Director Jon Chu says ‘G.I. Joe’ is personal, explains how Bruce Willis became Joe
UPDATED: Bruce Willis as Joe in new poster
On the surface “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” may seem like a Hollywood gimic to make a few bucks after the flop in 2009. Director Jon Chu has to convince fans of the TV show and comic books that this is not the truth.
Slash Film released their CinemaCom interview Wednesday which allowed Chu to explain he’s a fan first.
“To me, GI JOE is this very personal thing. I grew up on GI JOES. I grew up playing GI JOES and so I have a very specific idea and it’s probably really different from people who first knew about GI JOE with the 12 inch action figure, but we really tried to bridge all of those mythologies with everything you know about Joe and put it into one. For instance, Joe Colton, one of the number one questions when I first signed on to the movie everyone would be like “Well who is playing Joe?” I’m like “What are you talking about? There is no “Joe.” Then I remembered Joe Colton and was like ‘That would be really awesome to give Joe a face and a personality and there’s only one iconic person that could ever play that and that would be Bruce [Willis].'”
Then Chu got his wish and even the interviewer admit Willis is ‘perfect.’
“I didn’t know if Bruce would ever do it, but he jumped on board and it was just perfect. So to me I think it’s just… If you loved GI JOE or if you know nothing about GI JOE and you just like a story that has ninjas and lots of things blowing up, you should give our movie a shot.”
Chu describes his passion and desire to bring the Joe’s fighting style to the screen.
“I wanted to know that these guys were really fighting. I wanted to see the scratches and patterns on patterns. Growing up, when I would play with them in my backyard, I would have these week long epic adventures and I’m convinced that’s where I learned how to tell stories and make movies, because of my toys and in those cases when a guy’s arm fell off, that was even better, because it made the story more interesting and you would lose a guy for a day and then you’d find him again and they’d appear again. So all of those things, to me, is what we tried to build into the movie, that you actually felt the world and the action; each action piece was different from the next with different textures, different fighting style, different shooting style, and so it never felt like a repeat of an action scene and that you actually revealed stuff about each character.”
Channing Tatum, Ray Park and Byung-Hun Lee all return for “Retaliation,” but a new all-star cast is featured in Chu’s film. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, Joseph Mazzello, Walton Goggins, RZA and D.J. Cotrona have all been added.
“G.I. Joe: Retaliation” opens in theaters on June 29th.
