This Is More Than Disappointing
Last week, I hypothesized that Paramount was going to be targeting the GI Joe Movie Universe toward a distinctively younger demographic based on the fact that Paramount’s Tom Clancy franchise is also full of soldiers with cool nicknames like Disco, Switchback and Bisquick.
The box office, let alone a single studio, can’t support two realistic military franchises wherein the characters have cool codenames.
Not possible. It’s too confusing.
Therefore, the GIJMU would go toward more goofy nonsense with power suits and Mission Impossible masks.
Well, I was right.
First, Stop Calling This Movie A “Spinoff”
Paramount, after you bomb the opening live-action GI Joe movie and then barely break even with a sequel that has The Rock and Bruce Willis on the poster, you are officially in reboot territory.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if you went smaller, started with some of the core characters in their own stand-alone movies that lead toward origin films for both COBRA and the Joes, you could have a major franchise hit on your hands.
Except, you’ve now officially fucked that up.
Welcome Scarlett To The Snake Eyes Backstory
Deadline is exclusively reporting that Samara Weaving will play the red-headed intelligence ops Scarlett in the movie.
Samara, the niece of genre entertainment quasi-deity Hugo Weaving, is a 27-year-old native Australia, which makes it virtually impossible that she was named after the Iraqi terrorist hotbed that lies in the Sunni Triangle of Death.
If she is, those would have to be some woke fucking parents, yeah?
Why This Is Bad
Prior to today, we had mostly seen the casting of characters from the Snake Eyes’ backstory, where he — naturally — trains as a ninja.
While Baroness wasn’t directly from Snake Eyes’ past, she herself had a rich and colorful backstory as a student radical and terrorist that could have easily been woven into the overall Snake Eyes’ origin.
It makes sense that she might be floating around the orient in the mid-2000s. She could be the baddie or at least in league with the villain.
On the other hand, Scarlett is not only one of the good guys, she’s also definitively from Snake Eyes present, and moreover — she is his fucking girlfriend!
How You Gonna Have A Legit Origin Movie With Her?
I guess she could be the CIA chick who is checking out Snake Eyes’ ninja clan.
I guess she could show up toward the end of the movie to recruit him into the Joes.
I guess… nope… it won’t be any of that.
She will be all up in the movie, just for maximum nostalgia mining.
Which is bullshit because she could have had — should have had — her own Bourne / Silence Of The Lambs / Zero Dark Thirty mashup as part of the GIJMU.
I’m so mad, I don’t even care about Scarlett’s cosplay.
