New review of the third draft of the script from Latino Review.
Exclusive: A Look At The Final G.I. Joe Script!
[spoil]
[align=left]Reviewed by: El Mayimbe - 01.31.08
EL MAYIMBE STRIKES BACK! A LOOK AT THE FINAL G.I. JOE SCRIPT! LATINO REVIEW’S FIRST BIG SCRIPT REVIEW FOR 2008! ONCE AGAIN HERE WE ARE MAKING NEWS!
Rating: A+ A Complete Miracle
WOW! What a week for G.I.JOE! They cast HAWK, DESTRO, ZARTAN and they bring along G.I. JOE DEMIGOD LARRY HAMA along for the ride. The casting has been absolutely on point. Ok, so Marlon Wayans is an odd choice, but I’m diplomatic and will give him a shot. I read the first script by Elliot and Lovett, I then read the second one by Skip Woods, and FINALLY to bring it completely full circle, I just finished reading the third take by the best working genre screenwriter in Hollywood today – STUART BEATTIE!
What’s the verdict? A ****ING MASTERPIECE AND A LOVE LETTER TO G.I. JOE FANS! A+ THE THIRD SCRIPT IN THE TRILOGY IS THE ****ING BEST! HENCE THE $170 MILLION GREENLIGHT! THIS SCRIPT IS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I WANT TO SEE IN A G.I. JOE MOVIE! Finally! Oh my God! Ok, so I am a little biased towards G.I. JOE…BUT Stuart Beattie’s craftsmanship has absolutely alleviated all my fears. From the bottom of my heart, I congratulate and tip my panama hat off to Paramount, Hasbro’s Brian Goldner, and Lorenzo DiBonaventura FOR ACTUALLY LISTENING TO US FANS. I have been asking for the longest from my previous script reviews that they get Stuart to write this and bring on Larry Hama and HOLY ****ING COW THEY DID! They actually listened! When I first came out to Hollywood, I went to a Hollywood bookstore and asked for the G.I. JOE script that was written in the early nineties. Could never find it. If anyone has, please it email it to me.
Where do I even begin? What rocks about this? Two words, actually three: ****ING SNAKE EYES! In one of the most precise castings of comic book movies ever – RAY PARK WAS BORN TO PLAY SNAKE EYES! When I read this, Ray was all that I pictured. The perfect marriage of an actor and words on the page! In this script, he is hands down the masked silent ninja commando bad ass they we all grew up reading in comics and watching on TV. The first beat, THE INTRODUCTORY HERO BEAT, in other words the first time we see Snake Eyes on screen will be memorable if executed according to the page! I was like OH ****!
A COMPLETE FAITHFUL TRANSLATION! ON BEHALF OF THE FANS, THANK YOU SO DAMN MUCH STU! Brian Goldner specifically said this movie would be based on the old Larry Hama Marvel run. Well, the Snake Eyes origin from Marvel is in here namely – THE ARISHKAGE CLAN. We see the HARD MASTER, SNAKE EYES, and STORM SHADOW! It is actually a subplot/back-story in the script. That’s all you need to know. No need in spoiling it.
Let’s talk about STORM SHADOW for a minute. He’s like BOBA FETT in this – a bad ass ninja assassin who actually kills a G.I. JOE character with his katana blade! Again another faithful translation. My favorite villain. YES FOLKS, A G.I. JOE IS GOING TO DIE! YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST! I WON’T SAY WHO! Don’t get me wrong, Destro is the diabolical, conniving, scheming, arms dealer who plays both sides for financial gain and is really cool. Zartan is the chameleon master of disguise. But I love Storm Shadow. Doesn’t say much. Has a chip on his shoulder like he always had. In screenwriting, he is a great character a dope writer would love to toy around with because of the complexity of the character. Not a one note villain.
What else do I like? It is really cool that they completely avoided any Arab conflict of any kind in this script. The script is completely universal to be enjoyed by audiences around the world in how they remembered G.I. JOE. It’s a straight up action adventure story of good guys Vs. bad guys. Just like the comic and the TV series. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple and executed brilliantly. Out of respect for the filmmaker’s and Paramount, like I did with Transformer’s, I’m going to keep the spoilers lite. Let’s take a quick look at the first act.
We start off with a title card against black with a quote from GENERAL CLAYTON “HAWK” ABERNATHY – Whenever a new breed of evil emerges, a new breed of soldier must fight it. We are then in Paris, 1641. We meet a prisoner in Bastille Prison – JAMES MCCULLEN – a huge Scotsman with a proud defiance in his eyes, a RED SQUARE MEDALLION dangling around his neck. The prison guards take McCullen to the furnace where a priest reads the charges against McCullen. McCullen is found guilty of treason for the sale of military arms to the enemies of Lord King Louis XIII while he sold arms to the Lord himself.
McCullen played both sides and is getting punished for it. Before McCullen is sentences he swears that the Clan McCullen is bigger and far more powerful than the French could imagine and his legacy will continue with his sons, and their sons, and their sons. But McCullen is not sentenced to Death. The French want to make an example of McCullen for his treachery. Therefore, they pull out a metallic mask from the fire so that he shall wear it for his the rest of his natural life – THE DESTRO MASK. McCullen screams, they put on the mask around his face ala THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, and they melt the lock.
We are next at NATO headquarters in Brussels where we meet JAMES MCULLEN with the red medallion around his neck too, and like his great ancestor, the same proud defiance in his eyes. He briefs twenty two NATO commanders on NANOMITES – originally developed to destroy cancer cells but at McCullen’s MARS INDUSTRIES they discovered how nanomites can destroy anything. General Hawk is at the briefing and is not feeling McCullen. Hawk is there with his aide, a gorgeous German Lieutenant, COURTNEY “COVER GIRL” KREIGER. Hawk assures McCullen that his team is ready to transport warheads from his Mars Factory in KYRGYZSTAN.
We next meet the four man security detail convoy lead by DUKE and RIPCORD. Remember the opening of the 2nd G.I. JOE T.V. miniseries? THE REVENGE OF COBRA? When Duke, Scarlett and Flint and the Joe team escort THE LASEER CORE and COBRA ambushes them? Similar situation here. It’s our INCITING INCIDENT here. Duke and Ripcord’s convoy get’s ambushed and blown to smithereens by VIPERS – menacing foot soldiers clad head to toe in black battle armor and armed with fearsome pulse rifles. QUICK NOTE: Of course there are cool vehicles and such here being used by both sides, but for purposes of the review I decided to keep them out of the review for simplicity sake. Hell, they may not be the final vehicles that Hasbro sells but they are sure as hell in here like they were in TRANSFORMERS.
Who is leading these vipers and kicking serious ass? Long, slender legs in high heel black boots, the rest of her covered in black, form-fitting BODY ARMOR. She’s beautiful, exotic, and most of all, lethal. Her dark glasses glint menacingly – THE BARONESS BABY! Just as Duke is about to be smoked by The Baroness, on page 16, a HOWLER appears above them. Guess who comes to rescue? In the immortal words of Chud.com’s Devin… Ready for a geekgasm? Ladies and Gentleman, G.I. JOE geeks and fans around the world…I present this to you…A black-clad figure fast ropes down out of the Howler and lands behind a Viper and snaps his ****ing neck. Moving in a blur, he draws and buries a Katana blade into another Viper. Then he glances at the last Viper who’s lining up on him, too far away to reach with his sword. He quick-draws a Glock pistol! BAM! Right between the eye slit in his helmet – all this in the space of six breathless seconds. ****ING SNAKE EYES!
Duke glances at the almost mythical figure of SNAKE-EYES baby! Snake sheaths his sword on his back while holstering his smoking Glock. Red ninja clan markings on his triceps – THE ARISHKAGE CLAN LOGO FOLKS! Bad ass defined. As another Viper lines up a shot on Duke, a laser-like arrow bolt rips through his eye-slit and electrocutes him courtesy of SHANA “SCARLETT” O’HARA who fast ropes down from the Howler holding a gas-propulsion CROSSBOW PISTOL.
I’m not going to spoil the rest of this awesome sequence, but here we also meet LAMONT”HEAVY DUTY” MORRIS with his dual machine gun/ grenade launcher and ABEL “BREAKER” SHAZ wearing a computerized surveillance suit. Scarlett tells Duke that someone wants to meet him, a hologram of Hawk appears. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. Where is HAWK broadcasting from? From a control room in THE PIT where Duke and Ripcord are then taken to in the Howler. The Pit is located in Egypt. Here we get the cool exposition where we find out that technically G.I. JOE doesn’t exist but if it did, it’d be compromised of the top men and women from the best military units all over the world. The alpha dogs. This seems realistic. How so? Folks, today we live in the era of BLACKWATER and the outsourcing of the military. If there was a G.I. JOE or an elite group of soldiers, it would most likely be like mentioned above. Ten nations signed on in their first year. Working together, sharing Intel. Now there are twenty three.
Well there you have it. A couple of more pages and Act 1 ends. Like I said, I wanted to keep the spoilers lite. What sucks about all this? That I have to wait a year and a half to see this movie. Damn. Hopefully they will have something at this year’s Comic Con. There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t read this and saw this movie with fresh eyes but, I rather you hear it from me, a dedicated Joe fan. This was the biggest reading pleasure of my entire career because I love this title so damn much. My favorite script of all time. Thanks again to the hard work of Stuart Beattie. You’re the man! At heart folks, I’m still that 10 year old that ran home in September of 1983 to watch the first miniseries on WPIX 11 in NYC. This was a dream come true for me and it will be for the legions of Joe fans around the world when this movie hits in August 2009. Some people are Star Wars geeks, some are Star Trek geeks, some are even Transformers geeks. I’m a proud die-hard red blooded G.I. JOE geek! SO NOW YOU KNOW! AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE! YO ****ING JOE BABY!
HASTA EL PROXIMO CAPITULO…YO SOY EL MAYIMBE![/align][/spoil]
He seems enthusiastic, eh?