and populism all the time, depending on where I'm standing at a given time. But yeah… it is nice to know that our fandoms aren't completely enslaved to "entertainment" as the sole criterion for quality.
zmog
Ash from Carolina
I think sometimes it's just nice to know there are other people out there who want more out of entertainment. You see rotten movies doing well at the box office and rotten TV shows that never seem to end and you can think damn there is no hope. But having others who can see that entertainment can be so much more gives some feeling of hope.
Muramasa
I'm all for this and I do kind of see it happening in-universe. I could see Cobra Commander being one of the Cons' human collaborators and combining forces against the Joes and the Autobots. Would have been nice if there was a full-on Sunbow universe crossover. I'm sure they toyed with the idea many times then.
SMOG
Agreed. "Popular entertainment" doesn't have to mean "crap"… but often it does.
That said, it's pissing in the wind to complain about it… it's always been this way. Sure, today we look back at Shakespeare and say he was the entertainer of the people, a pulp-fiction craftsman making plays for the unwashed masses, and we celebrate him for it. What is easy to forget is that we remember Shakespeare because he was GOOD at it. I'm sure that a hefty chunk of the plays and other popular entertainment of the time was absolute garbage, and as such has remained little more than a historical footnote.
zmog
Ash from Carolina
You don't have to convince us. It seems like many of the people who hang around here want better action movies. That there are enough examples of good big summer action movies to no longer let movies slide on "well it's a summer movie".
The big question is how do you convince the general public not only in the US but also outside of the US to demand more from what they go to see than just really nice special effects? If people will go to the theater to see just about anything Hollywood will poop out then Hollywood isn't going to make the effort for more rounded films. Hollywood just seems to have this attitude that if people aren't going to demand better stories and better characters then just shove any old thing out the door.
Although perhaps we are starting to see some backlash from the general public. Some of the big films that failed to meet studio projections might mean that people are getting pickier. That just slapping on the name The Lone Ranger and staring Johnny Depp is no longer good enough to draw big crowds.
SMOG
I can't give Chu that much credit. The linkages to the previous bloated, misguided mess of a first movie were unfortunate, but a necessary evil, I guess. But none of that excuses the half-assed, messily reworked script for Retaliation, the bad dialogue, the nonsensical plot, the barely developed characters, the massive logical holes, and so on… that's all Chu (and of course, the scriptwriters, the producers, etc, etc…).
I agree though… still waiting for a GOOD GIJoe movie. Maybe someday.
zmog
daitarn red
cobra emperor be parther with megatron
cobra commader be parther with sneaking starscream
NotRamjet97
No to a TF/MLP crossover, but yes to a GI Joe/Tf crossover?
bellpeppers
Agree here.
Chu also had to make this film in connection to, and in the shadow of, the last failed train wreck of a movie.
All things considering, RETALIATION was gold. In GI Joe 3, I hope the canvas is blank and re-written enough to not only make a more GI Joe movie, but also make a good movie.
AgentAlabama113
I would love one. It'd be awesome
SMOG
Well, to be fair, Transformers and GIJOE have a history that extends beyond just Marvel (even if Marvel is itself a pretty legit part of TF history). The G1 cartoon also linked the GIJOE and Transformers universes on several occasions (shared characters, Marissa Faireborne being Flint and Lady Jay's daughter, Cobra Commander appearing in Season 3…). Since then, we've also seen a couple of other official TF/Joe miniseries, and a number of Joe vehicle homages in Transformers. It's not as counter-intuitive as you make it out to be.
I've always liked the slightly more realistic approach to GIJOE. I recognize that there will always be a cartoony, slightly sci-fi twist on GIJOE, but I prefer it when it doesn't get TOO far out. However, as I mentioned earlier, GIJOE fits very well into the Transformers' Earth setting. So yeah… for me it's a crossover that only works one-way.
As for Chu and Retaliation, well… I think part of the issue here is drawing a line between adapting an accurate VISION of a beloved toy line, and actually making a good movie.
Chu's vision for Retaliation was quite good. He really brought back many of the recognizable elements of GIJOE… the crazy vehicles that look like toys, the familiar costumes, little backstory elements that call back to the comics and cartoon… in that sense, yay.
Even in the more far-out sci-fi elements, it's fair to say that those also existed in the old Joe fiction, and also carried over from the first movie, so it's tolerable.
However, in pretty much every other respect, this movie was a mess. The acting was mostly awful, and the entire tone and sense of cause-and-effect was either schizophrenic or operating at the intellectual level of a 9-year-old. The script was a disaster to begin with, and the plot was full of nonsensical bullshit, made even worse by the obvious fact that the film had been hacked apart in post production, and reassembled into clumsy snippets (seriously… just look at all the shots in the closing credits from scenes that were clearly cut from the movie). Honestly… it was marginally LESS coherent and credible than your average episode of the '80s cartoon.
I'm always saddened to see people reinforcing the idea that a film only has to be "entertaining" to be worthwhile, and that this is the most we should ask from action movies. To me it sounds like trying to justify terrible taste. Action movies can also be GREAT MOVIES, if they are smartly written and well-crafted. If we are "entertained" so easily, and never expect better, then where do we draw the line? Reality TV? Videos of people being kicked in the balls? Argh!
Anyway, so ranting aside… I wouldn't mind seeing a GIJOE/Transformers movie, but I have very little hope for it actually being good.
Retaliation… ok yeah, the characters looked cool. Good for you Chu. Now make a movie that doesn't suck, please.
zmog
Ash from Carolina
I agree Chu is much better at that nice mix of give fans enough of the old so they feel like it's the characters they remember while at the same come up with some new things so it's got the stuff to make the live action version stand out.
Chu seems more like what they have been doing with the Marvel films than what Bay has been doing with the Transformers films. Chu seems to want to update classic characters for the modern world and live action while Bay seems to be bent on re-inventing the wheel.
soundwavempl
My comparison is solely based on how each director handled the live action adaptation of the franchise. While Michael Bay is spectacular at doing action movies and Jon Chu has just begun, I hate Bayformers and thought Retaliation was a much better GI Joe movie than the first one. Bay was never a fan of Transformers until he got the job to do the movies. Chu was a fan of GI Joe before he got to do Retaliation and it shows. I feel Bay has never shown any respect to the franchise and given it any heart, just juvenile jokes and treating the main characters more like supporting characters. Chu brought back Cobra Commander's iconic look and has done justice to the portrayal of the characters that were prominently featured in the movie in my opinion.
And at least Chu was able to pull off getting the live action versions of Cobra Commander, Firefly, Snake Eyes, and Storm Shadow to resemble their classic/iconic looks, while Bay has yet to do so with any character.