G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Reviewed by: - 12.30.05

Yo! The net’s numero uno script reviewer EL MAYIMBE here wishing ya’ll a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Feliz Dia de Los Tres Reyes! I know this script review was due a couple of days ago but come on now; I’m on Latin time! This week we take a look at G.I. JOE - the last script review of the year for 2005. We have the revised first draft dated September 16, 2005, 116 pages, written by David Elliot and Paul Lovett (the writers of FOUR BROTHERS – that really good Marky Mark flick that John Singleton directed). Yes folks there is a G.I. JOE script out there and it is very real! One of the things that pissed me off about the Halo script review was all those fans who really need to get a life, they actually thought the script I got was a fake and that how does a site like Latinoreview have the script?! Well, for all you lamers out there, these scripts aren’t handed out to us, they’re smuggled. Halo was no different. G.I. JOE on the other hand literally fell into my lap. I’m still in awe that I got it, you see, I’m a big time G.I. JOE fan! I have been waiting for this script forever. Anyone who is in their late twenties and early to mid thirties knew how huge G.I. JOE was back in the eighties. I love G.I. JOE. I have all 155 issues of the marvel series bagged and boarded in storage. Till this day, G.I. JOE was the only comic book that had a commercial advertise it. The commercials for both the comic book and the toys are now archived at the wonderful Joeguide.com.

September 12, 1983 was a day I will never forget. Besides being my sister’s birthday, I was a fifth grader rushing on the way home to catch the latest episode of the new G.I. JOE miniseries that week that always ended on a cliffhanger. I was glued to the set. A year later that same week, the 2nd G.I. JOE miniseries, The Revenge of Cobra came out, then the year after that the third miniseries The Pyramid of Darkness. Two full seasons followed after that and finished in 1987 with the G.I. JOE movie (the corny Cobra La one) that was supposed to be released in the theaters but due to the dismal reception of the Transformers movie (which rocked by the way) at the box office, the movie was re-cut into the last miniseries and aired in the fall. Here is some trivia. Did you know that Duke actually died in the movie?

From Joeguide.com - “It’s worthwhile to note that up until the last minute, Duke was going to die á lá Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie. Hasbro changed their minds at the last minute (the animation had been done already) and had some lines of dialogue changed and added, like Doc saying “has gone into a coma” instead of “is dead”, and Doc’s super imposed transmission at the end of the movie saying that Duke’s okay.”

Anyway, in 1994 Marvel ended the run at issue 155. Eight years later, Post 9/11, the wonderful guys over at Devil’s Due brought back the comic and it was an instant hit. Josh Blaylock, Joe Casey, and Brandon Jerwa are doing a kick ass job on the comic front. I currently read America’s Elite and the wonderful Snake Eyes Declassified that Devils Due currently puts out and any Joe fan would be wise to get these issues, as the storytelling is top notch. Larry Hama would be proud. When Devils Due brought back the comic and it was an instant hit, I didn’t realize that there were still fans out there like me who admired G.I. JOE growing up. I started sniffing around for the script that I heard existed and was written years ago. I always thought that G.I. JOE, if handled correctly, would be a kick ass film and one that I would geek out to see on the screen. Two years ago, in September 2003, there was an announcement in the trades that Lorenzo DiBonaventura was the guy spearheading the project to be made into the film at Paramount. Two years later, I got the draft! Wow! Finally! I have been looking for this script for years. Once in a while I would ask around to my sources to see if it was out there yet. Nada. I did hear that Hasbro would be a pain in the ass to work with and that they had specific requirements on what the filmmakers can and can’t do. Hasbro in my opinion killed the series by coming up with a new character, forcing Larry Hama to come up with a back story and throw it into the mix of current characters in order to sell more damn toys. In my opinion and the opinion of many other fans like myself, G.I. JOE worked best when they were just a core group of guys. The X-Men work because they stick to the same guys now for decades. Both the G.I. JOE comic and the cartoon got way too corny because of way too many characters. Hasbro needs to stop being whores and back the fuck off. The writers THANK GOD get it and have kept the G.I. JOE characters in the script to just a crack team of six commandoes.

Off the bat, I will say that no one will be happy with the character selection because we all have our favorites. The six G.I. JOE’s that made the cut for now in the draft are –

The commanding officers are:

Since I’m old school I thought maybe Stalker, Roadblock, Rock and Roll, Gung Ho, Flint, and even the Latino of the bunch - Hector Delgado himself - Shipwreck should have been in this. But you know what? The current six Elliot and Lovett selected work for this story and I will be the first to tell you that the current draft leaves it open for more G.I. JOE films and sequels. Maybe they are looking to make this a three picture series? If this turns out well, I don’t see why not and I’m sure future films would have more characters but as it stands, the current six work well in this draft.

Who are the bad guys? The antagonist of the piece is DESTRO. He is finally running the show like I feel he always should have. THE BARONESS is in this thing along with STORM SHADOW.

Yes folks, there is the Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow rivalry in this draft and they duke it out in the 3rd act. Strom Shadow has a cool back-story. In the script, he is considered the greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the world. When we first meet him on page 40, he is training Mercs and is wearing black canvas pants and has no shirt on and is covered in warrior tattoos. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were trained by the same master and were rumored to have fought once. They fought for two days before a single blade landed. Storm Shadow made a mistake and was defeated. However, the rage induced by Storm’s disgrace and has fueled ten years of further study in South America under a different master, under a weapons-free discipline of Brazilian Jujitsu.

Speaking of Snake Eyes, him and Scarlett are in a relationship in this draft and are in therapy because well, Snake Eyes doesn’t talk and has taken a vow of silence as a way of furthering his martial arts training and discipline! I thought the therapy scene on page 26 was hilarious. Very creative.

There is a COBRA in this draft. He is not COBRA COMMANDER, he is simply COBRA and he is a former G.I. JOE named REX. This story is a Cobra origin story of sorts. Here goes a quick preview of the 1st half of the script. I will try to keep the spoilers to a minimum.

At the opening we meet DUKE and REX as 14-year-old best friends and army brats getting into trouble together. We then cut to the present when they are in their thirties wearing thick extreme weather scuba gear. They swim out of a submarine dock into the deep ocean out in Northern Greenland. They are in front of a highly sophisticated research outpost consisting of a massive ice dome and a dozen yellow steel buildings built to withstand the extreme weather. Back in Washington D.C., in a military intelligence building, amongst high-ranking military and Intel officials, LT. GENERAL HAWK quarterbacks the operation on remote satellite feed. Greenland houses the newest incarnation of Destro Labs, a highly sophisticated, highly illegal, bio-weapons facility. Final clearance just came down from NATO and the Joint Chiefs. The operation has been given a green light. The stated mission objectives? One: Find and remove Destro’s two top scientists – both of whom have found their way onto the INC and UN’s list of wanted war criminals. Two: Completely eliminate the facility’s capacity to operate. A congressman is concerned that how does Hawk know that the lab is Destro’s and not some tree hugger from Harvard studying global warming? Hawk replies that his team has spent the last decade combating Destro’s ambitions. Destro is a true global threat. A shrewd billionaire with something of an Alexander the Great/Genghis Khan complex. The weapons facility fits Destro’s operating profile to a tee: the remote location to avoid oversight from the local authorities; SAT imagery shows troop barracks, machine gun sentry positions, and state of the art radar and comm. dishes. A six-man extraction team is sufficient for the operation. The G.I JOE team is the elite of the elite. They are consummate professionals. The next five pages we meet the Joes – HI-TECH, HEAVY DUTY, SNAKE EYES, WILD BILL, SCARLETT, and COMMANDER CONRAD HAUSER aka DUKE. REX is the 2nd in command behind Duke.

The next couple of pages, the Joes carry out the mission and something goes horribly wrong. Rex is horribly scarred as a result and I mean bad. He makes a recovery at a hospital and then disappears. Apparently, the Baroness was sneaking into his hospital room and shooting up Rex with steroids to speed his recovery. The six Joes track Rex down to Paraguay and they go after him. Destro is injecting a testosterone/growth hormone gene doping cocktail into Rex made by a DR. BENDER in turn making Rex into a chemically enhanced super soldier. The roids are also screwing with Rex’s head. Rex is reborn as Cobra. Destro wants Cobra to lead his army of super soldiers. The super soldiers are the best mercenaries from around the world that are also being injected with the same juice as Rex is. So basically that is what G.I. JOE is about - Duke and the Joes must stop Destro, Cobra and the chemically enhanced super soldiers.

What is cool is that there is no big Macguffin weapon of mass destruction that the Joes must stop like in the James Bond films. Cobra and the super soldiers are the weapons. Like the Baroness explains, in society’s relentless quest for more technologically advanced weapons, people seem to have forgotten the greatest weapon ever made: the human body.

The relationship of Duke and Rex is like that of Anakin and Obi-wan - Duke and Rex are tight and Duke is trying to save his friend from turning to the dark side.

I’m happy to say that this draft is very solid and a great starting point from which to work with. The structure is on point and the subplots fit nicely. Reading the script made me feel like I was back in fifth grade. The action is really cool and there is even some lighthearted comedy in the script that G.I. JOE is also known for. As a longtime fan of the series, I missed out on collecting the figures and such but I am damn glad that I got my hands on this now collectible script and that we are the first to break the story of the upcoming movie to the world. It was a great read and a movie I am most eager to see. Trust me, G.I. JOE fans won’t be disappointed. Hats off to Lorenzo, the writers and Paramount for a job well done. I had no complaints of the script. Once again, a very solid draft. Best of luck to the filmmakers and the ongoing development for what will hopefully be a good movie that will please fans old and new.

Once again, I want to wish my readers HAPPY HOLIDAYS and thanks for making 2005 a great year in script reviews. I do this for you guys.

Hasta el proximo año…

YO SOY EL MAYIMBE!

mayimbe@latinoreview.com