Creative Loafing presents Ed Loves Bacon

The Cast of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There’s a lot of grumbling and groans about the upcoming film G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra floating around the web and for while I’ve been trying to keep my cup of “Joe” half full. But after watching the latest trailer for the movie, I too had to start jeering this re-imagining of one of my favorite childhood cartoons.

In this trailer, we see Duke (Channing Tatum), Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) and Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) show some skin as they work out. The antics are just laughable and goes against the tone of the previous clips which focus more on the Joe’s fight against the terrorist exploits of Cobra.

Earlier trailers for the movie featured amazing disaster sequences with explosions and destruction reigning around the world. It sets up the need for an elite U.S. covert ops team, the Joes to come save the day. From there is a lot of foot-to-ass fight sequences and car chases which always make me eager to buy a ticket. For future reference,  cars+explosions+kickass = ed happy, but this new trailer is just bad – its venomous crap and makes the movie seem more of a farce than most fans originally anticipated it to be.

The film is seems to be inspired loosely by Hasbro’s G.I. Joe Sigma Six franchise which appeared in comics, cartoons and of course action figures. In Sigma Six, the Joes use special gauntlets which activate special devices, artillery and armor to thwart their foes. This is a far departure from the original animated series and 80’s serial comic book which portrayed Cobra as a blundering corp of egotistical villains. The movie trailers don’t seem have that tone and more importantly, evolved the group into a worldwide organization that knows how to put the terror in terrorist.

For those of us who enjoyed the tongue and cheek 80’s cartoon, G.I. Joe, Season 1.1 was released last week. The 4-disc set features some the series’ multi-part, serial episodes as well other memorable individual episodes.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra hits theaters in wide release August 7, 2009

Nick Cage has decided that he’ll muddy the water’s once again with sequel to the 2007 bomb Ghost Rider with a sequel, Ghost Rider 2 (no colon and subtitle as of yet).

According to brief interview with MTV during the promotional tour for his latest film G-Force, Cage mentioned he would like to deviate from the “western” feel the first movie had and steer it towards a more “international” view.

In Ghost Rider, Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a daredevil motorcyclist who at a young age sold his soul to the devil. In return for Satan’s favor, he’s impervious to harm and channels an inner demon who acts as a bounty hunter for fugitive demons.

According the IMDB, no information is available for the project, meaning Cage is still fishing looking for a writer and director to helm the project.

Here’s the MTV interview where Cage spoke briefly on the subject and what he’d like to see happen with the direction of the franchise.