storm shadow Tagged Articles at Cinematical

For a guy who allegedly got fired from his latest film, Stephen Sommers shows few signs that he's letting the rumor mill wear him down. "The guys who have been hammering me for the last year have really turned around in the last couple of weeks when they started seeing the movie," Sommers beamed during an interview about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. "I'm pretty happy."

Admittedly, Sommers' commercial track record is almost inversely proportionate to his critical one, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars with the Mummy movies and Van Helsing despite reviews that were, to say the least, often unkind. But speaking to the director via telephone about G.I. Joe, Sommers indicated that he has accepted – if not championed – his spot among Hollywood's purveyors of pure spectacle. "They love to hate the guys who make the movies that they love," he said of the "internet movie haters" calling for his head.

Cinematical spoke to Sommers about his participation in G.I. Joe, which followers of the film know has been highly-contested in press reports as the film moved towards its opening day, August 7. In addition to clarifying his employment status at the helm of the film, he discussed the development of the film's iconic conflict between G.I. Joe and Cobra, reflected on what interests him as a director and storyteller, and perhaps most importantly, explained why some of the costumes were changed en route to the silver screen.

Cinematical: When you started working on G.I. Joe, what did you feel like was essential to preserve about the source material, and what did you know that by necessity would have to change when you adapted and updated it for live-action?

While G.I. Joe certainly isn't the first movie to use Slurpee straws as a marketing tool, when you take into consideration all the bad buzz that's been following the flick around for the past several months, it's almost as if Paramount handed this joke to us all on a silver platter. Yes, those of you lucky enough to suck down your slurpee through one of these special straws will get the chance to own a limited edition G.I. Joe straw figure, complete with its own easy-to-make-fun-of awkward pose. There's four all together, and fans will get to choose from Snake Eyes, Duke, Storm Shadow and the Baroness. I actually think the Snake Eyes one is pretty cool (though Snake Eyes is always cool), but I honestly have no idea what's going on with the other characters. I mean, Duke looks like he's either praying or attempting to squeeze one out. You tell me ...

One imagines you'll be able to find these straws at your local 7-Eleven once we inch closer to the film's August 7 release date. Check out larger images of all four characters below.



[via Topless Robot]

UPDATE: Check out all G.I. Joe images in our brand spanking new gallery!

Above: Lost star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty, who serves as the G.I. Joe Team's heavy ordnance specialist with a passion for classical guitars and Bach. He is described as being unafraid of any situation despite heavy enemy fire. (for a larger look, head over to Coming Soon).

Paramount has released a crop of new photos from the upcoming live-action G.I. Joe flick; most of which appear to be different from those that leaked online not long ago. This seems to be a pretty easy film to market -- there's, like, 250 characters to eventually show us, and so they may as well unveil them a little at a time. Still not crazy about this whole special-ops look, but what can you do. Who's not in this film? I'd love to list the entire cast (which also includes folks like Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller and Dennis Quaid), but I think my fingers will go numb. There's a lot of folks in this thing; trust me. After the jump, check out the three other photos, as well as a little bit of info via our good friend Mr. Wiki.

G.I. Joe is due out in theaters on August 7, 2009.

Here's how badly I remember the G.I. Joe cartoons I watched daily as a kid: in seeing this new casting headline, I immediately thought the G.I. Joe movie was primarily filling women roles first. See, my bad memory had me thinking Storm Shadow is a female. I guess because the name sounds like Eye Shadow, or is reminiscent of Shadowcat (though somehow not reminiscent of The Shadow) and Storm, both being female X-Men. But now I know. And knowing ... well, in this case it's the whole battle. It is half the casting news, though, and thanks to another great Latino Review exclusive, we hear that Storm Shadow (brother of Snake Eyes) will be played by Korean "Mega Star" Byeong-Heon Lee (aka Byung-Hun Lee). Asian cinema fans might be familiar with Lee from Ji-woon Kim's A Bittersweet Life, Chan-wook Park's J.S.A.: Joint Security Area and/or from Park's segment "Cut" from Three ... Extremes, in which he starred as the film director. He'll also be seen in the upcoming Josh Hartnett-starrer I Come with the Rain. In G.I. Joe he will be playing Japanese; Storm Shadow is Cobra Commander's ninja bodyguard and assassin, though the character has been known to have loyalties to the good guys, too.

As for the other half of the casting news, this one is really a woman. A very beautiful woman, in fact. Playing the hot, red-headed Scarlett (what? you never thought cartoons were hot?), is former model Rachel Nichols, who two or three of you may have seen this year in either P2 or Resurrecting the Champ (she also appears in the upcoming, likely more popular Charlie Wilson's War). Nichols is perfect for the role of G.I. Joe's super-smart martial arts expert, and sometime team leader, as she's not just good-looking. Did you know she graduated from Columbia with a double major in math and economics? Of course, she'll have to adequately pull off a Georgian accent, but really all we care about is that she looks good holding a crossbow -- not that Scarlett would like us to think of her only as a sex symbol; she'd remind us that, "beauty may only be skin deep, but lethal is to the bone."

UPDATE: IESB has received official studio confirmation that the above casting rumor is indeed true. Head over there to read Paramount's statements.