The Four Color Media Monitor

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed Steven Caple, the director of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, who talks about a crossover in the works for both GI Joe and Transformers, inspired, it would seem, by a crossover Marvel did in the late 80s with a miniseries, at the time they were the original licensee until 1994:

Well, let’s cut to the chase. All the Sonic the Hedgehog references led me to wonder if a crossover was being set up, but as it turned out, I just had the wrong franchise. How on earth did this G.I. Joe crossover go down?

(Laughs.) The Sonic thing is hilarious. I haven’t gotten that one yet. So, in the beginning, I got the script, and I started developing Noah’s [Anthony Ramos] storyline. If you remember from the film, he was having trouble getting a job, and part of the reason was because of his military background. So, by the end of the film, I thought it would be interesting if he actually does get a job and his brother’s healthcare gets taken care of. But I wanted it to be a military organization and/or the government, and when doing so, the idea of Sector Seven and these other operations just didn’t really have enough weight.

And then I thought about this comic book series that was done a while ago [1987]. It was a four-issue limited edition, and it was a crossover between G.I. Joe and Transformers. And so I presented it to Lorenzo [di Bonaventura] first, the producer, and then [producer] Mark Vahradian. So those guys were the first ones to hear my pitch. I had already pitched a whole film to the studio, but this was new. And so I just saw the sparkle in Lorenzo’s eyes. He was really excited about it. He was like, “This could be crazy. This is good. I dig this.” He’s heard about it before, but never tried it. And he was like, “Maybe you don’t pitch it to the studio. Maybe you just write it in the script and go for it. Let them read your draft of the film and see how they react.” And that’s what we did.

And then the studio reacted positively, and they were just like, “Well, how do we do this? How do we make this happen?” Paramount didn’t know there was a crossover graphic novel, but Hasbro did. And so it just took time. It took almost two years to go through the whole system and talk to everybody and get a feel. I had to talk to all the producers and let them know the vision or direction I was going in. I didn’t know all of it at the moment when I had first pitched it or when they first read it, but throughout the process of making this movie, it started to get deeper and deeper. So I knew a little bit more of the direction I wanted to go in with the Joes, but the studio was on board since the beginning. It just took a while to get all the parties on board and settled.

This is obviously a seismic decision to make, so did everyone have to develop a tentative short-term or long-term plan for how to tackle this going forward?

Yeah, it was figuring out a way to use the G.I. Joe technology because they’re known for their tech. I was like, “Maybe we don’t have to go through the classic characters like Snake Eyes and Duke and all these other characters. Maybe there’s a way we can use other characters that haven’t been utilized as much.” There’s different series and editions and different factions of G.I. Joe as well. There’s G.I. Joe: Renegades and different branches of it, too. So I started to play with that, and I pitched versions of it to the studio and the producers. I pitched a direction I wanted to go in and ways to branch out the universe in general. Transformers movies have scope and size, but we’ve been spending a lot of time here on Earth, so I just think there’s more out there. Even in the graphic novels for Transformers, there’s other planets and things like that, and I was like, “We’re just thinking too small.” So, if we’re going to do movie number eight and nine and ten, maybe there’s a way to make this all more expansive and branch out.

On the surface, this would seem like a great idea, wouldn't it? But after at least 3 unsuccessful takes on GI Joe in over 15 years, that's why it's hard to get enthused, even if it's admirable on the surface that Mr. Caple would take inspiration from a Marvel miniseries. After all, what if they sabotage the potential deliberately, and turn it all into another wokefest? If that happens, then once again, franchise fans will once again be slapped in the face. But, if we understand how ultra-leftists operate in Hollywood, it won't be shocking they're not so bothered about potentially losing money on PC visions in the long run.

Honestly, GI Joe is better served in comicdom, along with the Transformers, and live action sci-fi's long become far too special effects/CGI laden. One more reason this news is not as hot as it might've once been 2 decades ago.

Labels: history, licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda