Stephen Sommers May Direct GI Joe

Can lightening strike twice? And by asking that I don’t mean can another toy become successful movie, I mean can a director of critically panned fair win over legions of fans by balancing a mainstream and hardcore audience?

Stephen Sommers, the man behind the Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies and the absolutely dreadful Van Helsing is now rumored to be the pick for directing Hasbro’s GI Joe.

Now Transformers essentially had its hardest work ahead of the effects team: making convincing characters came easy once you were convinced they could be real. GI Joe has some great characters too, but they are merely human, and it’ll take more than a guy dressed like Snake Eyes who doesn’t talk to get audiences to show up. Theres also that huge problem of this being a military movie and keeping it safe for kids. Transformers got away with all the violence and gunplay because it never showed a drop of blood and most of it was between non-human performers. Lets not kid ourselves, the villains need to be Cobra Commander, Destro, and The Baroness leading thousands of disposable soldiers.

Is Sommers up to the job? I honestly don’t think so, but I’ve been surprised before when Bryan Singer dropped the ball on Superman and Michael Bay surpassed expectations on Transformers. Getting Mark Wahlberg would help, but this needs to be handled very carefully.

From IESB