After showing the previously revealed test animation for Resolute, supervising director Joaquim Dos Santos explained that the new show (visually inspired by Ghost In The Shell) will not only be more violent and "adult" than the original, but also more realistic in its weaponary. Ignoring the laser guns of the '80s cartoon, the new show will use real-life tech projected ten years in the future: "Our idea is to be realistic for what actual soldiers will be using in five to ten years."

While Resolute is clearly being viewed as Hasbro as an introduction to GI Joe for new audiences, Dos Santos added that they're definitely not out to alienate old audiences, saying that the show's being created to be the show that you wanted to see when you were a bloodthirsty fourteen years old in the 1980s: "It really is for the fans."

That was the continuing theme during the panel, with Joe comic writer and movie consultant Larry Hama joining in:

From the very beginning, even after the first issue of the comic, I got lots and lots of letters, hundreds of them. I realized it had to be interactive. If the fans didn't like it, it was gone. It's because of you, it's your story.

Talking about the upcoming movie, the producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and writer Stuart Beattie (himself a fan of the 1980s comic series and toy line) discussed the problems with having so many characters. Di Bonaventura started by saying,

When we did Transformers, we had to find a human way into the story. With GI Joe, there are a lot of humans.

Their solution to this problem was twofold. Firstly, having multiple character arcs throughout the movie playing out against a very basic plot, and the second... well, more movies, as Beattie explained:

I'm big on simple plots and complex characters... I tried to model the movie on Raiders of The Lost Ark. Instead of ten four minute action sequences, we have four ten minute action sequences. I'm serious; there are only four action sequences, and they just keep getting bigger and bigger... They're such rich characters, I wanted to make sure that they were best represented... In order to deal with all the characters, we thought sequels would be the best way to go.

The team were very clear about The Rise of Cobra being the first of a planned series, as when di Bonaventura discussed the massive budget for the movie:

Paramount gave us more money to make this first movie than they did on Transformers.

The best news about the movie came when someone asked why Christopher Eccleston's Destro is being portrayed as the main villain. Won't there be any movie version of Cobra Commander? Writer Beatie paused, smiled, and then answered:

Well, the movie IS called 'The Rise of Cobra', so I'm sure you'll see Cobra Commander in there.

Of course, I expect we'll see a lot more of him in the sequels.

Here's the movie's premise: the G.I. Joe team, led by Duke (Channing Tatum), fights for freedom wherever there is trouble. And their arch nemesis is Cobra Commander and his Cobra Force. The movie is based on a Hasbro line of toys, but also on a comic-book series from the 1980s, which had the Joe squad working out of "The Pit."

CC2K has an early review of the movie's script, and apparently it includes:

• "Accelerator suits," which allow the G.I. Joe squad to run faster, jump super-high, smash through walls, and shrug off bullets.
• A "nano-bomb" that the Cobra Commander wants to launch — which launches a swarm of nanites that eat all of the buildings and machinery, without harming any of the people. (And how do the nanites know when to stop eating all the non-organic matter? Will this be explained at all?)
• The Neo-Vipers, super-soldiers enhanced by nanotech, so they can't feel pain or remorse. (And maybe they can actually regenerate from injuries? It's not clear.) A mad scientist, known only as the Doctor, creates these soldiers for Destro, who's horribly disfigured after a fight with Duke. Destro wears a mask made out of nanotechnology, which allows the Doctor, aka Commander, to control his mind.
• hawt babe Scarlett (Rachel Nichols, see pic above) who is a virgin, despite wearing breast-exaggerating armor (which can turn invisible.) Marlon Wayans' wacky sidekick character Ripcord has the hots for Scarlett, who says she'll date him if he can shoot her on an obstacle course. He fails to hit her, and later realizes he was actually shooting real arrows instead of "training arrows." Also, Dennis Quaid plays "Hawk," their leader, and The Rock is rumored to play Shipwreck, another one of the good guys.
• a weird backstory involving a romance between Channing Tatum's Duke and Sienna Miller's evil Baroness. They almost got married, and now she's a Nazi or something. The Baroness says things like, "Deep down, you're still the man I fell in love with." And "Do it, Duke. You've already killed me once."
• futuristic killer ninjas, as we already mentioned a while back. [CinCity2000]