G.I. Joe: Retaliation

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Published on 12 Mar 2013 by hanitv (CINE21) // Sendspace

Published on 12 Mar 2013 by nocutV // Sendspace 

GI Joe: Retaliation Press Conference Photos at ChosunIlbo // Innolife.net // Chosun online
GI Joe: Retaliation Red Carpet Premiere Photos at ENEWSWorld // Innolife.net // Candace Rose (thanks to highlight at PlanetBH)
GI Joe: Retaliation Press Conference Photos at KStar10 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12  / 13 

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March 14, 2013
‘G.I.Joe: Retaliation’ – Australian Premiere at Event Cinemas George Street in Sydney, Australia
Source: Mercury News (thanks to youyo712 for the highlight)

Jon M. Chu, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, DJ Cotrona and Lee Byung-Hun arrive at the "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" - Australian Premiere at Event Cinemas George Street on March 14, 2013 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

https://twitter.com/jonmchu


Source: https://twitter.com/ParamountAU

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Source: https://twitter.com/jonmchu

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"G.I. Joe: Retaliation" - Australian Premiere
Caption:  SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 14: Jon M. Chu, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Adrianne Palicki, DJ Cotrona and Lee Byung-Hun arrive at the 'G.I.Joe: Retaliation' - Australian Premiere at Event Cinemas George Street on March 14, 2013 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)




GI Joe: Retaliation Sydney Premiere Photos
zimbio.com // aceshowbiz.com // capsulecomputers.com // reellifewithjane.com
G.I. Joe: Retaliation 3D Sydney Premiere //  GI Joe Australia // daum.net //demotix.com

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March 15, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Australian World Premiere meets enthusiastic fans in Sydney
Source: Nate ++

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March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set VisitIGN visits a NASA facility for the filming of the upcoming sequel.
by Jim Vejvoda IGN
IGN visited the top secret set of G.I. Joe: Retaliation way back in October 2011. With the sequel's release now just weeks away, we can finally reveal more about what we saw being filmed -- and where.
We'd been sworn to to keep the nature of the facility used for filming a secret. But now we can finally reveal that the Joe sequel was partially shot inside a NASA facility outside New Orleans. A number of scenes for the sequel were shot on these converted soundstages, including the duel between Snake-Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) in the mountain lair of the Blind Master (RZA), the ninja who mentored them in their youth.
The first sequence we saw being filmed was the ninja battle sequence in the Himalayas seen in the trailers, a set-piece that's an homage to the famous "Silent Interlude" issue of the Joe comics. The battle spills out from the monastery onto a cliff side before leading into a full on zip line chase sequence and mountainside battle between Snake Eyes, Jinx (Elodie Yung), and the red-clad villainous ninjas.
During a break in filming, Park said he and Lee "wanted to make (their fights) real. Like it's two brothers fighting, there's a lot of aggression. Instead of flashy-flashy and doing flips in the air, we wanted to tell the story throughout the fight as well. There's a lot of good moves, a lot of great choreography that we worked on."
Lee said that he and Park are "both much more comfortable [with each other] now. We know each [other] and how we move. His specialty and my specialty. In this movie, he has a lot of fights. Of course, we've trained a lot together, but we need to train separately, also. We have other fights."
The NASA facility was made up of massive warehouses and silos, ones large enough to store space shuttles. It was truly amazing to walk around such a place, as if you'd stepped into a world crossed between Armageddon and the cavernous, government warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The next sequence we saw being filmed was an exterior one on the coastline where Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) is chasing Cobra saboteur Firefly (Ray Stevenson), who is escaping with a valuable case in hand. The smoking ruins of a tank (that we've seen Roadblock driving in the trailers) was nearby.
"This is the lead in to really a massive action sequence, a third act action sequence," The Rock told us during a break in filming. "Ripsaw, the fastest tank in the world. Beats a ‘Vette out of the blocks. It’s crazy. You can actually see it on YouTube. It’s unbelievably fast. So anyway, that leads into an incredible boat chase sequence and then leads into a big final fight at the end. It’s a really long extensive sequence that you guys are seeing and this is the beginning of it."
Of his role as Roadblock, Johnson said "there was a lot of latitude and leeway to, again, pay homage to the qualities that made up Roadblock, but also being able to add to that to make it even more interesting and make it fit me more." He added, "The great part about this role is there is a slew of bad guys who we have these great action sequences with at the beginning of the movie. Firefly is great, Ray Stevenson. I’m most excited, not necessarily to go toe-to-toe with them, because there is no toe-to-toe with them, but to join Bruce Willis. We’ve been buddies for some time and to be able to come together like this in this type of role."
"It’s so much fun," said Stevenson about playing the nefarious Firefly. "I get to blow stuff up and shoot guns. I have a fight with that big man over there. It’s a lot of fun." Stevenson revealed that Firefly is "working with Cobra Commander. He’s very much a right hand guy, really. But he is a mercenary type of character, basically. He was an ex-Joe and he’s now going for the highest bidder. Now he dresses better. ... He’s got no problem with murdering a few of (the Joes). He just lights them up, really. One of the lines we tried at one point was, 'I’ve broken out of eight prisons, but I’ve only broken into one.' So yeah, he’s got a bit of a sketchy past. He’s just fascinated with things that go boom."
Stevenson was unfamiliar with the G.I. Joe mythos when he landed the role. "It was all new to me. It was a new world to discover, which was great fun. It’s got its own kind of energy and its own genre. It’s own sort of style. Ninjas. The Arashikage. If you can commit to that world, it’s great. You can only take the comics and the previous movie so far. Ultimately, it’s about the script. That’s what you then zero down on."
You can zero down on G.I. Joe: Retaliation when it hits theaters March 28.

‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ Set Visit Report: Knowing is Half the Battleby Ben Kendrick http://screenrant.com/gi-joe-2-retaliation-set-visit-details/

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March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Ray Park
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net
Q: There's a lot of loud gunfire going off on set today.Ray Park: That used to happen to me a lot on sets where I had full rounds, blanks, and I would come out, about to destroy some Cobra and everyone's ready and everyone's on key to shoot their guns and my gun would jam sometimes. It was fun. My gun trainer on the first "G.I. Joe" gave me about a week of commando training so I got to shoot every single machine gun and hand gun there was. So it was nice to have that practice for this movie.
Q: Do you have the Uzi?Park: I have the signature guns on my side. I'm the man with the toys. I love it. I love playing Snake Eyes. It's a great challenge and I love doing it. I've been training since the release of the first movie, back in '09. I was just like, “Right. Okay, they're gonna start the sequel to this pretty soon so the last two years all I've been doing is Snake Eyes."
Q: Can you talk about the changes in the costume from the first film?Park: The changes with my costume are completely different. How I look and how the suit looks is completely different. It's more of an armor battle gear. Both suits from both movies were laser scanned to my body, so I had to go and stand there and they scan my body. They do the mold and make the suit. This one is more for like, ready for battle. More tailored for Snake. Chest plates and forearm, and back plate. And I actually like it. I like the look from the first movie. It was nice. But this, it's real. There's a person inside. Where as before it was...
Q: You look like you have more mobility.Park: Yeah, a lot of people say that. It's more functional. There's challenges as well. With the first one it was a challenge because I had never done anything like that before, with the suit. With the mask. I always talk about the challenges I had because I wanna perform the best way I can. Do the moves I want to do but, for something simple to me like a backward flip, is impossible to do in the suit, because the chest plate comes up and chokes you. So I have to change it a bit, which is good for the character because I'm not being myself, I'm being Snake. So I change the backflip. So instead of going backwards, I'll twist it, just so I'll have the leverage with the arms, and that's because of the chest plate. But I like that because it adds a different dimension to the character. Breathing is a lot better. My peripheral is better. But still, it's like I'm wearing sunglasses in a nightclub. But, you have to be Snake Eyes. And I like that because I really have to focus like the first movie. And I didn't talk much while I was on set, because I'm in the mask and no one could hear me anyway. So I just concentrate on what I'm doing, and breathing. I do the same with this. At least I can take it off a lot easier than the first one. So I really dig this suit. Loved the first one, and I really dig this one. I like it. I like the look of Snake. And when I see pictures of myself as Snake, I become an even bigger fanboy of myself as Snake. I really like it. I feel lucky to be playing the part in this movie. And I love the changes.
Q: Are your fight scenes with Storm Shadow more intense in the sequel?Park: Yeah, we wanted to make it real. Like it's two brothers fighting, there's a lot of aggression. Instead of flashy-flashy and doing flips in the air, we wanted to tell the story throughout the fight as well. There's a lot of good moves, a lot of great choreography that we worked on.
Q: How do you go about training for the silent side of the character when he's not fighting?Park: There's a lot I can do with the character, but I'm also working with my fellow actors, especially with Jinx. And I love Elodie's character and we've had this great sort of rapport since day one and this great relationship between the two characters. Where Snake doesn't speak, it's sort of sold through our actions toward each other.
Q: What sort of relationship do you guys have as characters? Are you rivals? Romantic interest to one another?Park: No, there's no romantic interest. We're ninjas. We're from the same Arashikage clan. We're fighting for the same cause. But we have a lot of scenes together and it's great. Storm Shadow is the bad guy and I'm upset with him, or Snake is upset with him, and he wants to bring him to justice. So it's fun. I'm really excited. I saw some footage last night, and I'm really, really happy about this movie.
Q: So on the terms of upgrading the suit, we see you have your visor look, will we see Snake Eyes with his 'commando' look, with the goggles?Park: That's a Jon [Chu] question. Jon's a big fan as well. When Jon and I first started talking when Jon was attached to direct, we exchanged emails and ended up talking and, I'm a fan too, but he's a bigger fan than I am, he knows a lot. And he's the right man for the job to sort of bring these characters to life. And the big thing was how Snake Eyes was gonna look. To have his take on it. The thing that Jon has always said to me is that Snake can look a lot of different ways. And I like how he looks in this. The changes to the suit makes Snake Eyes that much better. And the dojo sequence, that was a tough sequence for us to film. The lights...the crew members were sweating and changing their t-shirts because of the hot lights we had to simulate the sun. I was dying in there and so was Jinx. But it was such an important sequence for us to show because it's the first time you see Snake and Jinx together, and it tells a story. But it was a tough one to do and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad we did it. 
Q: Darth Maul is back on the "Clone Wars" cartoon series. Was there ever any thought that you might voice him?Park: No, no. I wanted to. Be really nice. But they had their own actors. I think Sam Jackson is one of the actors from the movies that actually voices his own character. So it would have been nice. It just didn't work out. But I'm always involved with it, you know, because that's my character. That's what got me into this world... I'm really lucky. George gave me my first big break and now here I am playing Snake Eyes.


25 Things to Know About G.I. JOE: RETALIATION from our Set Visit; Plus Video Blog Recapby Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub http://collider.com/gi-joe-retaliation-set-visit-recap/

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March 15, 2013
Dwayne wants to Rock the Force
Giles Hardie The Age Entertainment 
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson admits he plays with dolls, cries on set and wants in on the new Star Wars
Dwayne Johnson talks about the fun of working with a plethora of stars in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
While not many people over the age of 10 will admit to talking to G.I. Joes, an exception was made on Thursday as four cast members of G.I. Joe: Retaliation, including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, attended the film's Sydney premiere. Yet some in attendance were still reluctant to admit they played with the dolls as kids.
"Well, you gotta tell those guys, 'Brother, it ain't the dolls that are going to make you less manly'," Johnson said. "I did. When I was a kid it was all about G.I. Joe and Star Wars for me."
When I was a kid it was all about G.I. Joe and Star Wars for me. 
In fact Johnson describes his call up to this second G.I. Joe movie, in which he takes on the leadership of the G.I. Joes, as the equivalent of getting a tap on the shoulder from George Lucas.
Now, with a new Star Wars film gearing up under the direction of J.J. Abrams, Johnson is after a role in his other childhood playground. "I'm gonna call J.J.!" he declared on Thursday, "I'm gonna be in Star Wars."
Until then, he can be seen sharing the screen with action stars Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis and Korean star Byung-Hun Lee trying to enliven the cinematic brand that was left tarnished after the critically-derided but financially successful first film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
Johnson and Tatum both admit there were flaws in the first movie, which they hope to overcome with this film. "The first G.I. Joe did pretty good," said Johnson, "and a lot of people liked it around the world, [but] we all collectively thought there was something better that we could make to try and elevate the movie."
So, on a testosterone-charged set, who gets top-dog status?
The Die Hard star. "I've grown up watching Bruce Willis movies and he's a huge action star," said Lee. "That was an amazing experience and a tremendous honour. So fun."
"I humbly open up for Bruce Willis: you are the man," said Johnson. "Going into this, Bruce wanted to take the role because he then is Joe Coulton, the whole reason we're called G.I. Joes. [Yet] very early on, he was adamant 'this is Dwayne's movie, I want everyone to know that'. Because of his, just, coolness that way, humility: Bruce, this is your set."
D.J. Cotrona, who plays Flint, said he also respected Lee and his fellow martial artists. "We all trained ourselves to death, but the ninjas would go home injured and just go to sleep, and we all went out in New Orleans and just drank."
Adrianne Palicki, who plays Lady Jaye, is more interested in the other end of the pecking order. She hints that Cotrona took more than his share of hits from Johnson.
"He used to beat the crap out of him," she said, in jest.
"Yeah, but that was just for everyone else's benefit," Cotrona responded. "Then we would get together for long serious talks and he would tear up a bit.
"He is a cryer," Palicki said of her famous co-star. "It's not hard. Just talk about puppies and rainbows ..."
"... moonbeams," Cotrona suggested. "Savage Garden – his favourite band. Some Enya or Savage Garden; he'll go to a different place."
Johnson admitted he explores his sensitive side, a bit, for his acting, but doesn't draw on real life for his on-screen emotions. "I don't necessarily have to think about – nor do I want to think about – the bad things that have happened, the painful things that have happened. Because richard simmons, I've lived it! I don't want to live it again! I can appreciate it and embrace it. I think whatever the scene calls for, you've got to tap into that.
"As far as my co-stars saying I was a cry-baby. I'm sure DJ Catrona said something. I did tear up – every time he would come around, I would tear up. Because he has halitosis. Chronic."
G.I. Joe: Retaliation will be in cinemas on March 28

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March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Dwayne Johnson
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: How does it feel to be Roadblock?Dwayne Johnson: Great. It’s a great character. It’s a lot of fun. The character’s a lot of fun. You start to understand the mythology of the character, how he fits into the "G.I. Joe" world. It’s been a lot of fun. This version of Roadblock, where it’s a bit more “boots to the ground,” is badass.
Q: Boots to asses? That’s what you Tweet every day.Johnson: [laughs] I was gonna drop that.
Q: Does he still have his flair for cooking and all that?Johnson: He does! We’ve made sure to pay homage to all the important details that made him interesting in the world of "G.I. Joe". Then we added some more layers of that, too. I love the fact that he loved poetry and he could rhyme like Jay-Z... I love that. Those are all fun, cool layers to him. And then you add the element that he could rip somebody’s f--ing face off. That’s fun.
Q: So this is part of the new SAG rule that you get to be in every franchise, right?Johnson: [Laughs] It is, yes. We just made it. It is a rule. I okay’d it. Great rule.
Q: Training-wise, you were pretty thick in "Fast Five." What’d you do this time around? You look a lot leaner.Johnson: I leaned out for this quite a bit. The training changed, but was still intense and still featured a variety of different workouts that we did. I wanted to lean out for this while, at the same time, preparing for Wrestlemania, so it all worked out.
Q: How does it feel to be getting back into all that after years away doing films? Are you ready to get thrown around again in the ring?Johnson: There’s nothing like that. I’ve always missed that part about the WWE, which was the interaction with the fans and the physicality. On set, we can put together great action sequences, great fight sequences but, at the end of the day, I can’t take the other actor and plant him through the ground. I can do that in the WWE and there’s nothing like the live crowd interaction that that provides me. To be able to get back on that platform and to be able to do both and to go back and create special matches and special events for the fans, like at Madison Square Garden and like at Sun Life Stadium for Wrestlemania, that’s special.
Q: So what’s going on in the scene here right now? You’re chasing Firefly?Johnson: Mmm-hmm, chasing Firefly. This is the lead in to really a massive action sequence, a third act action sequence. Coming up here is Ripsaw, the fastest tank in the world. Beats a ‘vette out of the blocks. It’s crazy. You can actually see it on YouTube. It’s unbelievably fast. So anyway, that leads into an incredible boat chase sequence and then leads into a big final fight at the end. It’s a really long, extensive sequence that you guys are seeing. This is the beginning of it.
Q: Can you talk a bit about how you got involved with this project? Was it something you went after when you heard they were making another one? Did you go after it or did it come after you?Johnson: S--t comes to me! [laughs] No, Paramount and Lorenzo [di Bonaventura] had come to me with the idea about joining the franchise. The pitch they had I thought was great. The first movie was really successful. After sitting down with him and Adam Goodman, who’s the president over at Paramount, seeing their vision and what they wanted to do with this and how they wanted to make this movie was really appealing.
Q: It seems like your career has had a nice balance between family-friendly stuff and action-heavy stuff. This is the marriage of both. It’s a toy line but a serious take on it.Johnson: Mmm-hmm, I agree. [laughs]
Q: How is it lugging around that .50 caliber gun?Johnson: It’s great. That thing, it’s a beast. Let me show you guys. Should I pick it up? Oh, they won’t let us. I’ll show you the rounds it fires. Yeah, I get to fire this. The cool thing about that gun is it’s never been seen before on film, held, hand-held. Until I come along.
Q: When you had that meeting at Paramount, did they come at you with this particular character or give you a list of characters you could play?Johnson: There were a couple of characters. This one, in particular, made sense. Not only did this one make sense, but there was a lot of latitude and leeway to, again, pay homage to the qualities that made up Roadblock, but also being able to add to that to make it even more interesting and make it fit me more.
Q: Who on set are you most excited to be going head-to-head with, as far as physicality? Is there anybody that can take you on like Vin Diesel?Johnson: You think Vin took me on? [laughs] The great part about this role is there is a slew of bad guys who we have these great action sequences with at the beginning of the movie. Firefly is great, Ray Stevenson. I’m most excited, not necessarily to go toe-to-toe with them, because there is no toe-to-toe with them, but to join Bruce Willis. We’ve been buddies for some time and, to be able to come together like this in this type of role [is incredible]. 
Q: Jon Chu was telling us about the preparation process where you go in front of a camera and you do a lot of improv. Can you tell us about your experience with that?Johnson: That was a dynamite process that he had. With all the directors I’ve worked with, they all have their own great processes, which you guys know. You’ve met them over the years. He would essentially shoot a documentary and he approached it like he’s shooting a documentary. He came to the G.I. Joes and he wanted to know all about the G.I. Joes, specifically Roadblock. We did that for about two or three days. I thought it was incredibly helpful and it was really cool and I appreciated that.
Q: Would you let him put it on the DVD eventually?Johnson: Yeah, sure. I thought it was great. And we got into it, too. With D.J. [Cotrona]. I don’t know if we shared it with you. We got into some heated moments and Jon just let the camera roll and we got into it.
Q: You've been tweeting photos from the set. How has that online interaction been with the fans?Johnson: Hell yeah. That [first] picture, it was funny. We’re out in the desert. We’re shooting. It’s the first week. The sun was going down and we had wrapped. I told my guy who handles logistics, I said, “Take a picture of this. It’s kinda cool.” I got up on the dune and I saw it and it was f*cking beautiful. Well, there’s G.I. Joe. [laughs]... I really enjoy it, yeah. I enjoy it because I do it and that’s important. Even though I have a great social media manager and a great company who can create these ideas, it’s me, fingers to the keys. I think that’s important. That connection is important. But yeah, I enjoy it. And I’m fairly new to it, too. I started it in February. It took a while to understand, I think, the power of it utilized in the right way, especially when it comes to motivating people and inspiring them and making them laugh, too.
Q: I think we’re at a different age in terms of how people feel like they have accessibility to actors or stars or musicians. You also have a direct feedback that didn’t exist ten years ago.Johnson: Right, which, in that sense, is great, because you can always have your finger on the pulse of what fans and audiences like and what they don’t like. I embrace it and I understand its importance and its power to me and my fans.
Q: How did you know an hour before it was announced that Bin Laden was dead? Didn’t you tweet that? Did you personally pull the trigger?Johnson: You don’t worry about that, all right? I just knew. [laughs] Yeah, it became a huge deal. We tried to do our best to quell it. We were getting calls from The New York Times and everybody was calling, wondering. I got some good friends.
Q: From that incident, did you say to yourself, “I need to really think about what I’m tweeting now.” Did it change anything?Johnson: No, I didn’t second guess it at that time because there were individuals out there who knew, obviously. It was out there. I had just been fortunate enough to have people there when it went down. And I was excited and proud. In hindsight, I would have called the President and said, “Is it cool if I tweet this before your press conference?” [laughs]
Q: With all this talk of franchise, if [sylvester] Stallone called you about "The Expendables 3," would you want jump into something like that?Johnson: It all depends. Yeah, sure. I like Sly. He’s been a buddy for some time. That continues to grow, too and I’m excited about that and I know a lot of guys are. I love the first one and I’m excited about the second one. Sure, if he needs somebody to hunt somebody down, he knows where I’m at.
Q: You guys have built a lot of really cool practical sets. Can you talk about filming over at NASA and maybe one or two other sets that have impressed you?Johnson: Any set that I’m on impresses me, cuz I’m on it. [laughs] It’s cool, because it’s a massive facility that they have. Production had never gone in there to shoot. We were the first ones. There’s a lot of incredible history in there. It was great to go there and shoot and hopefully we didn’t richard simmons it up too much for the next production that might come in. “Rock was here.”
Q: Was there a particular set that they built there that you got to fight in or that you really enjoyed?Johnson: Good question. We’re actually going back, I think. I believe a lot of the first act is going to be shot there, which we haven’t shot yet. A lot of opening stuff. I know that they have shot there and I shot there, too, but there hasn’t been massive action sequences. That’s coming up. Our Helo was built in there and that was kind of cool. The Jay-Z speech was done in there.

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March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Byung-Hun Lee
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net

Q: We've been told that you have a bigger part in this movie than in the original film.Byung-Hun Lee: Yeah, that's a good thing. [laughs] I think it'll be more of his history. His history. We will see even his humanistic traits.
Q: Do you have to train specifically for these movies or is this just the shape you stay in all the time as an actor?Lee: You'll see. Of course there is a lot of action here. Much more, I think [than in the original]. They will use different weapons.
Q: For the character, did you go back and look at the comics or the cartoon?Lee: Actually, Jon [Chu] wanted to show a more realistic character. He'll be much more realistic compared to the cartoon or those kind of characters.
Q: We noticed your English is a lot better than when the first film was coming out. Have you made it a specific goal to be working on your English?Lee: No, no. Never. I've had to work a lot in Korea. There's no chance to learn English more. I could be much more comfortable, because I've been here three months. I could be comfortable here.
Q: It sort of feels like Storm Shadow is off on a separate adventure. Can you talk about that at all? How many scenes do you have just by yourself?Lee: I think definitely much more than the first one. I used to always be with Sienna Miller or Destro before. In this movie, I'm with a lot of people, actually. There's no specific person in this movie. I go around, sometimes by myself with Snake Eyes, Jane. Maybe all of them, I think.
Q: How many fight scenes do you get with Snake Eyes?Lee: There's two big fights with him and another big fight without him.
Q: What are you filming today?Lee: This part of a fight with Snake Eyes. At the end, I'm choking him, but he's locked my hand until they can help him.
Q: Are you and Ray Park very much in sync with one another as far as choreography goes on fights?Lee: Yeah, we're both much more comfortable now. We know each other and how we move. His specialty and my specialty. In this movie, he has a lot of fights. Of course, we've trained a lot together, but we need to train separately, also. We have other fights.
Q: Is there a scene or a weapon you're most excited about?Lee: You'll see. There's a sai.
Q: Can you compare and contrast making movies in the US and in Korea?Lee: Basically, it's the same. Or similar. But it's also real different, I think. The most different thing is that their pre-production is so short and the production is real long. But in America, their pre-production is really long but the production is much shorter. They decide everything from the beginning to the end. They edit and nobody can touch it, actually.
Q: How long did you shoot for "The Good, The Bad, The Weird"?Lee: Like seven months. Seven or eight months.
Q: How important is it to build a relationship with your stunt partners?Lee: That's why we train a lot. Even if you don't trust somebody, if you train a lot you'll trust them eventually. But Ray and I are really good friends. We trust each other. Training is much easier.
Q: When did you first hear about doing a sequel and were you excited to come back?Lee: Yeah, I was very excited and a lot of fans of mine all around the world -- Korea and Japan -- were looking forward to it.
Q: How much training time did you have for this one?Lee: Five weeks, I think. In my case, I'm not shooting every day. I have time to do some training. I train with the stunt guys whenever I can.
Q: What have you been doing in New Orleans?Lee: I like the storms. There was a huge, huge storm, Storm Lee. Everybody made fun of me. "It's because of you!" [laughs] "Okay, sorry."
Q: Are you planning to be in more American movies after this?Lee: I hope so. You never know.
Q: Do you own your action figure from the first movie?Lee: Yeah, I have three different kinds of figures. Fans send them to me. I have a few on my desk in Korea.
Q: What's it like working with Ray Stevenson?Lee: When I first saw him, he was hesitating. He asked me, "Hey, did you watch 'J.S.A.'?" I was like, "Yeah, of course." I'm in that movie. He recognized me. That was one of my favorite moments. We could be really close because of that.
Q: What about Dwayne Johnson?Lee: Yeah, we had a dinner right before shooting. I said, "Are you going to show off in this movie?" He said, "I don't know. Maybe. If Jon wants to do that." "Don't do that." [laughs]
Q: You're a much bigger star overseas. Do your fans there appreciate these American roles?Lee: Both. Some people cheer me on. Some people want me to do more Korean movies or TV series. That's because of the cultural differences. Some people want to watch Korean movies and TV series that are so Korean. It's both ways.
Q: When this is done, where do you go?Lee: I haven't decided yet. We're talking about a Korean movie and an American movie. I think I'll find out a month later.
Q: What's been the biggest challenge on this film?Lee: From the beginning to the end, everything has been a challenge for me. Working in Hollywood, especially in this kind of genre. I'd never done that before the first 'G.I. Joe'. It's sort of a fantasy action genre.
Q: Can you compare the two directors between this and the first one. What kind of energy has Jon brought in?Lee: I'm really close to Stephen Sommers. He was a really nice man. Their way of directing is really different. Really, really different. Jon is more Korean-style. I'm used to it. This is the first time I've worked with him, so that surprised me. I can work with him and feel comfortable and feel good. Even though the camera is rolling, he says "Different version! Different version!" Sometimes it's five different ways. I like that. Acting is one of the most important things. He thinks like that. I like that.

[rubie]

March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Elodie Yung
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: How are you enjoying this ninja costume?Elodie Yung: Oh, very much. It’s like a wetsuit, but without the water around me. I’m French, by the way, so let me know if you don’t understand me.
Q: Is the costume restrictive in its movement?Yung: It feels pretty good. It’s good. It’s not restrictive because we have a lot of action to do and with our costumes they made sure it was practical.
Q: Had you ever heard of G.I. Joe before they offered you this movie?Yung: Yes, from the first film. But I’m a girl, so I didn’t really know about G.I. Joe as a kid. I didn’t really watch the show.
Q: So are you a student of Snake Eyes?Yung: No, I’m not a student of Snake Eyes, but we trained in the same dojo.
Q: So you’re introduced in the dojo?Yung: Yes, yes.
Q: You’re a student of RZA's Blind Master?Yung: Yes, exactly.
Q: How is it working with RZA?Yung: It was great. It was crazy! ...He’s a really nice person. And I think he brings something very fitting in his character. When I first read the script, I thought that the Blind Master would be an old, little tiny person. But no, they bring RZA, and I think he brings something interesting for the Blind Master.
Q: Do you have a lot of things to play without dialogue?Yung: I think it’s about equal. So far, it’s been pretty much all my action stuff. I still have a long time. We’re going to work on some of the dialogue soon. It’s very, very different for me. It’s good, equal.
Q: Can you talk about filming two particular sequences that we saw? One was you in the red with the blindfolded sword stuff, and also we saw quick flashes of what looked like you and Snake Eyes on ziplines going down a mountainside.Yung: Yes, the mountainside. I didn’t do that, no. Some things had to be filmed by real professionals. I think the first scene in the mountains they had to film with people who were trained in the mountain things, like in real mountains. So I didn’t do that. But I did all the swordplay and fights. I was really nervous. I trained about a month before we began because I had never done swords before. I did a bit of karate -- I’m a blackbelt -- so I know how to move. But when I arrived there I realized I hadn’t used the swords, and it’s really difficult... We’ve trained a lot.
Q: Has coming to work on an American action film been very different from what you've done in the past? Is the language barrier a problem?Yung: Are you saying I should speak French? [Laughs]
Q: What has the adjustment been like?Yung: At the end of the day it’s still a film, and every film will be different. I don’t know. I’d guess that every American action film would be different. It’s just training, training hard, training a lot. Then you just give your best performance on the day, and I’ve been lucky so far. When I was on this film "District 13: Ultimatum," the stunt people were amazing. And on this film, they’ve been incredible. So no. To me it’s still professional.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about how it’s been working with Jon Chu?Yung: He’s been great! It’s surprising how calm and professional he is for 31. We’re almost the same age. He can just handle these big machines so well, and he’s very, very talented. He’s a good director.
Q: Because you have a lot of action experience -- as do a lot of the cast -- have you helped Jon out with or offered him any ideas?Yung: I didn’t help with anything. I don’t think he needs my help. But you have to adjust. Sometimes you can do a take, and it doesn’t work very well. He can say, “Okay, I think I should be facing more like this. Let’s try that.” And he’s really open. That’s a good quality I think. We can exchange a lot.
Q: How did you first get involved with the project? Yung: I auditioned. I was in London. I’m not living in the U.S., so I put myself on tape. That was great because I could do it myself and send it in. Then I had a meeting via Skype with Jon. So this is how we met. After that, I came here.
Q: Can you talk a bit about New Orleans. Obviously you’re not filming all the time. What have you been able to enjoy in the city?Yung: I would recommend you go to Jacque Imo’s. [Laughs] I’ve experienced all the food and restaurants in New Orleans. I’ve been doing a bit of surfing when I have the day off. To me, it’s very, very surprising how people are so friendly. But no, it’s very different from Paris. People here are very, very open and friendly, and that’s great. Just nice and relaxing. There’s a lot of fun going on.
Q: Is there a female antagonist that you fight in the film? Yung: In this film? Yes.
Q: Do you have an American role or an American movie that you would love to have a crack at sometime?Yung: There are so many things that I would love to do. I am enjoying this action movie. I’d love to do a drama or something different. I just enjoy doing very different things.

[rubie]

March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: D.J. Cotrona
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: Can you tell us a little bit about how the role of Flint came about and what your take on him is?D.J. Cotrona: It's a pretty staple character in "G.I. Joe" if you guys are familiar. I'm sure you are, like I am. I was really excited when I got the chance to kind of play with him. I think that, ultimately, there are so many characters in G.I. Joe that even all the iterations -- the comics and the different cartoons and everything -- have been a big ensemble. Lots of crossing storylines and stuff. The Flint character we have in this film is similar to the classic Flint personality-wise. I think the way the movie goes, it kind of gives you an intro to this guy. Kind of how he got into this unit and how he turns into the Flint that we've seen a lot more of in most of the other "G.I. Joe" stuff.
Q: Does he have a relationship with Lady Jaye?Cotrona: You know, some things are -- Well, we'll see. You know, there are classic elements to "G.I. Joe" and to some of the staple characters in it. I think that this movie, way moreso than the first one, will be true to that and make it much more realistic. You can expect things and maybe we'll see if you're right.
Q: So much of a cast like this is about energy and about building a unit. How have you guys built that bond in terms of rehearsals and being on-set throughout the experience.Cotrona: We actually got really, really lucky. A lot of times when you work on a job, you get that question and you spit out a line of richard simmons. Then you go to work and you fake it and never talk to the people. We actually got really, really lucky.
Q: A lot of beer pong?Cotrona: A lot of beer pong. A lot of ping pong. A lot of alcohol-related pong. No, we all get along really, really well. It's by the grace of God. Everybody's amazing. There's just a team spirit. Everybody really came here with a lot to prove and really wanted to make the best possible film that we could with this. I mean, Jon really loves "G.I. Joe" and I met with him a lot of times early on in the process. Everybody had kind of the same attitude of just trying to take this property and put it where we all think it should have been in the first place and make it a gritty, grounded, chunky, militaristic, dirty feel and also lots of cool action and great ninja stuff like Snake Eyes and all that. A lot of guys came with the same energy. We all totally get along. We had tons of rehearsal time. Each different character had very specific types of rehearsing that they did.
Q: It sounds like there was a lot of improvisation in the early stages of character building.Cotrona: Yeah, there was a ton, man. You don't often get opportunities to do stuff like that. This is a pretty big studio film and a lot of times the dialogue is locked in. Usually there's a guy off-camera with a gun saying, "Say the lines exactly as they are!" This may sound crazy, but shooting every day, the acting kind of feels like that. Jon really gave us a lot of leeway really to explore the characters and play with it from dialogue to different ways scenes work. It's great. Everyone is down to play and everyone is very generous. There's no egos whatsoever. We're really trying to tell the best story we can.
Q: Can you talk a little about your costume and the weapons you get to wield?Cotrona: Nope! Can't do it.
Q: Do you have the beret?Cotrona: That was my first question. Let's say there are things about "G.I. Joe" that you specifically expect and some things that need to be in the film at certain points whether it be relationships or certain costume aspects. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if they show up.
Q: Are you introduced in the film or is Flint there from the beginning?Cotrona: There's a lot of new characters in this one from Jinx to Lady Jaye to Flint. Theses are all staple characters in "G.I. Joe" that weren't even touched on at all. Everybody is essentially intro'd since it's really a new film. But he's there start to finish and it's a nice entrance.
Q: How's Flint's relationship with Duke?Cotrona: It's explored in the film.
Q: Is it volatile at all?Cotrona: Yeah, I think -- look. these are two guys that, in the majority of the G.I. Joes, came up as competing for the leadership. When one guy was out working, the other one was leading the guys. That's something that's very much explored in this. This is a unit. A military unit of very diverse characters. Flint's a very strong character. Duke's a very strong character. Roadblock's a very strong character. Jaye's a very strong character. They all have to kind of find the best ways to work together as opposed to one person leading the rest of them. Everybody gets in and -- Everybody knocks heads a little bit be it Flint or Duke or Roadblock. This is a tough question that I can't answer without giving too much away.
Q: Do you get many scenes with Snake Eyes? We heard he's in his sort of own separate storyline.Cotrona: I have worked with Ray. Everybody gets to mix. The great thing about this is that, while it's all "G.I. Joe," we have two really great stories underneath. You have the strong, hardcore military stuff with all the things you want to see and much more and then Snake Eyes' journey is kind of separate in the beginning. It goes much further into his individual journey and everything you would want to see there. But they do come together in a really cool way in the second part of the film towards the end. They all kind of merge together. It's really cool You almost get three movies. You get the hardcore military G.I. Joe thing. You get a really amazing Snake Eyes action-based ninja acrobatic amazing fight thing and then they come together. Everybody mixes it up together.
Q: Is this all being led by Joe Colton?Cotrona: I don't know. I forgot. I guess I'll have to wait and buy a ticket. (Laughs) Short term memory loss.
Q: You were cast as Superman in the "Justice League" movie that didn't move forward. Did that experience and training help you at all for this team-up film?Cotrona: The "Justice League" thing was a while ago. It was about three years ago now. That was a long slog. We were playing with that for about a year. That was during the writer's strike time and it started and it stopped. That was a big bummer. I was really, really excited to work with George Miller and the script was really, really good. The stuff that WETA was doing was amazing. It's just a shame that we didn't get to finish that because it was going to be really, really cool. But everybody in this business has seen that. For every project they have that goes, they have like five skeletons in their closet. Or a bloody corpse of something that never happened. I'm just excited -- there's so many elements that go into making a big film and so many elements that can go wrong along the way. I've learned that intimately. I'm just happy to get this one to the finish line. I do now have this knee-jerk reaction where, until I see it, I'm not believing anything. I'm just kind of halfway expecting the plug to be pulled every day. But yeah, it's been great. I did the Justice League thing the wrong way. I read too much on the internet. You can't do that. The internet is the devil. Or the internet is not the devil, the comment boards are the devil. Believe me, I've been on the opposite side on there, too saying, "You can't let that guy be that character!" But really it was WETA, WETA, WETA, WETA, WETA. They are amazing and they can make anybody look like anything. It was a damn shame that we didn't get to finish that. I promise you that it would have been amazing. It would have been incredible. The scale of this was fantastical. It was a Lord of the Rings scale. It would have been really cool.
Q: In preparing for Flint, did you concentrate on the cartoon or the comic?Cotrona: Look, I've been preparing for this role since I was six years old. Honestly, working with Jon on it has been such a pleasure because he's a young guy and he grew up strapping M80's to these guys and blowing them up just like I did. When we get together I really feel like I'm in my back yard with my friends. It was really everything. I'm very familiar with all of it. I looked at a lot of it. There's also a lot of recent anime kind of stuff that are really, really, really cool and that has a more realistic feel. There's a lot happening at IDW, too, with their comics. I flipped through everything.
Q: Did you get to film anything at NASA?Cotrona: NASA is an incredible space. We built a bunch of different stages there so you walk into one of the bays every day and you see something completely different. You walk in and go, "Oh my god. There's a world of ninjas in here. I guess I'm in the wrong building." Then you walk in another day and there's a section of a blown-out building in a desert. We have tons of different set pieces going on in there. Our biggest sequence in NASA we have yet to shoot. We're actually making that the last thing on the schedule and for the last three weeks we'll be shooting that. There's a huge, gigantic military installation type thing. There's gonna be a lot of moving parts. We're going out with a bang.
Q: Are you part of the scene that's being shot right now?Cotrona: Yeah, most characters get to play in the fort. I get my time to play too.
Q: Have you been scanned for an action figure?Cotrona: I have indeed. Christmas is covered this year. The cool thing is that it's not a toy based on a film. That always happens where a film comes out and they try to force a toy line and it dies off in six months. This is "G.I. Joe". It's the ultimate toy line. It's it own cool thing. It's a little piece of history and I'm very excited about it.
Q: When you signed on, did you sign on for sequels as well?Cotrona: Yeah, but any job you do that's a big studio tentpole, they always want to cover the idea of maybe doing more. Everybody did, but that's pretty standard these days.
Q: Because it's a bigger universe, does that cover you for tv shows and video games and stuff?Cotrona: Like they can say, "We're making 'G.I. Joe' Teletubbies, put this suit on?" That's all pretty separate. Sometimes if they do a video game, they'll ask you to do the voiceover work. I think for any other projects, be it a TV show or a cartoon or what have you, when you do the movie, you're signing on for other potential films. That's pretty much it.
Q: Are you planning any G.I. Joe PSAs?Cotrona: I want to do one of the remixed ones. Have you seen those? I want to do one of those. We have yet to have been asked to do that, but it would be fun. Maybe I'll start touring the country with the D.A.R.E. program and a beret on. That'd be fun.
Q: What's next for you after this?Cotrona: I'm reading scripts just like everybody else. Tin cup in hand, knocking on doors, trying to get a job. It's tough. They don't make as many films these days and there's a lot of guys that are fighting for jobs. But yeah there's stuff coming up that I'm reading, knock wood.
Q: What sort of weapons do you get to use in this one?Cotrona: What don't we get to use?! You will see every potential tool to hurt, maim, kill, destroy any person, place or thing. Everybody's got their own little signature deal and they all come about and are placed in neat little ways throughout the film.
Q: [Motioning to Roadblock's giant gun] Do you ever look at stuff like this and go, "Well, mine sucks".Cotrona: I don't. Not at all. This is nice, but you're not going to be moving around very quickly. I've got a Flint bias and I'm going to stick with it.
Q: Is Flint still a Warrant Officer? In the cartoon, he used to pull rank on Duke sometimes.Cotrona: He was a Warrant Officer when it originally started. I can't give out any story stuff, but there's the classic canon of "G.I. Joe" as it was created and then there's the film version they already did. We're trying to steer this film in a much different direction and I think we're going to be very successful. But it has to mesh with two worlds. We're trying to take the origins of these characters and make it mesh with the first film. There are a lot of things that are very constant, but you've got to make little nips and tweaks to make certain characters work at certain points. There is a lot of classic Flint stuff, minus a few greased wheels to shove him into the movie at the right point.
Q: Are there any characters that you really want to see?Cotrona: Barbecue. Barbecue. Barbecue. Barbecue. Barbecue always. Bazooka. Quick Kick. There's a ton of guys. But this film I think we hit. We've got some amazing characters. Roadblock is in there. Flint is in there. Lady Jaye is a huge one. She's finally in there. Jinx is in there, which I think is really cool. Firefly is awesome. I always thought he was a really cool character that didn't get enough. We see a lot of him in this film. I think we did really good. There are a couple for really hardcore fans that you'll see in there. They fit in a lot of characters. Even guys that you wouldn't think that they would take the time to put in. It's cool. It's deep. There are a lot of Easter Eggs.

[rubie]

March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Ray Stevenson
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: How does it feel to be the Big Bad of the film?Ray Stevenson: It’s so much fun. I get to blow stuff up and shoot guns. I have a fight with that big man over there. It’s a lot of fun. 
Q: You’ve been doing a lot of iconic properties between Thor, The Punisher and this.Stevenson: I only do icons. Actually, I’m not sure what it is. It’s a desperate measure to try and get an action figure for my two little boys. Finally, I may be getting one! "Thor" was going to do one, but I haven’t seen it.
Q: Speaking of stuff for kids, the riff on the Punisher you did for "Super Hero Squad" was hilarious.Stevenson: Ah, yes. He’s a weird character to try and throw in the mix somewhere. He’s sort of walking death. Someone once asked me, “If you put Spider-Man, Batman and who-ever man in a room with you, who’s going to come out?” I said, “Oh, come on. They don’t kill people.” It’s unfortunate, but if you’re on Frank’s list...
Q: There’s kind of cult growing up around that film now.Stevenson: I think so, yeah. It would be nice. Not a lot of fans knew it when it was out, but it really has grown over the years, which is really nice.
Q: There have been talks of turning the Punisher into a live-action television series.Stevenson: Really? Why not? I mean, there’s always room for a good vigilante story. Not that I advocate vigilantism! But there’s always room for a good one. I just think that, with Frank Castle, you run the danger of popularizing him to a certain degree. You don’t want Billy Ne’er-do-well’s kid tooling up and going back to take revenge on all the bullies at school, do you? Again. You don’t want to glamorize someone like Frank Castle and say that’s alright to take vengeance into your own hands. That’s why, with "Punisher: War Zone," we really made of point of showing the world as a dark place. You’re kind of glad he’s there and you want to see what he does next, but it downplays that idea that someone would want to go out and actually be Frank. People wear the symbol. They wear that skull in different ways, shapes and forms. If you cross a line, there’s zero tolerance. If you go and murder children or rape children, you’ve crossed a bloody line. There’s a certain instinct in everyone that there’s a zero tolerance line somewhere and it’s not up to the lawyers to really work that out. 
Q: Does Firefly have his own agenda in this movie, or is he strictly working under Cobra Commander’s orders?Stevenson: Yeah, he’s working with Cobra Commander. He’s very much a right hand guy, really. But he is a mercenary type of character, basically. He was an ex-Joe and he’s now going for the highest bidder. Now he dresses better. 
Q: So he has a history with some of the Joes?Stevenson: Not so much personally as just with the whole Joe setup. He’s got no problem with murdering a few of them. He just lights them up, really. One of the lines we tried at one point was, “I’ve broken out of eight prisons, but I’ve only broken into one.” So yeah, he’s got a bit of a sketchy past. He’s just fascinated with things that go boom. 
Q: You’re wearing some very distinct makeup.Stevenson: This is only half of it because I’m in the car today. Ordinarily, they darken the hair and do more on the scar. I had this idea that it should be a bone white tree of a scar, like the mark of Kane.
Q: How did this project come your way?Stevenson: Lorenzo di Bonaventura very graciously called my agent. He said he was a bit of a fan and asked if I’d be interested in playing Firefly. I said, “In a heartbeat. Where and when?” He said, “New Orleans.” I came here once before a few years ago for “Cirque du Freak” and was delighted for the chance to be back. 
Q: Were you familiar with the cartoon or the comics beforehand?Stevenson: It was all new to me. It was a new world to discover, which was great fun. It’s got its own kind of energy and its own genre. It’s own sort of style. Ninjas. The Arashikage. If you can commit to that world, it’s great. You can only take the comics and the previous movie so far. Ultimately, it’s about the script. That’s what you then zero down on.
Q: Did you find that with your other roles in Thor and Punisher that you were dealing with a fanbase that was already very active and engaged?Stevenson: It’s scary, really. But they’ve invested. The fanbase is invested, especially in such established, iconic characters. They’ve invested every week and every fortnight, buying the comics for years. Actually, the characters belong to the fans. You do have to be respectful of that, but you’re not doing the comic. You’re doing the script. With Volstagg, other than having a CGI Volstagg that’s nine feet tall and nine feet wide, it was more to try and get the spirit of it. He’s a guy who has got a heart the size of a planet and wears it on his arm.
Q: It seemed like you sure loved wearing that Volstagg fat suit.Stevenson: That suit. Oh my god, it was a nightmare. I remember Kenneth Branagh saying, “You can go larger, love. Go larger.” I said, “Alright, but if I dip my toe in the river of ham, you’ve got to tell me.” He turned around and went, “Darling, you’re speaking to someone who has swam in the river many times.” He just said, “You can’t go too large.” So I thought, “All right.” My son was three at the time and, when something upset him, it’s like his whole body cries. Volstagg has that childlike quality. When it’s time for battle, it’s “For Asgard!” and he just thinks he’ll sort it out later and charges in. 
Q: One of the things you’re very good at is jumping into character that don’t just look very different but sound very different. Can you talk about the voice of Firefly?Stevenson: I like to just change a little thing. You look at the character’s center of gravity. Frank was a heavyweight boxer. He’s got Judo legs. If you hit him with a truck, he’s still going to be standing there. It’s a different center of gravity than someone like Volstagg, whose center of gravity is much higher, even though he’s larger. I remember looking at the elephants in “Fantasia” or “Dumbo” where they’re up on their toes. It’s a different center of gravity. So you can change the voice as well. How someone speaks can say as much about a character as anything else. 
Q: Are your key weapons the guns you have on you?Stevenson: I’ve got the handguns. You should see my jacket. I’ve got my knife and I’ve got fireflies. Bascially, they’re munitions with bombs. Then my bike is one huge weapon of mass destruction. 
Q: How much bike riding do you actually do in the movie and what kind of training did you have?Stevenson: None whatsoever. I think it was too risky. Even the stunt guys that use that bike were expert, it was their specialized area. And even they had trouble with that bike. It looks great. It’s got machine guns, rockets, whatever but in actually riding that thing, actually controlling it, it’s a beast. So it wouldn’t even be worth training me up and getting me on it.
Q: Are you excited for "Thor: The Dark World" and is there anything you’d like to see Volstagg do in the next one.Stevenson: I’d like him to be in it. [Laughs] I’m still waiting to hear. I was very proud of the first one. I thought Chris Hemsworth did a cracking job, as did Ken Branagh.
Q: It was one of the hardest ones to get right.Stevenson: We walked a knife-edge on that movie and any slip along that way and you would have lost your audience but he took this behemoth and pulled it off.
Q: The template is set now, so it should be easier for you guys to go back and play in the world.Stevenson: Fortunately he did the Asgard stuff first. Because wearing those larger than life costumes, if we’d have done the New Mexico stuff, it would have looked like the medieval fair come to town. But we had done Asgard and seen some of the biggest sets I’ve ever been on.
Q: What are your fight scenes like in this one?Stevenson: I have two or three big fights with Dwayne. Fisticuffs. We end up hand to hand twice. One early on and then one big one at the end – very cool fighting. Very unique... Gun-fu. It’s kung-fu with guns. Firing at the same time, and blocks. The whole sequence was worked out where we both have weapons drawn and are literally blocking and kicking. It’s just incredible.
Q: Are you getting ready to shoot that?Stevenson: We’re shooting some of it tomorrow. We have to tidy up with the first unit. Second unit spent two or three days last week on the whole fight.
Q: Is the fight choreography more difficult because you have to have that whole extension?Stevenson: Well, it’s technical. Since you can’t be shooting blanks. In case one goes off in somebody’s face. So technically the fight is a choreographed dance because squibs are going off in the wall. So when you do that [motions with his gun] there’s an explosion in the wall. So it’s on target. You just learn it.
Q: Johnson seems like a good action partner because he’s the kind of guy who throws himself into it 100 percent.Stevenson: Completely. He’s great. Really easy to work with. He’s fast and strong. Even some of the blocks, it’s like hitting an iron bar. He’s great. I’m not sure I’ve ever fought anyone that size before. He’s monumental. It’s interesting to be eye to eye in a firefight with a guy who is six foot four.
Q: That’s one of the rare things about you physically, a lot of actors are not 6 foot 4 and you bring that physicality.Stevenson: I just keep my head down. It’s never really posed a problem – or I’ve never really heard about it. Hopefully I just keep working and no one says anything about it.
Q: In this scene here, you crash and then run?Stevenson: No. This scene, we go head-to-head. It leads up to the gun-fu fight. And basically he’s in this attack tank and I’m on my motorbike and we’re literally gunning at each other. Firing all weapons at each other. And I launch some rockets as he launches some and both things blow up. He just blew my bike up. But I have this package which has been taken from the Fort, from the Heads of State. It’s my briefcase, which I can’t possibly live without. So I’m hightailing it off to a speedboat out there with a machine gun on it. And he’s got a bigger boat. And he gives chase. We have this chase around the piers with guns going off and then we’re into this mano a mano. It’s going to be great but this is us going head to head. I think Jon Chu is bringing a lot of heart to this. It’s not just about these amazing toys and action scenes. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, that’s his world as well. But Jon Chu is bringing a lot of heart to it as well.
Q: Chu said there was a lot of improv before filming began but since you’re separate – did you go through that?Stevenson: No. We kind of Skyped. “Hi Jon.” “Hi Ray. How are you?” It was weird. Jon and Lorenzo must have had a discussion before that. So, I didn’t get grilled. It was Lorenzo’s role: “I want you to play it but I want you to come up with things. See what you want to do with it.” Very simple. No pressure.
Q: You mentioned Firefly is a mercenary.Stevenson: He’s an ex-Joe.
Q: He has no actual political agenda?Stevenson: Just power and money. And being with the biggest gang. And I think he just likes to dress like this. He dresses like he’s going to Bahnheim in Berlin. A big club in Berlin, rather than on parade. He’s done his parade days. They’re over.
Q: Did he kill that alligator himself?Stevenson: Oh yeah. And ate it. He killed it with a bomb. “I’ll put it on the back of that jacket. It’s going to look cool.” In fact, on the elbow is the tongue. Alligator tongue. I’ve got some stingray skin on there as well.
Q: Have you seen any alligators down here while you’re filming?Stevenson: Yeah, I’ve done the tours down in the bayou. And there’s that wonderful, wonderful educational program: Swamp People. None unexpectedly, though.

[rubie]

March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Jon M. Chu
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: Was this a film that you specifically went after?Jon M. Chu: Yeah, I was finishing up my other movie and I always loved action adventure. It's something I always wanted to do. Obviously, I played with Joes as a kid and loved them. To me, it was an opportunity to do something cool with Joe. I was talking with Adam Goodman at the time and it happened to be the moment they were looking for a director. He asked what I liked about it and I told him how, when I was a little kid, I would take them out into the backyard and play in the mud, dirt and the water. I loved the aesthetic, which was week-long adventures in my backyard and I love the idea of making a movie like that because I don't think we have a lot of those movies. Fantasy-style with hard action.
Q: You aren’t known for being an action director so was selling yourself to the studio difficult?Chu: Yeah, going after any movie there is a lot of competition to try and get it. To me, it was more about “I've always loved movement.” Storytelling and movement without words. Even when watching John Wayne on the porch or Cyd Charisse taking off her jacket and revealing her red dress. All those things communicate so much more than paragraph dialogue could and that’s what I’m fascinated with. Convincing them to hire me for the job, I guess, was just my expressing my passion for the characters and how we want to make it human while also grounding the characters. Make them individuals, because that’s what I love. My Roadblock is my Roadblock. He was a person with a personality and with a different uniform then everyone else who had an arm missing and that shipment in was really cool to me. 
Q: So you must really love this whole silent fight sequence going on?Chu: To me, that "Silent Interlude" is amazing and beautiful and I think the comic book really changed how we saw "G.I. Joe." In a way, we want to do that for this generation of kids. I do not know how much kids today know about "G.I. Joe," probably not as much as I did growing up. To reestablish that and to show this isn’t just a fluffy movie but that it actually has some meat to it. Even though there are crazy ninjas flying off things, there is a cool sort of darkness to that, which is also fun. And yes, when they do not speak at all, it puts all the pressure on how we tell the story. You don't have expressions, you just have their eyes. Unless you go to a close up, you cannot really tell how they're feeling. But it is how they move their bodies and how they jump and creep forward when they are threatening. All those little things make a big the difference. It's a big, long sequence.
Q: Is it difficult when you’ve done dance and fight sequences? Is your camera placement and the choreography for that completely different?Chu: Yes and No. Everyone who shoots dance sequences does it in a different way. Everyone who shoots fight sequences does it in a different way. I have been really lucky to work with the most incredible dancers. You don't have to fake that stuff and you see them do it. Feeling weight and form, especially with the 3D. Putting them in a space and working the space uniquely, not just rehearsing it in a space and plopping it in. Working it in a sort of improv style here we were finding things. We did the same with the fight sequences. Our guys are so good, Dwayne [Johnson] and all these people know how to actually fight even if they needed to be trained on the sequences.
Q: Is it difficult to step into a world that another director has defined, with some of the same cast and iconography, to define it in your way as well?Chu: Again, yes and no. They’re are some things we definitely knew that we couldn't abandon. My idea of what "G.I. Joe" is is a little bit different than that and how I have always fantasized about how Joe would be. Since we are starting from a different part of the universe, we were able to make it fresh. Of course, when you put someone like Dwayne, Bruce Willis and these guys in there, it changes up the whole vibe. So no matter what, where we started it, the tone was going to be different. I never really thought we had to tie into anything visually from the first movie. Not that I had anything against it. It just isn’t my style. So, like the costumes and stuff, we were able to refresh everything. Also, in the tradition of "G.I. Joe," every time they release a new version, the characters would get a new costume.
Q:That makes Hasbro happy!Chu: Yeah, right! [laughs] That does make Hasbro happy! But moreso, it gave us a blank slate to start which was a fun thing to do. There was a lot of work in all of these design elements and so many versions of all these different things. It was about finding the right, delicate tone.
Q: On the first "G.I. Joe" movie, Stephen Sommers said a lot was influenced style wise by the 1960's James Bond movies. What action films and filmmakers are you most inspired by for this film?Chu: In terms of style of this movie, there are so many different "G.I. Joe" generations and people who have their own ideas on "G.I. Joe," which is also the biggest difficulty. You have the original Joe people, which were 12-inch dolls during the Korean war. That type of thing which is very real. Then you have the cartoon generation that is all “Cobra Commander and Snake Eyes!” and the original fans are like, “Who the f--k are those guys?” Then you have the comic books, which take those characters and grounds it in a lot of different ways. While I watched the cartoon a lot and I thought the first movie was sort of in that realm, we are doing more like the comic book version. We have the characters, but you can see the scratches on their armor. Like, every time one character kills someone, they scratch a mark into their armor. It has a wear and tear to it. With the action, it's fun since we have all these different worlds that we jump into. The ninja world and the military world and each one we spend a lot of time in. We go to Pakistan, Washington D.C., the Himalayas, a valley, the desert, Japan. All over. With each, we employed a different style which has made this process really a lot of fun. In one scene we use GoPro's that we can throw around and at people. In another scene, everything is smooth and slick. It is dictated by the movement and the story we are trying to tell. I have always loved action adventure like "T2" and "Indiana Jones." To me, the martial arts stuff I love. "Kung Fu Hustle" is one of my favorite movies. Also, I always watch "Goodfellas" before I start a movie just because, when you think everything has been done, you watch that again. It shows how normalcy in a talking scene can become this really interesting mental game-play. That is what we try to do in this movie, because we have such visual eye candy. Like, at one point we are in a cave telling a story and two people are talking. You can actually make that really interesting by being way outside the cave and just hearing them echo through it and not see where they are or just the shadow moments. We play a lot with that.
Q: What was your overall experience working with Bruce Willis?Chu: Across the board, of course, I was nervous starting the movie since I don't know anybody and they don't know me. It is sort of an interesting thing to come into. What was best was that, very early on, I sat down with all of them and walked them through the process and designs. I talked them through my love for the material and some of the not ready yet previs. We had a camera and did a bit of improv stuff to play around. With the camera, I pretended to be a documentary filmmaker who was doing a "G.I. Joe" piece and would ask Dwayne “How did you recruit Lady Jaye and when was the first time you saw her?” Then I'd bring the actress in and I'd say, “Okay, this is the scene where you are trying to convince Roadblock that you can be a member of the Joes.” She would have known already he was a legend and he would start quizzing her so he could know more about her. She would come back at him to turn the interviewer around, going after him too. We did this for the first few weeks and, in those experiments, we shot hours and hours of footage, which helped us learn about each other. We also learned a lot about how the characters worked and how they had changed over the years. Their version of it was able to be refined and we got to integrate a lot of these aspects into the character development. They would do things that helped inform the characters and we brought that over onto the first day of filming. With Bruce Willis, it is Bruce Willis. When he comes in, as much as you prepare for it, he comes in and does his thing, which is awesome. You cannot have a more professional guy who knows his stuff. For his character, that is exactly what you want from him. Even when he whispers, you’d think it is a little soft, yet it still works and it is awesome. Stuff I could never direct him on that he just brings to it. Even when there was something I'd want him to try, he would go for it. That was the best thing about our cast and crew. They are all so collaborative. Usually it would be weeks of feeling it out and testing but, from the beginning, everyone was on board and it was a really good experience.
Q: Were there a lot of difficult conversations about deciding who was coming back for this movie?Chu: Totally and I love those guys. They’re storylines I'd love to put in with many different characters. When you focus in on the movie and the journey we were following, there were just too many characters, ultimately. Also, we wanted to discover a different part of the G.I. Joe world. Throughout Joe history, that has always been a favorite of mine to jump around.
Q: Would you bring any of them back? Or do they not fit with your style? Chu: Yeah, definitely there are storylines I'd love to pursue in other ones if we get that chance. For instance, the storyline between Scarlett and Snake Eyes is a classic and such a good story. It wasn’t really played out in the first one and we didn’t get the opportunity in this movie, but it is so beautiful and it can be really cool on-screen. I'd love to do so in the future.
Q: Can you say which Joe's are in the movie? Are there any other Joe's that we don’t already know are in there?Chu: I’m sure they're some here and there, but I kinda like you guys discovering it.
Q: We all thought that the bald guy in the goatee was Gung-Ho but it isn’t?Chu: It is not him and you will have to wait and see.
Q: Did we catch you on a coincidental day or is this "G.I. Joe" shirt you're wearing a good luck charm?Chu: Well, I only have three shirts! [laughs] No, I have had this for a while and wear it very often. It helps me focus when I get stressed.
Q: What can you say about the soundtrack? Have you started conversations on the tone and vibe? No Justin Bieber singing, right?Chu: Yes we have, and no, Bieber isn't singing, although RZA would be awesome. Trust me, when he stopped by, we were kind of prodding him like “Come on RZA! Let's go!” Really though, we are sort of in transition. This is like the ultimate mash-up hero before their was a mash-up hero. Ninjas, military, crazy sci-fi stuff all mixed together. Now what is cool is that mash-ups in a way have kind of evolved, so this stuff plays somewhat contemporary. We want to incorporate that into the sound of the movie as well. We don't want just a traditional score because that plays almost like a traditional '90s action movie. Really, I think Joe is cutting edge and more cutting edge than people see it as. We will try and incorporate that musically and mix in some things.
Q: Can you talk about some of the artists you are interested in and contacted?Chu: We are in the middle of that right now, so I don't want to jinx it. We don't have anything yet to announce, but we are looking for some fun collaborations. As we put the movie together the tone is continually shifting. We are seeing that the best part of this is the discovery aspect of how it will sound. Even from the beginning it has shifted in my brain from what it is now.
Q: Are you thinking about putting together any character vignettes and background stories on the characters before the film releases?Chu: I'd love to do that but we aren't quite there yet. But yeah, it is something I’d really like to do.
Q: Switching gears, what about PSA's being included? It wasn't in the first film and a lot of people wanted them. They’ve been hinted at a bit by Lorenzo.Chu: Everything is a possibility right now. We have a lot of ideas and versions of things. There are a lot of things we want to do before it ends. PSA's are tough to put into the movie, because it is tonally difficult to strike that balance. I think that, now that we’ve found a lot these characters, there is a version of this movie that we could, given the opportunity.
Q: Snake Eyes has the visor look, does he have the military goggle look too?Chu: You’ll have to see and we did a lot of different designs of him to get us to here. That was one of our biggest things, him and Cobra Commander. Literally, just so many things. The blue cannot be overly saturated and you cannot go black, just such delicate stuff. The mouth is definitely off limits but even just the tone of the visor color.

[rubie]

March 14, 2013
G.I. Joe: Retaliation Set Visit: Lorenzo di Bonaventura
Source: Silas Lesnick ComingSoon.net


Q: What's the biggest difference between this and the first film?Lorenzo di Bonaventura: I think tone is probably the biggest difference. Paramount came to me with Jon [Chu] as the way to do it and, looking at his past work, I wasn’t sure what that meant in terms of what he’s done and how that would apply to what this was. So we really talked a great deal initially about, one, that he grew up with Joe and he really understood it. I knew immediately that he had an internal grounding in it that was really good. It wasn’t a fantasy to him. It was part of his childhood. So there was this innate understanding and we talked a lot about tone and what he liked. What he liked about Joe growing up and what he would try and apply to it today versus what we had done originally. So we kept talking about how to give this thing as much intensity on a physical level and still play within the boundaries of what it is. The script we had developed prior to him joining on pretty much stayed the same. We kept making it better, but we played a lot more Kung-Fu in this movie. The storyline between Snake and Storm Shadow - there’s two storylines that are going on: The Joe's as well as Snake and Storm. These storylines then converge. So you spend a great deal of time in that world as you can see. It was great to get The RZA to be the Blind Master. One of our favorite casting choices. I think we had a hell of a lot more time to prepare this movie than the last one and so the costuming and the sets have reflected the amount of time we had.
Q: The title is "Retaliation." Is that Cobra retaliating or is that the Joe's?Di Bonaventura: It’s actually both. You’ll see in the movie it goes back and forth between who is doing what. I don’t think you could actually pin it on one or the other. More than anything, what we liked about it was the attitude. It said "There’s an aggressive movie going on."
Q: You’re walking a fine line between rebooting and sequelizing this round. How do you walk that line in terms of trying a different tone this time but also appealing to people who enjoy the first movie.Di Bonaventura: It is tricky. I was trying to think back when we started first talking about the fact we were going to try to, I’ll say, "re-energize" the cast, if anybody had really tried that in a way. I think either people abandon everything and start over or hold onto everything. I couldn’t think of one and I’m sure you guys probably know better. There’s probably one you’ll figure out, but I think in a way the Jonathan Pryce story grounds the movie. Because having the President of the United States -- those of us that saw the first movie know where he’s starting out in this movie -- and those of you who don’t have a good surprise. That’s such a jewel. When have you ever had that opportunity to play the White House that way? So we wanted to hold on to that. Then we also said, "You can’t just have one or two of those elements. You have to have a few of those elements." So we, by process of elimination or by process of feeling our way through it, came to this sort of balance. It’s interesting because I’ve watched a lot of the footage and it doesn’t feel like we’ve stepped away and yet we have. It’s a really interesting thing. I can’t really explain it because it was a sort of "feel your way through it." One of the things we wanted to do was that we wanted to try to bring an uptick of machismo to the cast. With Rock and Bruce, we sort of got a lot right there. Boom. But at the same time, when you look at some of the secondary characters now, like Walt Goggins, who is a great actor, he has a really fun role. Joe [Mazzello] is in there and so is the RZA. I think all of those things have brought a different flavor and, at the same time, it’s Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow and we’re fighting the same battle. A new and improved Cobra.
Q: Are there any Cobra characters that are returning?Di Bonaventura: Well you saw Cobra Commander there. That was him.
Can you say who is playing him – because obviously Joseph Gordon-Levitt is not back?Di Bonaventura: A guy names Luke Bracey is playing him. He’s an Australian actor who isn't yet very well known.
Q: Is he going to be behind the mask the whole movie then?Di Bonaventura: Yeah, he will be.
Q: Is the hood in there?Di Bonaventura: The hood is not in there. I’m personally opposed to the hood. I think it’s KKK and I don’t think it’s a cool thing to show kids. So, for me, I didn’t grow up with it in the same way that a lot of people did and I understand their feelings about it but, for me, I can’t put that symbolism into it.
Q: There’s a lot of practical effects in the sizzle reel footage - are you consciously stepping in the direction of practical effects?Di Bonaventura: For sure. It’s part of the attitude notion I was talking about where you ground it. "Gravity" is a favorite word of ours in this movie. How do we give everything a sense of gravity? So there’s a ton of special effects and ton of practical things that are done so that we’re not relying on visual effects as much. There will be a couple pretty wild [scenes]. I can definitely say there’s one action sequence in this that you’ve never seen anything like. That’s going to be a mixture of practical and visual effects and it is really nuts. So there are a few scenes that are going to rely on it but, when we do it, we’re blowing it out. Other than that, we’re not going to use it that much.
Q: Can you tell us who some of the new non-leading Joes are?Di Bonaventura: One of those characters is Grunt and another is Clutch. Those two guys are there and you do meet them in the movie. And there's Mouse, that’s Joe Mazzello.
Q: Are you going to be explaining away some of the missing characters from the first one, like Destro, since we’re not expecting him to be in this one?Di Bonaventura: Don’t be so sure. You never know. I think we’ll explain a little bit and I think also the universe is so big you can’t really deal with everybody. There’s definitely a move in the movie where we reduce the number of people that we are trying to deal with. But you know, for instance, Bruce’s character is the original Joe, Joe Colton. So, that’s another Joe that we’ve added to the mix and it’s really kind of a fun intro you get with him in the movie. That was one of the things with his character in particular. One of the experiences I had on the first movie was that there are those people who grew up with the '80s Joe and there’s the people who grew up with the Joe before the '80s. The people before the '80s were, "What the hell is this?" a little bit. You know, they liked the movie, but they were kind of like, "Where’s my Joe?" Bruce is their Joe. You know, it’s a very conscious nod to my age group who grew up with it. Bruce did, too. He had some funny stories about what he did to his G.I. Joe action figures, as do we all I’m sure. In a way, bringing him into the movie and by bringing that sort of, I’ll call it "down and dirty ethic" of that simple thing called Joe. It also, again, gave it some gravity. It is kind of fun, though. You see his house. He lifts up the stove and there’s there are all those guns underneath. Basically, anything you open in his house or anything you lift up -- the cushions on the sofa, anything -- there’s guns underneath. He may be semi-retired, but he’s ready for action.
Q: Does Joe Colton serve the same function as Dennis Quaid’s character from the first film?Di Bonaventura: No, he’s not. We don’t really have a character like that in the movie. I mean, he plays the most senior guy and they come to him for advice and help, but he’s not the commander. He’s retired, actually, at the beginning of the movie.
Q: Are you holding onto any of the fantastical elements from the last film or the cartoon, like the Pit?Di Bonaventura: Well, we pay homage to the Pit. That would be the right way of saying it. We make a kind of fun homage towards it. It’s not the same as in the first movie. It was abandoned at the end of the first movie, if you remember. There’s a little bit of a funny nod to it later in the movie.
Q: The last movie had a very international theme. Is this film sort of back to being an American Special Forces team?Di Bonaventura: I guess that’s probably because of Bruce and Rock, but that sort of goes [boom]. You know, at the same time Elodie Yung, who plays Jinx, is the woman from "District 13: Ultimatum." She's pretty badass. She’s doing all that. Pretty awesome. You know, Ray Stevenson comes with all his… you know. I don’t think it was a conscious thing one way or another. I think we were just trying to find the best cast for Firefly, for Jinx, for Joe Colton. I think there wasn’t really a real purposeful intent.
Q: In terms of the dynamic, how has it been for Channing Tatum, who was the center of the last film, to introduce guys as gigantic as Dwayne and Bruce into the mix?Di Bonaventura: I think it’s been pretty seamless, actually. He’s got a lot of stuff on his plate so it sort of took a little bit of the pressure off of him and put the pressure on a few other guys’ shoulders at the same time. So I think it’s actually kind of a fun thing for him. He was like, ‘I’m a fan of Bruce Willis. This is great.’ So I think it has turned into a fun thing for him.
Q: This one looks like it’s heavy on the vehicles as well.Di Bonaventura: The difference between the two movies is, really, that, because we didn’t have a lot of time [on the first one], almost every vehicle was either very simple or it was CG. For this movie, we had time to sit down and say, "All right, what would his fan boat look like? How many guns does it have on it? What’s its armor like?" All the things you do when you have enough time. I think we were able to build a lot more. I know we were able to build a lot more things, so we were probably able to get a lot more variety in the vehicle and a lot more detail in particular.
Q: Do you guys have a few really big action set pieces or a lot of little ones throughout the movie?Di Bonaventura: I think we have two really big ones and we have another couple that are pretty big and there’s a lot of little ones. There’s a lot of action in this movie. We’re not short of it, that’s for sure. I think because we swung, I’ll say, more Kung Fu, it tends to be a little bit smaller, but not necessarily less spectacular. We can do some wild stuff with the people. Byung-hun is an awesome martial artist, as is Elodie, as is Ray. So you’re able to do a lot more things. We have actually more people who know what they’re doing.
Q: How has the development of the story changed throughout the pre-production process?Di Bonaventura: It’s actually been a staggeringly constant arrow. We sat down and said, "What was the feedback from the first movie that people liked? What were they missing" and we sort of put all that stuff into a basket and went, "Alright. What can we pull out of that?" One of the things that we had always thought was interesting was the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow relationship and what happened in the backstory. Why are they such archenemies and is there, in fact, a reason? Is there betrayal? What is that? So we actually seized on that very early on and we explore both the backstory and the result of the backstory in this movie a lot. The movie it's akin to the most is probably "The Empire Strikes Back" in that Luke is off with Yoda and our guys are fighting the battle. This movie does that for quite a period of time, actually. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow’s story goes on down one track and the Joes' story goes down another track. I’m guessing around the end of the second act is when the two tracks hit each other.
Q: How soon after the other film does this one take place?Di Bonaventura: A couple years, because the President is still in office. We actually had to sort of think that through because I think we said he was in the second term. We had a lot of thinking, but it's roughly two years later.
Q: How organized is the scope of Cobra in this movie? Are we going to see thousands of Cobra troops like in the comics?Di Bonaventura: No, you won’t see thousands, but you may see hundreds. We’re not doing a battle scene in the way that [you might expect]. I think, in a way, Cobra at the end of the first movie is imprisoned. This movie is a lot about regaining form, if you would. And rebuilding. So, at the same time, they have infiltrated the White House and that gives you a certain amount of resources you never could have had in the first movie. It’s sort of that balance that we’re trying to play of it. He’s not at full power at the beginning of the movie but, by the end of the movie, he’s pretty close to full power, short of doing that kind of gigantic scene.
Q: Is Cobra a known organization to the public in this film?Di Bonaventura: They will be.
Q: This is a different movie for Jon Chu and action can be really daunting for any director. How has he adapted to it and how are you feeling as producer?Di Bonaventura: Look, it was my biggest question when I sat down with him. It’s like, there’s a certain sort of intuitive understanding of action that, if you’ve done a lot of action movies, you either build it or you have it and you recognize it in others. I think Jon had some intuition on it, he just hasn’t had a lot of opportunity on it. We surrounded him with a lot of people who have done a lot of action and he’s got great ideas about action. So he may not have had the full skill set to deal with everything, but he was given the tools to deal with it. Our second unit guy, George Ruge, is awesome. We have a great fight coordinator, we brought in Byung-hun’s double. We call him Doo. Doo-Hong Jung. He’s like Korea’s open-handed fighting champion. There’s a lot of people on this movie. Herb Gains, our executive producer, has done a lot of action. I’ve done a lot of action. I think that, if you have the instincts, which he does, we as professionals can give him the means to achieve the end.
Q: You’ve also got guys like Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis, who probably have strong ideas themselves about action themselves.Di Bonaventura: Absolutely. They know how to conduct themselves and, you know, Byung-hun has a very clear idea about what he wants to do. Jon has a strength that I haven’t seen in a lot of directors. He actually listens to everybody. He has a really uncanny ability to get everything out of everybody around him and the result is, hopefully, that the stew is a little bit better as a result of that. Steve Windon shot "Fast Five," so he’s got some really great instincts about where cameras should move and that’s one of the things I liked about "Fast Five." I thought the camera work had a lot of energy and intent to it. That’s why we picked him, to give that sort of energy to the DP and make sure it’s not scenic.
Q: It's a roughly 70 day shoot. Has the pace been somewhat frantic? Di Bonaventura: There’s an amazing amount of time-consuming action in this. Especially when you start getting into the Kung-Fu pieces. They take a long time, to do them right. This movie does mimic the other movie in the way that it starts in South Korea and goes into the DMZ, the Korean Demilitarized Zone. It goes to Islamabad. It goes to Washington D.C. It goes to Germany. It goes to South Carolina and Tokyo. There’s brief stop in India. Very brief. There’s a big sort of scale to it. All that stuff happens more at the end of the shoot than at the beginning.
Q: Obviously merchandising is a big component of a franchise like this. How far out have you guys been planning what you want to see merchandising wise? Do you have a video game planned? What kind of talks with Hasbro have you had about new toys?Di Bonaventura: You know, Hasbro is really in charge of the merchandising and we participate with them. We’ve been planning it for quite a while. I think the biggest change is that there are more vehicles. There are more details for them to take advantage of. There’s a very funny Nerf gun thing in the movie. It’s actually in the movie. Whether Hasbro had been or not, we would have done the gag. It’s a very funny gag. I think it’s a little more evolved because we were able to spend more time getting ready for it. Hasbro is better prepared as well. The last time was such a rocket ship ride. They greenlit us October 31st and we were shooting February 10th or something. February 2nd. We never even got a rewrite on the script. We got one draft and then we were going. That didn’t give much preparation for them or for us.
Q: Is Firefly working directly under Cobra Commander or is he kind of on his own?Di Bonaventura: No, he’s not following his own agenda. He definitely is a character who has his own ideas of what he should be doing, but he’s definitely a guy working within the umbrella, I’ll say. Cobra is the lead bad guy, but Firefly is such a phenomenally colorful character. Actually, he’s one of those characters that, when we wrote the script, he had like six lines and you went, "This is one of the coolest characters I’ve ever read." It’s just a weird thing that something that didn’t have that much initially, everybody went, "Whoa!" He’s got one of the greatest intros I’ve ever seen for a bad guy.
Q: Do the Joe's know about him beforehand? Does he have a history with the Joes at all?Di Bonaventura: No, he doesn’t. You know, we’re trying to strip it down so we don’t do a lot of that halls of power or generals sitting around. That kind of thing. We try to keep that to an absolute minimum. Because, one, I don’t think it’s all that much fun and we’ve seen it. The other reason is that, for the kids involved, they really don’t like that. It’s like, "What the hell is all that stuff?" For me, I like pace anyhow. We made a conscious effort to sort of strip it down and try to isolate the good Joes going after the bad guys. We really focused on that as opposed to seeing all the machinations that are going on behind it. 
Q: Any chance of Major Blood making an appearance?Di Bonaventura: Not in this one, no. We can’t get everybody in, even though we try to. That’s funny. We’ll get him in the next one if we’re lucky enough to get there.
Q: Are there rights issues with certain characters that you can’t use?Di Bonaventura: I think there are some rights [issues] when you start getting into the background of Joe. Some of them are partly owned by somebody else. They had to clean up a few things and there’s some overlap with some other properties, strangely enough, as far as names go. I want to say that, with Roadblock’s name we had to clear up some challenge by some small toy company. In general, though, they tend to be fairly simple things if you have a problem there.
Q: Is that why Heavy Duty was in the first one, but was played in a way that was more reminiscent of the Roadblock character?Di Bonaventura: I think we just liked the name Heavy Duty, frankly. It sounded kind of cool. We weren’t trying to play him like Roadblock.
Q: Are past characters obliquely mentioned? Like, "Scarlett and Ripcord are off on a mission!" Or are they just never mentioned?Di Bonaventura: They’re never mentioned... It was enough of a challenge to add so many new members that trying to deal with the old members would have really been a mind drain for us. We just couldn’t.
Q: Was Larry Hama involved with this one at all?Di Bonaventura: Probably not as much as the first, but not for any reason other than that he’s really busy and we’ve been really moving. Larry definitely likes what’s going on and we like Larry. He was really busy when we were first starting out on this.
Q: Can you talk about balancing the funnier parts against the more serious tone?Di Bonaventura: It’s tricky because, if you make it too funny, you lose the sense of gravity. You know, [the Jay-Z line is] funny because, in that scene in particular, we originally had a version where he’s quoting George Patton, which is what you expect. It was really good, but it wasn’t as cool... I always find the hard thing is, if you try to find cool, good luck. But you do stumble across it now and again. We were sitting there with this George Patton quote and I kept saying, "Come on! We’ve got to have something new or something cool." Our writers came up with that quote. They were like, "Okay, how about this?" The first time we saw it, we all laughed, which is what we were hoping for. That there is sort of a pop culture nature to that notion. It does not seem like it’s reaching past who people are today.
Q: Since you guys are going for a PG-13, can you talk about the level of violence that we might see or not see on-screen?Di Bonaventura: It’s more violent as a movie, sure. You know, like all these big PG-13 franchises, we walk the no blood, little blood, heavy impact line. That’s what we did with "Transformers," too. I think it’s interesting, for me, having my time at Warner Bros. making all those action pictures. If it wasn’t horror, it wasn’t cool. I find it fascinating that this is where we are today and what you’re allowed to do with PG-13 now is so much different than what you could do back then.
Q: Are there going to be regional Joe's like, "We’re in an artic mission, this is a job for Snow Job!" Di Bonaventura: We tried doing that and when you put those characters in, they feel laughable. What’s the guy with the bird on his shoulder?
Q: Shipwreck.Di Bonaventura: We tried really hard.
Q: Couldn’t get the parrot to cooperate?Di Bonaventura: He was on strike. It was funny, because we actually had a real debate about that. One of the storylines in this movie is about trying to keep it reduced, so there’s actually a story point to why you’re not meeting all those people.
Q: How many Joe's are in the film total?Di Bonaventura: I’ve never counted it. There’s twelve on the plane. You meet some others in a bar. You’re going to see, I guess, twenty-ish, maybe thirty. Twenty to thirty, somewhere in there. But you really get to know the core group of like eight or ten.
Q: Any chance of Public Service Announcements this time?Di Bonaventura: There’s a chance.
Q: Will Flint wear the beret?Di Bonaventura: That’s interesting that you like the beret. Well, we had a lot of debates about that beret. I know soldiers actually hate berets because they make no sense to them, they don’t block the sun. They keep your head warm. The ceremony you saw on-screen, I don’t know if you noticed that, there’s a real pageantry thing. Dress would be berets there for everybody.
Q: Getting back to the PSA’s, on the first film, you mentioned that you didn’t have enough time. Are the PSA’s something that you might do teaser trailers on or would they actually be in the movie?Di Bonaventura: It won’t be teaser trailers. That’s too restrictive because, if you don’t know the show, that won’t mean a damn thing to you. I think that, by nature, those things are very tongue-in-cheek and they would set the wrong tone. Maybe down the road you’ll see something like that in the campaign. Maybe on the internet or something like that, but not as a main tool of trying to advertise. Because I think that, for people who didn’t grow up with show, it means very little and they are really corny and tongue-in-cheek and that’s what’s fun about them. If we didn’t do them that way, people who like them would be like, "Well, wait a second that’s not the thing I remember!" Then the ones who don’t, they’re going to like the ones you guys wouldn’t like. It’s sort of a non-winnable situation.
Q: What is the overall scope of Bruce Willis' character?Di Bonaventura: I don’t want to oversell the scope of it, but he plays an incredibly important role in the movie. It’s not a cameo, but it’s not an everyday player. Like I said, his character plays for the people who grew up with that Joe – an incredibly important thing – and we play to that. In the plot of the story, he has a very integral moment, a couple of moments, that sort of change the course of what’s going to happen. He probably plays a bigger role in the plot than maybe screen time, actually.
Q: You had mentioned that both you and Bruce have memories of the classic Joe Colton. Can you elaborate on those?Di Bonaventura: Well, you know, everyone has those stories about how they blew up their G.I. Joe figure. I’ve yet to talk to someone who hasn’t had one of them. The funny one, what I always find, is when you start getting into that conversation, I’ve always heard the other side which is that they’ve taken their sister’s Barbie dolls and chopped and hacked them up. I find that really funny. There seems to be a real thing about killing the Barbies first. Bruce had the same kind of things we all did. You were into it and then you sort of got to the point where, as you got older, you started to grow away from it, but you don’t really know you’re growing away from it. It starts be a thing you blow up and throw off the roof with an M80 on it and see what happens, right?
Q: How did you end up in New Orleans, was it a tax thing or was it the studio?Di Bonaventura: It was a combination of things. One is the city is incredibly welcoming to film production, which makes filmmakers want to come. It’s a big deal for us, because we’ve been in cities where you’re not welcome and it’s such a brutal pace at which you work (in terms of hours) that in your downtime, when you’re in a city that’s not really happy that you’re there, it’s really uncomfortable. You know, we talked about it with "Transformers." Chicago put their arms around us. We just kept shooting in there and we kept moving scenes to Chicago because they treated us so nicely, because it was a nice environment to shoot in. One is that it’s a great place to be part of. It’s a very livable city. Tax credits absolutely take part in all this, it is a huge incentive and studios are acutely aware of it.
Q: How did you guys end up as the first film to shoot at this NASA facility?Di Bonaventura: Well, actually, Herb is the one who first thought, "Hey, there’s that building over there? Can we get it? What’s there and can we get into it?" On "Transformers" we had worked at Cape Canaveral. When Herb brought it up to me, I was like, "Well, yeah. We know some people." And NASA is pretty conducive and Herb really should be the one who speaks to it because he really went through the process of convincing these guys to give us the facility. But, you know, the space shuttle went down and this facility needed something.
Herb Gains: It was really timing. I was familiar with this facility from doing previous films here and was never able to get into it. But with the shuttle program winding down and their desire to bring in private enterprise it took about four or five months of sitting down at the table and figuring out a way to do it. We got it done. Both sides were motivated.
Di Bonaventura: And you’ll see as you walk around, Herb is going to show you guys around. The scale of this place is crazy and it has helped the movie tremendously. We’ll take you to what we call the "Nuclear Depot," which is actually where they stood up the fuel tanks for the space shuttle. It’s gigantic and we turned it, in this movie, into something. That fuel tank became a nuclear missile.
Gains: We’re basically occupying about 200,000 square feet of space here.
Q: Can you shoot exteriors here as well?Di Bonaventura: We’re doing exteriors here. We’re doing everything here. In fact, what’s happened is, I think it was my ideas to put the DMZ over there, right? So, every time we go to ourselves and go, "Uh, where are we going to put [something]?" And we go, "Well, there’s that place in the facility down there." So what’s happened is, for this movie, it’s going to give far more scale because we’re able to be on a production level that’s incredibly efficient. So the efficiency is actually going to show up in more visual effects. More firepower and more action. There’s an area that’s going to serve as the DMZ in North Korea and we were really scratching our heads because we couldn’t find a location. It was the weirdest thing, but it turned out to be one of the most difficul. That and the prison, right? Those two, we were like, "What the richard simmons are we going to do?" And we kept looking and we kept saying, "That doesn’t look like it and that doesn’t look like it." I just went, "Well, there’s that thing over there. Let’s go over there." And we went over there, everybody went over there, and we went, "Well, actually, this is going to kind of work." So we’re doing North Korea here. We’re doing Pakistan here.
Gains: We’re probably doing 65-70 percent of the entire film here.
Di Bonaventura: This is a perfect example. We have a screening room here. We didn’t have to go all the way into the screening facility. So it’s been a great advantage that we could set something up here. There’s just so much space for doing different things.

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Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/uipthailand?feature=watch

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March 17, 2013
'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' Gets China Release Date by Clarence Tsui THR
"The Croods" will also follow "Django Unchained" in getting an April rollout in China.
G.I. Joe Retaliation and The Croods will follow Django Unchained in getting a release in China in April.
The second installment in the action-film franchise, starring Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, Dwayne Johnson and Korean star Lee Byung-hun, will make its bow in Chinese cinemas on April 15, followed by The Croods on April 29.
Django Unchained was earlier granted a Chinese release date of April 11 (it's understood that Quentin Tarantino will be recutting the film himself to ensure that it passes the Chinese censorship board).
The Impossible, meanwhile, has yet to confirm a concrete opening date after being pulled from the release schedule in March.
The Chinese roll-out for Iron Man 3 has also remained unconfirmed. Earlier reports about a simultaneous U.S.-China release on May 3 have now been countered with online messages about the film possibly opening in China in late April.
Iron Man 3 opens in Hong Kong, where distributors and exhibitors decide on release schedules independent from the mainland Chinese authorities, on April 26.

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Highlight at General Joes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aOwEI9sPXU&list=UUe7flOfHOQdOjIh7CPOrtcQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMlb7pevK4M&list=UUe7flOfHOQdOjIh7CPOrtcQ&feature=player_embedded

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Highlight at General Joes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UUe7flOfHOQdOjIh7CPOrtcQ&v=H8JhBRzD1sk

[rubie]

Highlight at General Joes