"G.I. Joe"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
August 2, 2009
Watch "G.I. Joe" Trailer
FROM ACTION FIGURE TO ACTION HEROES
G.I. JOE: The mere mention of the name immediately conjures up images of heroism, patriotism and the kind of tough rigor required to get the job done. That’s the G.I. JOE millions of kids have known since he was first introduced by Hasbro in 1964. “Everybody has immediate recognition when you say that name,” says Lorenzo di Bonaventura, one of the producers of “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra.”
When G.I. JOE arrived on the scene, says Hasbro’s president and C.E.O. Brian Goldner, who serves as a producer on the film, “the term ‘action figure’ was actually a new one. Boys would never be found playing with fashion dolls, but the idea of an action hero or action figure came along and really stuck. For a little boy, it was the personification of a hero who could empower him to feel like he was part of the action.”
The popularity of G.I. JOE persisted through the Vietnam War era and beyond, introducing new gadgets, but it was in 1983 that G.I. JOE went through its biggest change. That year, he went from being a 12” figure to the, by then, more common 3 ¾” figure kids had already started collecting in other series. G.I. JOE also went from a “he” to a “they” – a team of super-elite soldiers from around the world, each with his/her own specialty and state-of-the-art gear to help them do their jobs.
In “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra,” there’s RIPCORD, an expert marksman and weapons specialist; SNAKE EYES, a ninja warrior armed with Katana swords and a Glock pistol, skilled in martial arts, reconnaissance and infiltration; SCARLETT, tough and bright, also a martial arts master and skilled with a gas-propelled Crossbow Pistol; BREAKER, a specialist in deciphering covert electronics and technology; HEAVY DUTY, the team’s weapons specialist; GENERAL HAWK, who is the team’s commander; COURTNEY “COVER GIRL” KREIGER, a runway model-turned-spy and GENERAL HAWK’S assistant; and, of course, DUKE, a combat veteran with courage to spare: he’s the G.I. JOEs’ leader and soldier personified.
“Each one has a particular skill they’re really good at, and the team counts on that skill,” says di Bonaventura.
While a hugely-popular animated TV series debuted in 1985, it was a long-running series of comic books that truly helped retool G.I. JOE and give it its engaging mythology. The combination of new action figures, comic books and a TV show, helped propel G.I. JOE farther than it had ever been. “They ignited the collective minds of the fans of that era,” says Goldner. “In fact, the G.I. JOE of the 1980s was more successful, globally, than the original.”
For the comic book, Hasbro made the obvious choice in partnering with Marvel Comics. A young staff editor named Larry Hama was assigned the task of creating a comic book series for G.I. JOE from the ground up. At the time, says Hama, all that existed were designs for the figures, but no story. “We went to a meeting and they said, ‘Well, we have these ten figures,’ and that’s what they had,” he recalls. “They had drawings of what the figures were supposed to look like. There was a guy with a rifle and it said, ‘Infantry,’ and there was a girl with a crossbow, and it said, ‘Intelligence.’ We said, ‘Well, where’s the rest of it?’ and they said, ‘Well, this is what we have.’”
The story also was going to be clearly one-sided. “We asked them, ‘Well, what are they going to do, just march? There has to be some sort of conflict.’ So we decided for the comic book, we’ll have these guys called COBRA who will be the bad guys. We told them, ‘We’ll take it from here.’”
Though Hama considered himself “a duck man” (as opposed to a superhero guy) at the company, he begrudgingly took on the assignment, figuring the series would last no longer than a few years at best. “Common knowledge at the time was that a toy book never lasted more than three years.” Educating himself with materials collected from military bookstores and other sources, he eventually created dossiers for each character in order to keep them straight in his own mind, as well as the fans’. Those dossiers made their way onto the backs of the toys’ packaging, helping to clearly define the characters that would stay fixed in G.I. JOE lore.
Spanning 155 issues, Hama’s comic books, says Goldner, “told this amazing story of a G.I. JOE team up against these COBRA forces. For a whole generation, this complete fantasy was a real phenomenon.”
THE GATHERING FORCES
With decades of success and a far-reaching fan base, it seemed only natural that G.I. JOE would make its way to the big screen. So what took so long? “Hasbro had looked at it in the past and talked to many different filmmakers,” explains Brian Goldner. “"I just don't think the company had a sense for how to tell the story, keeping the mythology intact, and help filmmakers see what’s possible in a G.I. JOE versus COBRA story.”
In 2000, the company began to take a new look at ways to reinvent its brands, including G.I. JOE. “We’d been strong in the boys business. We have TRANSFORMERS, we have G.I. JOE. So we started to focus in on what kinds of stories we could tell that would matter today,” notes Goldner.
Power-hitting Hollywood producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and his production company, di Bonaventura Pictures, had a strong interest in the idea of a G.I. JOE film and began to pursue the project with Hasbro. “Lorenzo met with Brian Goldner, and they talked about making G.I. JOE into a big feature film,” notes executive producer Erik Howsam. Howsam himself was a G.I. JOE kid from the start. “From four years old, I grew up with not only the 12-inch G.I. JOE, but also when I was 11 years old, the reinvented G.I. JOE of the ‘80s. I’d race home from school, watch the cartoons, buy the comic books, buy all the toys. So when Lorenzo said, ‘One of the things I’m working on is G.I. JOE,’ my eyes just lit up.”
Although Paramount bought the rights to G.I. JOE first, it was di Bonaventura’s success with another Hasbro property, the 2007 blockbuster TRANSFORMERS, that finally got the project off the ground. TRANSFORMERS was actually the second thing we got involved with,” he recalls. “The attitude of this G.I. JOE comic book was just something a lot of people couldn’t get their heads around completely.” The enormous success of TRANSFORMERS changed all that. “It was quickly apparent to everybody the kind of success you can accomplish with this kind of deep-seated mythology. Then it was, like, ‘Oh, I see, I see. I got it. Reality and fantasy mix really well together.’ That’s what got ‘G.I. JOE’ going and Paramount has been an unbelievably supportive studio to work with in it.”
Adds executive producer David Womark, “Lorenzo’s the type of guy that once he decides he’s making a movie, it can be a year, it could be ten years, but the movie gets made.”
To helm such a story of both super-action and mythology, di Bonaventura approached a man who has practically recast the mold for both genres: Stephen Sommers. His deft handling of the myriad elements in the non-stop action films “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns,” from action-heavy set pieces, to globetrotting adventure, self-effacing humor, larger-than-life characterizations and sparring romance in between life-and-death situations, turned both films into worldwide box office gold.
“I knew all his work through ‘The Mummy’ series,” says Goldner. “That’s a terrific combination of the thread of mythology, but taken to a whole different place with a great action-adventure feel.” Adds di Bonaventura, “Steve is fun, energetic, and he’s passionate about it.”
The film posed a unique challenge to the director. “What sparked my interest was the notion that this would be a cross between a comic book and a James Bond film,” he says. “The idea was that we could have this giant canvas with larger-than-life characters and a great mythology that already existed in the G.I. JOE world.”
What made the premise unique for Sommers was the inclusion of that mythology. “Steve absolutely understood the world of the original 12-inch G.I. JOE but, as he began to understand the G.I. JOE vs. COBRA story, he got very excited, and that really helped propel the movie,” says Goldner.
“The G.I. JOE I grew up with is a very different thing from this movie,” Sommers says. “The reinvention and reinvigoration that Hasbro did in the ‘80s basically rebooted the whole concept, and they supported it with this rich mythology from the comic books and the animated series. We felt that it was just filled with great potential for a motion picture.”
Bringing the G.I. JOE story to life meant more than just replacing an action figure with real humans. “While we’re respectful of the original 12-inch G.I. JOE, this movie is not a toy movie,” says di Bonaventura. “It’s really based on the comic book series from the ‘80s that comes with an intricate mythology and a whole group of fully fleshed-out characters.”
To help those characters fill their battle suits, di Bonaventura turned first to screenwriter Michael B. Gordon, who co-wrote the story with Stephen Sommers. Later, screenwriters David Elliot & Paul Lovett were brought in. The duo had previously collaborated on the hit action thriller “Four Brothers” starring Mark Wahlberg. Then the filmmakers turned to Stuart Beattie, whose success in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy made him uniquely qualified to breathe life into these cultural icons.
Says Beattie: “Lorenzo just called me, out of the blue, and said, ‘Hey, let’s do G.I. JOE.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ one reason being because of Lorenzo. He knows how to pull the trigger and get people moving around him. I knew it would get made. I’m from Australia and I didn’t really grow up with G.I. JOE, so when I was introduced I just found it an irresistible world.”
“A lot of people spent a lot of time in their childhoods and also in their adulthoods with these characters,” says Sommers. “We have a certain responsibility to execute that. We’d hate to disappoint somebody who’s invested 20 or 30 years in G.I. JOE.”
Arnold Vosloo, veteran actor from Sommers’ “Mummy” films and who plays ZARTAN in G.I. JOE, knows this firsthand. “Whenever you do something that has a following, it’s always tough because you don’t want to let the fans down. If you screw it up, they’ll stop you in the street and tell you.” Adds Marlon Wayans, who plays RIPCORD, “If we do this wrong, there’s gonna be some crazy comic book guy at my house dressed in a G. I. JOE costume trying to kick my ass!” he laughs. “But, I think they’ll be happy with how it turned out.”
For a film to be a success, it has to appeal not only to hardcore fans who have been champing at the bit for decades to see their heroes come alive, but also to potential new fans who are simply out for a great ride. “In a sense, as filmmakers, we have to serve two masters,” says executive producer David Womark. “We have to satisfy the hardcore fans, but we also want the film to have broad appeal for people that don’t know anything about G.I. JOE.”
Stephen Sommers is someone who is particularly adept at accomplishing that difficult balancing act, Womark notes. “That’s one of the aspects of the film that Stephen really got into in a big way, walking the fine line between doing something that honors the fans but, at the same time, had a component of modern adventure and excitement like a lot of his movies do.” Adds Howsam, “That’s something I think Stephen understands in a big way and it was a real priority for him.”
Sommers has a true understanding of how to manage the story to respect both audiences, he says. “I feel we’ve taken the best of these colorful personalities. We’ve been respectful, but in no way did we handle them with kid gloves,” he explains. “What fills a comic book page or a small screen won’t necessarily fill a movie screen, so we have painted with both fine and broad strokes. In some cases, we’ve even given them much more detail and back story than was presented in the books and the series.”
Beattie also studied both military terminology and true G.I. JOE slang. “There are certain phrases that these characters use which quickly identify them to fans as JOE characters,” says Beattie. “This is not just a military film, it’s a G.I. JOE film.”
Beattie’s initial research finally paid off when he got the call to “re-engage.” “It was good that I already knew G.I. JOE so well because there would have been no time to get up to speed on it. I just had to get in there and write.”
All the writers on “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra,” were careful to follow the basic G.I. JOE story template that fans have come to know and love: the G.I. JOE team has a secret weapon they’re transporting and must keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
However, the screenwriter’s knowledge of the G.I. JOE world helped keep the story unique. Beattie understood the team’s secret nanotechnology weapons –microscopic robotic devices. “We wanted something that could only exist in the world of G.I. JOE and not in any other,” notes Beattie. “It’s the fans who have made G.I. JOE what it is, so whenever you take on a project like this, you’ve got to listen to them and understand what it is that they want, and the only way to do that is by becoming a fan yourself.”
CAST & CHARACTERS
What sets “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra” apart from other movies derived from comic books is the fact that G.I. JOE is a team, comprised of a number of complex characters, each with his or her own qualities and back story. “I know that quite a few comic books have been turned into films, but I think this stands out. It has an entire band of elite specialists, all of whom are heroes, not just one hero facing his demons. There’s also this great group of bad guys, so it becomes this very primal fight of good versus evil, G.I. JOE versus COBRA,” notes screenwriter Beattie.
Particularly appealing is the sense of camaraderie among the G.I. JOE team members, another quality often missing from other comic book films. “It’s a huge part of who G.I. JOE is,” says Beattie.
A major part of the G.I. JOE mythology is the many characters’ intertwined back stories, which are slowly revealed. “The spine of the movie is really four sets of relationships that you follow throughout the film, as opposed to just these characters as a simple team,” explains producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. “There’s so much intertwining between the villains and the good guys and even within the good guys, there’s a lot of shared history that goes on.”
The same is true for the villains, Beattie notes. “It’s a group of bad guys who are always fighting each other and trying to get ahead while taking on the G.I. JOE team.”
For its cast, Sommers and di Bonaventura stuck close to the comic book in creating a multinational team. “We really wanted to create a cast that was as much of a polyglot as possible, and create a camaraderie amongst them that could be discernible onscreen,” he says. Again, the fans would expect nothing less. “We wanted to be true to its origins,” says Brian Goldner. “Those characters were always very colorful and multinational, and you got the sense that wherever trouble was, the G.I. JOE team was there. They were up against a force, COBRA, that was everywhere.”
The multinational makeup of the characters was appealing to the actors, as well. “G.I. JOE always broke down those national boundaries and just said, ’It’s not about one country against another country. It’s about good guys against bad guys,’” notes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Rex in the film.
At the core of the public consciousness of G.I. JOE, though, is an image of a virile, rugged American soldier, like the original 12” action figure, who appears in the film in the form of the DUKE character. “DUKE embodies a lot of the values of our military in a big way,” says executive producer Erik Howsam. “He is a guy who’s incredibly loyal to his friends, who will do anything for them. He’ll do anything for his country. He’s a born leader.”
DUKE is far from the one-dimensional fighting machine, however. “He reminds me of some of the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters I grew up with,” notes di Bonaventura. “He’s a man of few words, yet very complex. He loves very deeply, and cares deeply about his friendships and is not afraid to be vocal about them.”
As the character at the core of the G.I. JOE team, the audience more or less experiences the journey through DUKE. “He’ll never back down,” explains Goldner. “That’s what causes him to be brought along, and, through his eyes, the audience gets to see what being part of the G.I. JOE team is all about.” Adds Beattie, “He becomes our eyes into the G.I. JOE world.”
To step into DUKE’s combat boots, the filmmakers tapped star-on-the-rise Channing Tatum, whose good looks and physical stature made him a natural to portray the heroic Special Forces soldier-turned-G.I. JOE.
Di Bonaventura comments, “Channing Tatum is DUKE. Just like DUKE, the girls will fall in love with him and the boys will want to be him.” Adds Howsam, “Not only does he look the part, but he also embodies a lot of those values himself.”
The young leading man, known to audiences for his work in “Step Up,” is sufficiently awestruck with landing what he calls ”the role of my life.” “This is unlike anything I’ve ever done,” he says. “Other than when I was four, running around with my G.I. JOE figure. Some days on set, it would just hit me that it wasn’t real to me when I realized where I was and who I was playing. Unbelievable!”
Getting deeply into character, Tatum frequently offered to perform many of his own stunts. “It’s not a question of whether you had to ask him or not, he volunteered,” recalls Erik Howsam.
“Channing is just a natural athlete,” says stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell. “You don’t really need a double for Channing. He can do it all.”
DUKE is introduced to the G.I. JOEs while accompanied by RIPCORD, his wisecracking Special Forces sidekick of 10 years. “RIPCORD is the type of soldier DUKE would trust implicitly with his life, “says di Bonaventura. “So even though he’s sometimes cracking jokes, there’s something going on underneath. He can be casual and fun, but when the fur starts to fly, he’s the guy you want by your side. RIPCORD is a substantial character with substantial skills and he plays an enormous role in the final conflict between the G.I. JOE team and the COBRA team.” “He’s one of those guys that’ll stand by you until the end,” says Channing Tatum.
Particularly engaging to watch is the onscreen relationship between DUKE and RIPCORD. “The kind of camaraderie the two have is kind of like that of the ‘Lethal Weapon’ movies, where they’re in the middle of a gun battle and they’re still bickering with each other in a funny way. It allows you to easily see the humanity in these folks and their true character,” says Brian Goldner.
There is the kind of bond between DUKE and RIPCORD that is at the core of the military experience, says U.S. Army Liaison Lieutenant Colonel Paul Sinor, an advisor on the film. “Everybody who’s in the military fights the war for the person next to them. That’s who you fight the war for.”
That camaraderie carried into the relationship between the two actors, as well. “What’s great is that those two guys love each other in person,” notes di Bonaventura. “They developed camaraderie off screen that bleeds onto the screen.”
Casting the part meant finding an actor who could not only be funny, but deliver in the clinch. “We had seen Marlon Wayans in a small movie called ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ where you could see the depth of characterization he was capable of,” says the producer. “It’s easy for Marlon to be funny, but he’s also a really good actor.”
Wayans grew up poor in a housing project with nine other siblings, so, while he watched friends play with the action figures, he and his brothers had to improvise. “We used to play with roaches and paint them green to make our own G.I. JOE action figures,” he quips. “I used to want to play with them, so it’s fun to actually be a G.I. JOE.”
For Wayans, working on a Stephen Sommers film was like taking a seat on a super-sized thrill ride. “We get to do a lot of fighting, kind of like when we were kids playing cowboys and Indians, or army soldiers or war. Except now I’m getting paid.”
The screen fighting might be as close to the real thing as Wayans ever hopes to find himself, he says. “It’s a scary thing, this war stuff. Those military guys need to be paid $20 million a fight. God bless those people out there fighting for our freedom, because while RIPCORD may be about danger, I’d be in a ditch somewhere e-mailing people.”
If there is any one character fans have been waiting to see come to life, it is SNAKE EYES, the mysterious and deadly Ninja element of G.I. JOE. “He is probably the most iconic G.I. JOE character,” notes Stuart Beattie.
Nearly as iconic to fans is the actor who portrays him, Scottish-born Ray Park, best known to genre fans for his depiction of the demon-faced Darth Maul in “Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.” “Ray Park has a huge, huge following,” notes producer Bob Ducsay, “partly because he played Darth Maul, but also because he’s just a great martial artist. He does an unbelievable job with SNAKE EYES in our movie. We’ve got a guy who’s doing everything needed to bring his character to life.”
A childhood fan of martial arts film heroes, Park says he and his brother played with the British equivalent of G.I. JOE, known as Action Man. “I had the 12-inch doll, the massive tank, the big helicopter, and he had SNAKE EYES, STORM SHADOW and the COBRA Commander. I would always play STORM SHADOW, because I loved the fact that there was a ninja dressed in white,” he says, referring to SNAKE EYES’ COBRA nemesis.
Fans at Star Wars conventions would often suggest to Park that, should a G.I. JOE movie ever be made, he would be the perfect choice to play SNAKE EYES. The seed having been planted, when the opportunity arose, Park went for it in a big way. “I wanted to do it because of the fans, because of my younger brother, and from having played with that big 12-inch doll as a boy,” he says.
Park was so enthused about auditioning for the part; he was even prepared to film an audition to send to the producers. “I was going to make my own audition tape and send it in and say, ‘This is SNAKE EYES.’ I went to town and bought myself SNAKE EYES commando gear, a load of Ninja stuff.”
The producers headed him off at the pass, asking him to come in the following week to test in person, so Park prepared instead from the inside out. “For that weekend, I just became SNAKE EYES. I didn’t eat. I was just cleansing and doing a lot of research on what SNAKE EYES was about. So that Monday morning, as soon as I walked into that training facility for my screen test, I was SNAKE EYES.”
Recalls Erik Howsam, “Ray came in there and was so excited to play this character. Between his moves, his technique and his swordplay, he just blew us away and we said, ‘Ray Park has to be SNAKE EYES.’”
Park’s fascination with ninjas made it easy to transform himself into this fascinating character. Notes Beattie, “Ninjas are appealing just because they’re so cool. They don’t go for any of the samurai formality. There’s no code, no rules, none of that. It’s ‘We’ll kill you and you won’t even know it.’”
It’s SNAKE EYES’ quiet resolve, says di Bonaventura, that makes him an absolutely essential member of the G.I. JOE team. “Just when you need him, there he is. Just when everybody else is out of control, he’s calm. When everybody else is calm, he’s moving.”
Unique to SNAKE EYES is his vow of silence. Playing a character who never speaks posed a welcome challenge to Park. “That was really the attraction to me as an actor, to use my body in a way that I’ve never used it before, to try and communicate, even if it’s just with a little finger twirl. It tells the audience there’s someone there underneath the armor.
“I wanted it to be iconic; I wanted it to be really cool,” Park continues. “I wanted to be true to the fans and to the character, so that when fans see it, they’ll go, ‘There’s SNAKE EYES.’”
“There’s nobody else who could have pulled that off other than Ray Park,” says Brian Goldner.
Handling counterintelligence for G.I. JOE is the physically agile and weapon-savvy SCARLETT. “Besides being a wonderful markswoman with her crossbow,” explains Beattie, “she’s a bona fide genius who got through college by age 12.”
SCARLETT is also drop-dead gorgeous, so finding an actress who could balance looks and brains landed the producers at the feet of Rachel Nichols. “SCARLETT is one of our three resident hotties,” explains Sommers. “The character is extremely intelligent and also happens to be outrageously beautiful, as only comic book heroines can be. Rachel has to strike a difficult balance. On the one hand, the movie is a bit of a comic book, but at the same time, you never want somebody portraying a brainiac and not being able to pull it off. SCARLETT’s an intel expert and an accomplished combat soldier. We were blessed because Rachel’s wildly intelligent and she brings that in full to the screen.”
Because a project like “G.I. JOE” is very secretive, Nichols’ auditions were pages from other movies. “In my first audition, they had me read from ‘Van Helsing,’ because they were keeping the script top secret. I went through the entire audition process without ever getting to read ‘G.I. JOE.’” Hoping to become even better prepared, Nichols searched the Internet for anything she could find on the project. “I love Stephen and Lorenzo, and I thought TRANSFORMERS was fantastic, and so was ‘The Mummy.’ The other actors who had already signed on were great. So when Stephen called and said, ‘Congratulations!,’ I screamed in his ear, and he hung up the phone. He called back four minutes later and asked, ‘Have you read the script?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Then how do you know you even want to play SCARLETT?’ I answered, ‘Blind faith, Stephen, blind faith!’”
Parisian actor Saïd Taghmaoui was cast as BREAKER, the communications expert who, himself, sometimes has a little trouble communicating. Although “G.I. JOE” was the action film debut for the actor, he found his own creative process was the same. Taghmaoui commented, “Despite the incredibly elaborate sets, I still felt like an actor working intimately with a director. I was able to forget about the massive scope of my surroundings and focus on telling the story, despite what was happening around me.”
Nigerian-bred British actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was the perfect pick for the role of HEAVY DUTY. “He’s a big, hulking man known for his specialty in heavy weapons,” explains Erik Howsam.
The scale and scope of the action-packed feature was one of the prime draws for Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “As far as scenes are concerned, we cover the whole gamut. We have underwater fights; we have a moving battle through the streets of Paris and one underground in the desert. Then we have all these guns and weapons, hand-carried and mounted on vehicles. So, for me, it’s an absolute thrill ride, and I think it’ll be the same for the audience. Also, I think it’s been made more contemporary by including everyone, making it more international. That only enhances the movie.”
The second “hottie” on the side of good is the eponymously named COURTNEY “COVER GIRL” KREIGER, played with stunning looks and Czech smolder by fashion model Karolina Kurkova, who has her own theory about her character’s name: “She definitely has an inner strength, you can see it in her eyes. She’s a G.I. JOE and can kick some ass, but she’s always very composed. She never shows what’s going on.”
“G.I. JOE’s leader, GENERAL HAWK, is the authoritative, demonstrative leader who lets you know exactly what he’s thinking, especially when you’re on the receiving end of an order. As di Bonaventura observes, “He’s a hardened, tough battle veteran who’s seen a lot of missions and a lot of action. And he’s a guy who sees the world through a very simple prism, which is, ‘Get the bad guys, and keep your team together.’”
Early in the casting process, the perfect fit for the role had evaded filmmakers, until producer Ducsay saw an early cut of a film his friend was making called “The Express,” in which Dennis Quaid plays Ben Schwartzwalder, the Syracuse University football coach to the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, Ernie Davis. Ducsay remembers, “I got in the car after the screening and called Steve and said, ‘I know who GENERAL HAWK is. It’s Dennis Quaid.’”
Quaid needed no coaxing to take the role, but got some at home nonetheless. “Dennis is so iconic for a role like this; it was just fantastic when he said yes,” recalls di Bonaventura. “His son is a fan of the comic books and the animated shows, and he urged him, ‘You gotta do ‘G.I. JOE,’ dad!’ It’s always great to have a kid on your back.”
Although his son may be a fan of the ‘80s G.I. JOE, Quaid remembers when Joe was spelled with upper and lower case letters. “When I was growing up, G.I. Joe was very patriotic, very American. There had always been toy soldiers, but this was the first one to come with gear and a Jeep and things like that. Everybody wanted one. Now, G.I. JOE has become more international, more of a coalition, if you will, of international elite soldiers, who are out to keep the peace.”
Playing the President of the United States is veteran British actor Jonathan Pryce. “I’ve played lots of powerful figures in the past, but none quite as powerful as this,” he says proudly. Throughout his long career, the actor has portrayed an immense variety of characters, and though “G.I. JOE” is drawn from the comic book world, he laughs, “At least I’m not a Disney ride character this time,” a reference to his appearances in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.
Having a British actor portraying a U.S. president is not at all a far-fetched choice. “In Britain, we’ve always been aware of the strength of the American President, as well as how they behave, how they walk,” he explains. “There’s a consistency to it, a very proud way that the President walks.” He is always noticeable, says Pryce, because of those around him. “There are always people around him, guys walking backwards, wearing sunglasses and talking up their sleeves, which I find fascinating. That’s how you know it’s the President.”
While the G.I. JOE team is a conglomerate of fascinating characters, the villains in “G.I. JOE” are no less captivating. As with all great mythologies, the antagonists are driven by darker forces, each with a back story sure to keep both new and old fans engaged, as more and more about their intertwined stories, both among themselves and, with G.I. JOE, is revealed.
“We go much deeper into the backgrounds of characters like DESTRO and The BARONESS than in the comics or the series,” states producer Ducsay. “Not only will the fans enjoy it, but it also makes it engaging for the person who knows nothing about G.I. JOE. Our goal is to tell a story about universal characters.”
The movie opens with a sequence never portrayed in the comic books, but one which provides the origin of one of the leading villains. While the present-day James McCullen, the head of MARS (Military Armament Research Syndicate) appears to be less than honest in his dealings of sophisticated weapons, the film brings us back many generations where, in 1641 at France’s Bastille, an ancestral member of the clan McCullen is facing the consequences of similar misdeeds.
“It’s one of the first scenes that Stephen and Stuart Beattie came up with,” Howsam explains. “When I read it, I was, like, ‘My God, if you’re a fan, you’re going to be so excited about this,’ because it takes you to this other world and gives you a great history of McCullen’s ancestor.”
“Like all of our characters, McCullen has many sides to him,” di Bonaventura explains. “He’s a legitimate arms dealer, if you could say that, who is in the arms procurement and creation business with NATO’s backing. He’s a man who can carry on that kind of high finance, HEAVY DUTY technical world and, at the same time, behind him is this completely illicit organization.”
“There’s a great deal of dishonesty behind him, but I suppose that’s a given in this Byzantine world of crosses, double-crosses, vengeance, money, lust for power and greed,” says British actor Christopher Eccleston, who portrays the complex character. “He seems to be working, like all ‘bad’ characters, in the end, for himself, in this case, with a desire to control the world.”
Di Bonaventura, who first came upon Eccleston in Danny Boyle’s 1995 film “Shallow Grave” (and more recently seen as Britain’s Dr. Who), notes, “He’s such a dynamic actor and brings such gravitas to the movie. It’s fantastic, because he sort of anchors the bad guy side and keeps it a little more on the ground, as The BARONESS, The Doctor and STORM SHADOW can be very theatrical.”
COBRA’s most beautiful and deadly member, The BARONESS like so many of the film’s characters, has a past that both haunts and drives her.
While comic book fans will know The BARONESS as a brunette, the producers took advantage of the blonde and British actress Sienna Miller, creating a transformation from one to the other, just as Ana, her pre-BARONESS identity, changes. “She also brings swagger,” says di Bonaventura of the casting choice. “You need fun, you need to have a twinkle in your eye, and she brings all of those things.”
Another crucial character in the “G.I. JOE” mythology is STORM SHADOW, who carries an important story arc, one whose childhood origins will finally come to light to fans in the film. “If you’re a G.I. JOE fan, you want to see these characters in a huge way, and we deliver,” says Erik Howsam.
An elite henchman for COBRA, STORM SHADOW is, like SNAKE EYES, a ninja, a supreme martial artist, who carries two swords. The two were trained by the same master, and thus bear the same ninja markings, and it is indeed this childhood rivalry that has driven each man, though in decidedly different directions. “Showing the root of the mythology between these two characters immediately cements your understanding of what these guys are all about and the paths they have taken as adults,” notes Hasbro’s Goldner.
Portraying the hard-hitting ninja is Korean martial arts star Byung Hun Lee. “He’s a gigantic star in South Korea, probably their biggest male movie star,” says di Bonaventura. “He has great command of the screen.”
Although Lee was at first unaware of the history of G.I. JOE, upon researching the character, he soon realized the magnitude of the project. Lee states, “STORM SHADOW is actually a character with both good and bad sides. He’s a mysterious character. It made me nervous sometimes. There are so many fans and I wondered, ‘Am I doing this right?’ In the end, it was so exciting to do.”
Another intriguing character in “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra” is The Doctor, who implements McCullen’s evil plans. “Like all really great scientific sort of villains, his obsession with science over all priorities is the thing that drives this character,” explains di Bonvanetura. Hiding a horribly disfigured face behind a mask, The Doctor no doubt has plans of his own. “His desire to see his view of science implemented has made him lose who he once was, a highly moral, emotional man who’s turned into this very twisted, dark, scheming individual.”
Played with seething darkness, the character is brought to the screen by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, well known to fans for his five-year role as Tommy Solomon on the popular television comedy “3rd Rock from the Sun.” “My parents were peace activists and they didn’t let me play with toy guns. Swords were alright, though, so I was all about Thundercats and He-Man. Then, when the parents weren’t around, I played with my friends’ G.I. JOE action figures.”
To play the evil Doctor, Gordon-Levitt had to endure four hours in the makeup chair each morning for the application of prosthetic makeup by renowned special effects makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji, a protégé of makeup legend Rick Baker. The actor didn’t mind the ordeal, instead taking full advantage of the transformation to give his character its teeth.
“The guy who did my special effects makeup, Kazuhiro Tsuji, he’s a true artist. I sit in his chair and watch him work and, four hours later, I’m a whole different person,” observes Gordon-Levitt. “Creatively, what I’m after as an actor is to be someone else. We do that in a lot of different ways, like putting on a costume or changing the way we talk, but to have someone physically change your face, that’s beyond anything I’ve ever had the opportunity to do before as an actor. When you put on the makeup and the mask and everything, you just assume the posture. It really makes it easy because it doesn’t have to come from the inside out. It comes from the outside in.”
The four hours in the chair were never wasted, the actor using the time to get into his role for the day’s work. “The first day I went into Joe’s trailer and they were applying the makeup, I saw him listening to something on his iPod,” recalls di Bonaventura. “I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is he listening to?’ He told me it was ‘Richard III.’ He’s listening to Shakespeare as he’s getting his makeup put on. That really kind of explains him in a nutshell and the vast perspective he brings to the role.”
One of The Doctor’s most important creations is the Neo-Vipers, the basic COBRA army. “By introducing ‘NANOMITES’ into these soldiers, they lose their sense of fear, their sense of pain, and display abject loyalty. They’ll do anything,” explains Stuart Beattie. “They’ll go to their deaths without blinking an eye.”
Adds Erik Howsam, “They’re almost like the Storm Trooper characters in ‘Star Wars.’ They’re incredibly menacing, hulking soldiers, and the G.I. JOE team has to go up against these guys. How are they going to stop them?”
Arnold Vosloo, star of Sommers’ “The Mummy” thrillers, plays ZARTAN, a mercenary whose uncanny ability to absorb the identities of those around him makes him a formidable foe. “He can pick up anyone’s traits and copy them instantly,” says Beattie. “He’s a master of disguise, so I get to be a lot of different characters, without giving too much away,” Vosloo says with a wink. “In the comic book series, he’ll hire himself out to anybody, to the highest bidder. He’s a pure mercenary. I suppose kind of a little like an actor,” he laughs.
A native of South Africa, Vosloo didn’t grow up with G.I. JOE, so when Sommers first approached him about acting in the film, his response was, “What’s G.I. JOE?”
“We walk together at Will Rogers Park for exercise, and about a year ago, he was saying he was hoping this G.I. JOE movie works out and that he’s got a great part for me in it. I had no idea what G.I. JOE was.”
That, apparently, has changed. “All my friends are in their late forties now and have little kids, and when I told them that I’m doing ‘G.I. JOE,’ they all freaked out. Hopefully they’ll all take their kids to see the movie.”
FROM ICONOGRAPHY TO IMAGERY
A cast this size is a clear indicator of the sheer magnitude of “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra.” Stephen Sommers’ films are typically bursting at the seams, but “JOE” represented a formidable project for even the heartiest of production teams. Over an 82-day shoot, the crew worked 160-plus sets and set pieces that were designed and built on stages in the L.A. suburb of Downey and other locations throughout the city as well as on location and on stages in Prague. In all, 25 different locations were scouted, designed, built, dressed and shot. That included an around-the-world trip of location shooting any traveler would envy – France, Norway, the Czech Republic and North America. Paris provided the iconic landmarks, while Prague offered streets with slightly fewer challenges for a production seeking to film a high-speed chase through the French city. The chilly climes of Norway mimicked the North Pole. A Fort Worth, Texas armed forces base and Downey’s former aerospace-facility-turned-film-studio (that was once home to the Space Shuttle) provided ample military locations.
It wasn’t enough that Sommers and his filmmaking team were bringing one of the most-loved comic-and-action figures to life, they did so under an absurdly compressed timetable. While such action-heavy fantasy films typically have anywhere from 24 to 30 weeks to prep production, “G.I. JOE” had a total of 12 weeks of prep, allowing the production to begin filming immediately after the end of the WGA strike in Los Angeles in February 2008.
“Every department was so crazed, every single department was trying to get everything up to speed and they really did amazingly,” says producer Bob Ducsay. “Prep on a movie like this would normally be six, seven, eight months. We did it in three.” It wasn’t just a matter of building sets and finding locations. “This is a manufacture movie,” comments co-producer and unit production manager JoAnn Perritano. “That means we’re making the props; we’re making the costumes. It’s not like we can just go and buy stuff off the racks. Every actor had to be body-scanned to make specifically unique costumes built just for them.”
All the more impressive is the fact that the production finished two days ahead of schedule. “That’s positively remarkable,” declares executive producer David Womark. “That shortened prep time wasn’t enough time to do a movie half this size. A lot of that is a testament to Stephen’s creative decisiveness. He really had a good handle on the story and the characters and, logistically, we came up with a good plan that helped him along.”
The tight schedule created a pressurized environment for the production. “It made everything really crazy. We were making decisions so fast, one on top of the other. It was like a pressure cooker. It made everybody stay on top of their game.
Sommers and his producers procured the finest in behind-the-scenes talent to meet the many time-and-craft challenges “G.I. JOE” posed, including producer/editor Bob Ducsay, executive producers David Womark, Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum and Erik Howsam; cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, whose work on TRANSFORMERS gave him a unique understanding of the subject material; production designer Ed Verreaux; editor Jim May; costume designer Ellen Mirojnick; special effects supervisor Daniel Sudick, whose “explosive” resume looks like a Who’s Who of the biggest action pictures of the last decade; second-unit director Greg Michael; stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell; and visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis, along with a veritable platoon of other film craftsmen at the top of their fields.
Bob Ducsay and Greg Michael hold unique positions on the team, having known and worked with Sommers since his earliest days in film. “We started our careers together, so it’s just amazing to be out here doing it again,” says Ducsay. The two met while Ducsay was a teaching assistant in the sound department at the USC Film School. He has since edited all Sommers’ films.
Greg Michael came upon Sommers quite by accident. “The first time I met Steve, he was painting my fraternity house,” Michael recalls. “Steve said, ‘I just moved here from Minnesota and I’m just earning a living right now so I can go to film school.’ He had been traveling Europe as a busker, playing instruments on the street for money, managing bands, and he had just gotten accepted into film school.”
Michael ended up working as a cameraman on one of Sommers’ student films and they have been together ever since. “Every once in a while, Steve and I will be on the telephone, and one of us will say, ‘Can you believe this? Here we are in Prague,’ or ‘Here we are in Bombay.’ It’s been an incredible ride.”
Sommers has indeed come quite a long way since his days painting frat houses, running an explosive roller coaster like “G.I. JOE” in a manner that not only kept the cast and crew on track under incredible duress, but smiling while doing it.
“What I love about Stephen is his excitement,” notes Marlon Wayans. “I think he goes home and holds a G.I. JOE when he goes to sleep every night.” Says David Womark, “He’s the most passionate person on the set and his enthusiasm is contagious.” Greg Michael agrees. “He’s like an electric generator. He excites everybody around him.”
Many liken Sommers’ enthusiasm to that of an 11-year-old boy. “He’s like a kid with an erector set, a multi-million dollar erector set,” says Channing Tatum. Or as Joseph Gordon-Levitt notes, “If you talk to guys my age about playing with G.I. JOE, their eyes light up. ‘I’m gonna set him up this way, and I’m gonna build this other thing, and I’m gonna attach my guy to a balloon and watch him fly away or pull his head off and put on another one.’ Watching Stephen Sommers direct this movie, you get that same feeling.”
Sommers’ childlike excitement in no way diminishes his creative instincts. “He’s always open to new ideas,” says Stuart Beattie. “Nothing is ever too crazy.”
The director’s respect for the crew, in any situation, is enough to draw them back, no matter how difficult the project. “When the phone rang, I couldn’t wait to sign up for a second go around with him,” says JoAnn Perritano, a veteran of “Van Helsing.”
Recalls Rachel Nichols, “He’s very easy to be around. And he’s very savvy. He shoots extremely fast. Stephen knows what he needs, so you don’t spend a lot of time shooting a million different angles of things that you’re not going to use. He’s very concise and that’s why we’re not shooting 20-hour days.”
SOMMERS-SIZE
Stephen Sommers has quickly become a master of the action epic, as is evident in his popular “Mummy” movies and “Van Helsing.” To his crew, many of whom have worked with him on all his major projects, his vision for epic scope, and painstaking detail in his propulsive action set pieces, has come to be known as Sommers-sized. It is not merely large-scale for the sake of it, but part of his passion to continually keep the audience’s adrenaline pumping and their eyes glued to the screen.
Sommers builds sequences through careful progression, brick upon brick, with an acceleration that is carefully planned and timed. That includes the overall look of his film, which he entrusted to his production designer Ed Verreaux. “Ed is highly familiar with the world of action and effects movies,” says David Womark, referring to Verreaux’s work on “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “Rush Hour 3” and “Jurassic Park III.”
The unique challenge Verreaux faced had its roots in a franchise that already had an established look, one which fans were familiar with. “One of the things we wanted to do though,” he says, “was try to push it to the next level, while still staying true to the real character of G.I. JOE.”
Having only a passing familiarity with the franchise, Verreaux immersed himself in the world of G.I. JOE. “I went online and went out and bought about $200 worth of G.I. JOE comic books and learned all about DUKE, SNAKE EYES and their whole universe. It was kind of fun for me to spend a week reading comic books, just to get a sense of what the world of G.I. JOE was all about.” Notes executive producer Howsam, “Ed really did his homework on the property and created this really vibrant place that the actors, Stephen and everyone could live in.”
The designer not only had to create the contemporary world, but also the unique worlds of both the G.I. JOE team and MARS, and he quickly gained an understanding of how they differed. “In the first big meeting we had with Hasbro, they explained that MARS really had all the slick design stuff, while the G.I. JOE side is a little more utilitarian, closer to everyday military, not quite so over-designed,” he explains.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of big movies,” says di Bonaventura, “but this is one of the biggest movies I’ve ever seen. The scale is enormous and the architecture of it is very specific and has to be exceedingly specific, because you need to be able to differentiate where we are at all times, be it in the world of the G.I. JOE team, MARS or our own world. That was a big demand to place on Ed and his team.”
The crew took advantage of front-end time made available in the compressed schedule, building large numbers of sets during the first portion of production time. “The first couple of weeks we were doing local locations in Los Angeles, partly because we had to have time to get the sets built,” Verreaux explains.
During the film’s full-speed-ahead prep and shoot, more sets were continuously built at a single time than on any other film made to date. On average, large genre films usually build no more than 12 to 14 sets during a single period. The “G.I. JOE” production had 168 sets and set pieces constructed for the film.
Many of the largest sets were constructed at The Downey Stages. “There were very few nooks and crannies in the Downey studio that we didn’t in some way or other use or build a set on,” says Verreaux. Among the sets built were the mammoth Urban Combat Level (part of the giant “Pit,” the underground home base of G.I. JOE), the MARS Docking Bay, the G.I. JOE Submarine, the MARS Missile Tube and Launch Tube and the MARS Flight Control set, among others.
The Pit, in fact, is the most impressive, featuring several levels (augmented by several more with visual effects set extensions). “There’s the Urban Combat Level, the Undersea Warfare Level, the Command Center, a myriad of hallways, a medical bay, a rec room, where the G.I. JOE team hangs out and where we get to know them a little better,” Verreaux explains.
“It’s absolutely gigantic,” observes Sommers, “complete with an immense elevator that can transport aircraft to the surface.”
“The amazing thing,” says Sienna Miller, “is that everything works. If there’s a button on the wall that has lights where there should be lights, if you push it, it’ll start flashing.” Co-star Rachel Nichols agrees. “The attention to detail and the authenticity makes the movie come alive for those long-time fans.”
Set decoration was as important a part of art direction for “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra” as for any film. “Our set decorators, Kate Sullivan and Jille Azis, really filled in all of the details,” Verreaux explains. “For instance, when you opened a drawer at the home of The BARONESS and they even went so far as to design the family crest. There was stationery on the table with the family crest and the address with all of it in French. It’s those little touches that you may not see in the film, but it really helped the actors. It helped set the mood for them even though it may not necessarily all be seen on camera.”
Another part of Verreaux’s domain was the fantastic number of aircraft and other vehicles seen in the film. “They’re a whole combination of technology, vehicles and armament that you would hope to see in a ‘G.I. JOE’ movie,” says Hasbro’s Brian Goldner.
“We basically built all of the military vehicles,” says Verreaux. Multiple versions of each had to be constructed, for cases in which a vehicle is seen in regular operation, then another for special effects rigging, etc., all based on pre-visualization during the film’s prep. “We knew there were going to be ‘X’ amount of shots of a certain vehicle doing something a certain way. Some had to explode a certain way, some had to flip.”
The crafts are an exciting component for fans who have played with or known the vehicles by name since their childhoods. “Just the sheer number of aircraft, vehicles and underwater craft we’ve managed to stuff into this movie is unbelievable. It’s Stephen’s imagination run wild,” says David Womark. “There’s the HOWLER, which is a modified G.I. JOE troop carrier, the MARS Razor, a next-generation jet that the MARS have manufactured. Then there’s the MANTIS ATTACK CRAFT and the SHARC ATTACK VEHICLE, which are our underwater mini-submarines. All these vehicles were designed from scratch, specifically for this movie.”
The vehicles, the film’s settings, props and costumes, have one thing in common. “We set the story a decade ahead, which gave us the license to exploit today’s technological advances,” states Sommers. “We’re taking technology that exists in one form or another and positing where it could possibly go. We’re referring to it as ‘science fact’ as opposed to ‘science fiction.’”
Each of the technologies shown are “things that we all know the military are doing, we just haven’t seen them yet,” says Goldner.
They’re all things we might one day see on the battlefield, just not now. “They’re what we call ‘next generation,’” adds David Womark. “It’s kind of like if somebody handed you an iPhone ten years ago. If you looked at it, you could see that it could someday exist, just not yet.”
The technology is shown and used in a way that will make audiences see that it might be possible. “It’s really part of the storytelling,” explains Greg Michael. “If you set something up so that an audience can at least understand the mechanics of how it’s supposed to work, and then show it actually working, then they’ll believe it. We never make such a leap of logic that hasn’t been properly set up and push the envelope to a place where the audience is thinking, ‘Oh, well, that’s just impossible.’ You want the audience to go along for the ride.”
Key among those futuristic technologies is the nanotechnology employed in the secret weapons both the G.I. JOE team and the villains are trying to get their hands on in the film. “The challenge was coming up with some kind of weapon that we all haven’t seen a million times before,” says Erik Howsam. The producers didn’t have to look far to find it. “Nanotechnology is already showing up in science journals, and even in international publications like Time and Newsweek,” says Michael. “We’re just putting a new spin on it.”
Next generation designs were also part of the approach to Ellen Mirojnick’s costume designs, as was a certain visual panache. “Ellen’s known for making actors look sexy, beautiful, hot,” says David Womark. “Given the cast of this movie, that was something very important for Stephen.”
Sommers’ direction to Mirojnick was fairly straightforward. “On the first day, he told me, ‘You must create iconic images.’ Those were our marching orders, and we designed from there.”
Mirojnick, as with all the film’s designers, kept close to the original iconic designs found in the comic, though brought them up to date for a modern audience. “I took the point of view of reimagining how the franchise would look now, something Hasbro really encouraged. They want to wow kids in 2009,” she says.
After first getting acquainted with the franchise, the designer placed her psyche in the mode of a video game. “They wanted it to give you that same feeling we all had the first time we watched James Bond,” says Mirojnick. “That was thrilling because we saw things we hadn’t seen before, and it was a whole new experience. That feeling was something Stephen was very, very anxious to capture.”
Costumes, like all departments, were under the gun, schedule-wise. “This was really the biggest action movie I’ve been involved with, and I’ve done a bunch of action movies,” she says. “We basically had to create the equivalent of 11 superheroes and we had to do it in a mere three months. We had to invent an entire world, stuff that hadn’t been made before.”
First and foremost was the G.I. JOE Liquid Armor suits, their basic fighting suit. “It’s a high-tech battle suit that’s impenetrable, but you put it on like high-performance skiwear,” Mirojnick explains.|
The completed suits, however, were quite popular with the cast, particularly the male cast members. Says Mirojnick, “Some of the boys put them on, looked at themselves and said, ‘Oh, I don’t have to work out and train.’”
On typical superhero movies, the actor wears an inner muscle suit beneath his clothes. “We didn’t want to do that,” says Mirojnick. “I designed a suit; we call it liquid armor. It is a suit that is sculpted musculature that enables the external anatomy to become liquid armor. The conceit was to put the muscles on the outside. It was a great idea.”
One thing all the “G.I. JOE” costumes have is a unique camouflage design. “In the beginning, I noticed that everything in this world is branded,” says Mirojnick. “So G.I. JOE needs to have a stamp. It’s a camouflage that comes in regular colors, but it has G.I. JOE included in the design.”
The coolest representation of the film’s “next generation” feel was the Accelerator Suit. In one epic sequence in the film, DUKE and RIPCORD are chasing after several of the villains, who are going at top speed through Paris in a Scarab. Donning their Accelerator Suits, they offer a formidable challenge to the all-terrain vehicle.
“The suit was actually an idea Stephen had,” David Womark explains. “The suit has a certain amount of robotics that can help somebody travel in it anywhere from 30 to 40 miles an hour, as well as bust through walls or break through doors.”
Again, the idea is not completely far-fetched. “The Department of Defense reps came down and looked at some of our concepts and apparently they’re working on a very similar suit, one which will help soldiers run faster and shield them from ammunition,” he continues. “We’re probably ahead of them by six or seven years.”
Mirojnick and her team developed the first concept drawings for the Accelerator Suit, but, as she notes, “We had a terrific concept artist who drew it on the first day he was hired and we knew immediately that it was unmakeable.”
Shane Mahan at the Stan Winston Studio was then hired to actualize the design. “They learned a lot of the technology of how to build suits like this from their work on ‘Iron Man,’” notes Womark. However, there was a big difference between the Iron Man suit and the Accelerator Suit. “In most of ‘Iron Man,’ what you see is an animated visual effects version of the suit. We wanted both Marlon and Channing to be in these suits as much as possible, for medium shots, for close-ups, even for some of their stunts, so the challenge was that it had to be cool enough for the fans, but functional enough on the set.”
The result was a modular design that allowed the actors to walk, run, sit or otherwise move with the action, which is not to suggest the suits were comfortable. “If hell was a costume, it would be the Accelerator Suit,” Marlon Wayans declares, adding, “The devil probably has one or two in his closet.” Channing Tatum agrees. “They might be the most uncomfortable things ever made, but man they are cool looking.”
Offering another challenge was the costume made for Ray Park as SNAKE EYES. “For the initial design, we looked at ninjas, and then back to the comic books,” explains Mirojnick. The result was a suit that combined elements of SNAKE EYES’ Ninja life with his role as a commando with G.I. JOE. “It’s a fitting homage to the original SNAKE EYES design,” David Womark notes.
The sculpted suit, complete with heavy-duty visor, was an adjustment for Park. “I’d never worn a suit that covered my body and my head before.” In time, Park became used to the costume and even picked up a few pointers from some of the stuntmen working on the film. “They gave me a few tips on how to try to make the suit my own. I love the costume. I love the way it looks. I would have worn it home given the chance.”
For his COBRA counterpart, STORM SHADOW, Mirojnick designed a costume befitting the actor portraying him, Byung Hun Lee. “He is really handsome, a true gentleman in Paris when he’s first recruited by McCullen to go on a couple of missions. He also has his fighting suit and a mask,” the designer explains.
SCARLETT has a variety of costumes that get right to the point. “She has great liquid armor that accentuates every part of her sexy body,” says Mirojnick.
For the evil BARONESS, Mirojnick turned Sienna Miller from what she calls “the most fabulous girl next door” into her incredibly nasty alter ego. “She came in and said, ‘Paint The BARONESS on me.’”
Miller’s outfits are made of leather and crocodile. “She’s an all-around assassin,” notes the actress, “a real throwback to Diana Rigg in ‘The Avengers.’ I think everybody will aspire to be The BARONESS.”
The main costume for the BARONESS is beyond tight. “The outfit is so tight, she can’t sit down,” notes Channing Tatum. During breaks in shooting, Miller was required to rest against a “leaning board.” “It’s kind of like the Hannibal Lecter thing he got wheeled around on,” the actress says. “Mine was just this princess chair. It’s got BARONESS written above it. They measured my arms so that my hands could just dangle elegantly over the end.”
PROPS FOR THE PROPS
The props for “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra,” should prove equally eye-catching, at least as far as fans are concerned. Prop Master Brad Einhorn, veteran of several “Batman” movies, says, like other department heads, that the short prep schedule made things tougher. “We had about nine weeks of prep, which really isn’t enough for a movie like this. I did a couple of ‘Batman’ movies, and I had six months of prep, and it’s about the same amount of work, but we did it and we did some great props.”
Einhorn and his team created a fascinating arsenal of weaponry and cool gear, everything from hand weapons and tank weapons to The BARONESS’ glasses. “We built everything from scratch. Everything was custom manufactured. No props were bought for this movie. We had about 30 or 40 people in town make them all,” says Einhorn. “Checking every step of the manufacturing of the hundreds of props was the tricky part, going back and forth to the director, making sure he’s happy, but I just love manufacturing and creating new crazy props.”
The most complicated prop was the “star of the show,” the ‘nanomite’ warheads, which took over three months to fabricate. “It was the first prop I started on because I knew it would take the longest. Every piece of it is machined. We had glass molds to make the glass parts, and it’s all made by hand and comes in a really cool case with the kill switches.”
In the personal weapons department, one of the more popular on set was SCARLETT’s high-tech crossbow. “Rachel Nichols loved that prop. She couldn’t get enough of it,” Einhorn notes. Built as a practical crossbow, the device is covered with an array of LED lights. “It looks like an optical illusion. It opens really weird and actually scares you. It’s almost like a magic trick.” Adds Nichols, “It doesn’t really fire, which made it easy for me, actually, because then I can never miss a target!”
Ray Park was particularly pleased when it came to the SNAKE EYES’ weapons, his favorite being the ninja tonfas. “It’s a handle and a stick, and mine has two snake heads on top,” says Park. “STORM SHADOW was always beating on SNAKE EYES when they were kids, but the tonfa became SNAKE EYES’ weapon of choice. And over the years, he developed this weapon and made it his own, so at the press of a button, I have a spike at the top and a blade at the back. It’s lethal and very dangerous.”
Even nearer to the hearts of both Park and Einhorn are the SNAKE EYES’ swords. “I’ve always loved them, ever since I was a kid,” the prop master says. “If there’s a sword in a movie, I’m always excited.”
“One of the reasons why I got into doing martial arts was the sword work,” says Park. “I just love the magic of moving a sword around. To me it’s a dance.”
The sword fighting sequences in the film are carefully choreographed, Park notes. “They have to be really precise. We made sure we hit our beats, and we would dance and tango in, doing the waltz together because the last thing I wanted to do was have a sword and cut one of my fellow actors by accident. It was a constant challenge.”
Another important piece of craftsmanship is DESTRO’s mask. “It’s a fantastic piece of artistry,” declares actor Christopher Eccleston, who dons the face covering as McCullen. Einhorn and his team took great care to reference the mask of the comic book. “We want fans to say ‘DESTRO’ as soon as they see it,” he says.
In a Stephen Sommers film, props can be anything as small as a ring or as large as a Humvee, each adaptable to being tossed around. Such is the case with the COBRA vehicle adorned as a SCARAB, which can go just about anywhere, and does, with the help and expertise of special effects supervisor Daniel Sudick and his team.
In one sequence, the Hummer is tossed down a traffic-filled street in Paris. The scene was actually filmed in Prague, where a great many outdoor sequences were shot. Sending a Humvee down a city street crashing into cars and turning it into a projectile takes precision and skill. “Dan Sudick’s challenge was that he normally does effects like this on a back lot or a soundstage,” says David Womark. “All of a sudden, he finds himself throwing cars in front of people’s houses. You want to make sure that the car doesn’t land in somebody’s living room.”
Sudick had to hurl the Hummer 60 feet down a historic street only 30 feet wide. “We had to have a guide cable on the front,” he explains. “We had two cannons in the back that were rigged to fire at the same time, and the cable up front had to have a pretty good force on it to keep everything in line.”
The chase scene was filmed with nine cameras with cars flying everywhere, in true Sommers-size scale. “We did two takes with nine cameras rolling on each take, so there are essentially 18 individual camera shots worth of footage,” says Greg Michael. “It looks like every single car in Paris is flying!”
“I think we actually bought and destroyed over 112 cars,” says executive producer Womark. “I think we beat the record, which was ‘The Blues Brothers,’ which had about 102 or 104 cars wrecked.”
The stunts were performed by the stunt team, as well as cast members. Placing yourself in the center of an explosion bumps up the adrenaline, but also solidifies the effect, says Sienna Miller. “Personally, as an audience member, I would love to know that the explosion I saw was not created on a computer, that it was actually real and the actors were really there. The fans will know we were there. They’re real, live explosions and we were very close to them, but we had the best people in the world making sure we were safe. We never felt compromised.”
Equally important is the presence of the actors in key fight scenes, particularly those between The BARONESS and SCARLETT. Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols both worked closely with stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell to develop the scene and to train. “Rachel, because of her stature, was tall and held her hands in a certain way, so her moves involved more punches,” he explains. “Sienna is a bit shorter and was a little more grounded, and she started throwing kicks. It was a perfect blend; they matched up beautifully.”
“We trained every day of the week for about six weeks to master a 90-move fight sequence,” says Nichols.
Performing your own fight scenes includes both benefits and risks. Says Miller, “There was one moment when we were filming where she kicked and it went to the wrong place and I responded naturally and blocked it in the right place. It became instinctual.”
The most anticipated battle between two characters is the explosive duel between SNAKE EYES and STORM SHADOW. “The rivalry between those two is one of the core mythologies of G.I. JOE,” says Bob Ducsay. “It’s kind of like watching the Obi-Wan and Darth Vader showdown,” adds Stuart Beattie. “It’s that powerful.”
Rondell worked closely with Ray Park and Byung Hun Lee to develop an exciting battle that accentuated the styles of both artists. “Ray comes from a huge martial arts background, using a style known as WuShu, which is really amazing,” Rondell explains. “It’s the head postures and hand postures and poses that are really what the audience wants to see, because that’s SNAKE EYES.” Adds Park, “It’s a more flamboyant style, and they understood that, so we sort of combined what I can do with what they wanted me to show. We would just work together until it felt right.”
Lee brought a different style. “He’s a little bit more methodical and stylish in his own way,” says Rondell. “But when you put them both together, it’s quite a battle. They both really excel at their martial arts, and I think their styles really complement each other.”
As part of the SNAKE EYES/STORM SHADOW mythology, there is also a flashback sequence in which audiences see the first such duel when the characters were children. “I interviewed quite a few kids, and we found these two nine-year-old pro martial artists who were really, really talented,” Rondell recalls. Two additional sets of doubles were brought in for the children, to allow the boys to only work within the specified time frame for child actors. “We’d bring in the first set of kids and they’d shoot part of a scene, and then we’d pull them out and bring in the other set of kids for the insert work.”
The professionalism of the young martial artists astounded even a veteran like Rondell. “Each one of the kids was completely trained, knew the fights inside out and were very supportive of the other pair who were fighting at the same time. It was a complete team of nine year olds. The crew was in awe of how respectful they were and how quickly they learned it and put it together.”
Being an arms-heavy movie, the cast also received firearms training, which, to their surprise, was done with live ammunition. “It was important that they know what it felt like, what they were dealing with, the actual kick of the weapon,” Rondell explains. “They learned how to load the weapon, how to handle the weapon, how to give the weapon back to the prop master. It’s all very serious stuff.” Shooting real bullets took some getting used to, but Sienna Miller explains that she caught on quickly. “I’d never fired a gun before in my life, so this was a new experience for me,” she says. “We went out on a gun range outside L.A. and were given Glock pistols with live ammunition. It was an overwhelming experience.”
While the weapons training helped get the actors used to the kick of a real weapon, making it look natural was another matter. Among his other tasks, U.S. Army liaison Lieutenant Colonel Paul Sinor helped teach the cast members how real Army soldiers handle guns. “I don’t want somebody who has just gotten out of the Army to look at this film and say, ‘Oh, that’s just an actor,’” he explains. “I want him to look at it and say, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’ Plus, it helps the actor feel proud that he did it right.”
Sinor helped out with everything from handling weapons to dialogue, as well as pointing to items in the script that didn’t quite read truly military. “We might request changes, say to dialogue, where there might be an exchange between a sergeant and an officer that isn’t exactly correct,” says Sinor. “Or there might be a reference to Jeeps. Everyone thinks that the Army still drives Jeeps, but we haven’t driven them since the mid 1970s. So we have it changed to the appropriate vehicle, things like that.”
The respect for the military is evident in the respect given to Sinor’s opinions on set. “Stephen pretty much gave me carte blanche on set. He said, ‘If you see something you want to correct on the spot with an actor, go ahead and do it.’”
Having the military as part of “G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra” was something the producers insisted on, because it is the core of who G.I. JOE is. “The name G.I. JOE means a lot to them and what they stand for in a lot of ways,” says Erik Howsam. Adds Sinor, “G.I. JOE is an American icon. It would be very difficult for us not to be able to support that. G.I. JOE is a hero, not only to American boys and girls, but worldwide. He does what the military’s supposed to do and he does them right. He does them properly. That’s why we’re proud to be part of this.”
“Since the very beginning, G.I. JOE has always celebrated the heroism and character and bravery of men and women in the Armed Services,” says Hasbro’s Brian Goldner. “In this film, we’re able to bring that out in a kind of a fantastical situation that is still rooted in reality.”
Bringing “G.I. JOE” to the screen in a way that’s exciting both for fans and newcomers was a challenge, but one completed in a way sure to please both. “It was a hugely daunting task,” says Stuart Beattie, “because I know it’s so important to many people. We really took pains to make sure the fans would be happy with it. We want them to say, ‘That’s the ‘G.I. JOE’ I’ve been wanting to see for so many years. That’s the G.I. JOE I remember.’”
“G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra,” however, is not a political film. Says Channing Tatum, “It’s just a big, big fantastical ride, whether you’ve heard of G.I. JOE or not.”
Stephen Sommers closes: “This movie has been such fun to make. Every day has been fun. There wasn’t a day where you didn’t see or get to participate in something exciting. It was a great group of people and it was a joy to come to work every single day. It’s been a great, whole, overall experience. I just really love what I do.”
