It's nice to know that Stephen Sommers was completely and utterly aware of what he was making: giant splodey toys! G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be released on DVD and Blu-ray release on November 3rd. Kabooooom.

In celebration of this weekend's toyetic toy epic, the website of literary magazine McSweeney's has given Keith Pille's Journal of a New Cobra Recruit the spotlight of its front page again, allowing a new generation of cynical reader the chance to glimpse behind the scenes of what it takes to turn a man into an unstoppable faceless (non-)killing machine:

June 16, 1986
First day of boot camp was a bear. All of the other boots seem like nice guys. Don't know what any of them look like because the first thing they did when we got here was give us blue helmets with black hankies to cover up our faces. I'm getting pretty good at recognizing people's eyebrows though.

Figured we'd do a lot of exercise today, but we didn't do as much as I thought. Mostly just running out of a door and yelling "COBRA!" at the top of our lungs. I got pretty good at it. Now I can sound awful scary when I yell "COBRA!" You wouldn't think it would wear you down, but boy, am I pooped.

If that's not enough, you can also revisit Pille's Journal of a Seasoned Cobra Veteran:

June 10, 1987

My first day on duty at the Terrordrome! What an experience! It was like being on a Hollywood red carpet, I saw so many heavy hitters! I'd barely walked in the door when I saw this beautiful woman in the tightest uniform I've ever seen. I was checking her out when I realized it was the Baroness! Live and in the flesh! That lady really knows how to make the COBRA emblem look good. (I shouldn't say that. The Baroness is a valued leader in the COBRA organization, and it's not right for me to objectify her.)

By the time you're done, you too will want Pille to write the next Joe movie.

The new movie is expected to make above $50 million between Friday and Sunday, according to analysts, which would make it more successful than Terminator Salvation and within Watchmen's $55.7 million opening weekend (Joe actually grossed more than Watchmen on the Friday, but Watchmen's Thursday night screenings took it to $25.1 million total for the day officially). This may be the sign that movie executives were looking for, in terms of proof that name recognition and a more general rating - Joe is a PG-13, against Terminator and Watchmen's R ratings - is more important than either positive buzz or the quality of the finished movie.

With mainstream reviews coming in and not being very good (although Roger Ebert's is a masterpiece of snark), it'll be interesting to see if that impacts attendance throughout the weekend. If it doesn't, and Joe ends up making somewhere around the rumored $55 million, expect to see more toy movies being rushed into production... and past the movie critics.

It's been a lackluster summer for fun blockbuster movies. We've gone months watching letdown after letdown. I guess it was only natural that we assumed that G.I. Joe would be yet another installment of boring explosions, tired plots and bad acting. But I'm happy to say G.I. Joe is actually exciting explosions, silly plots and enjoyably bad acting. Does it have flaws? Oh yes, many. But it's a cool breeze of refreshing action fun that airs out the stink of disappointment from Transformers 2.

The film is full of the tropes from director Stephen Sommers' past work, which if you if you like a strapping young hero coming to terms with his heroism-ness, the big, seemingly unstoppable host of baddies, and the many women counterparts who, although they are perfectly capable of kicking ass on their own, constantly need to be saved by the menfolk, you are in for a treat. Think of it as a highly militarized version of both The Mummy and Van Helsing, with slightly less charismatic leads.

G.I. Joe starts off with the delightful and actually scary CEO of MARS James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) explaining all about his brand new weapon fueled by what appears to be the green Powerade and nanomites, tiny bugs that eat metal really super fast. Actually that's wrong the movie started with a super old flash back in medieval times, seriously I think they shot in the restaurant, that showed, rather unnecessarily, the McCullen lineage and how his ancestors were skeevy weapons peddlers too and eventually got caught dealing to both sides and were forced to wear an iron mask. And that is how G.I. Joe does foreshadowing, by just telling you what's to come.

Anyways back to the future. So McCullen is a bad guy and attempts to steal his own weapon that he sold to the US, thus killing off a whole military unit except for Duke and Ripcord, who join up with the off-the-books black ops unit, the Joes. You can tell they are black ops, because they are wearing all black.

Dennis Quaid and his little hat play General Hawk, who allows Duke and Ripcord to join up with the Joes, for now, because, surprise, the Baroness, who showed up to steal the weapons earlier and kill Duke's men but not him, isn't the sexy Russian we've all dreamed about, but Duke's ex, who used to be blonde, so the hair color change signifies evil-ness.

After this the flick is just a giant chase and be chased action feature. Everybody wants the nanomite weapons and the Joes do a really lousy job of protecting them, hence the eventual destruction of the Eiffel Tower. But honestly, this is all the time I'm going to take to describe the confusing and flat out ridiculous plot because that's not what we go to these kinds of movies for. We go to Joe to watch Ripcord make jokes, Snake Eyes flip, kick and wave his samurai sword about and to witness the toy accelerator suits we will later contemplate purchasing because even though we're old now, that doesn't mean we have to stop buying toys. And the suits, surprisingly not as heinous on screen as I imagined. The CG was terrible, and I mean terrible, but you didn't really care because the movie established early on that they weren't striving for reality in any sense of the word, so "shut up and eat your awesome."

What's in it for die-hard Joe fans? Plenty of shout outs and new fancy military toys to get excited about. The movie makes a serious effort to let you know they know it's a movie based off toys, with giant underground drill tanks, underwater subs, power suits, jet skis and jets. Sienna Miller all but winks into the camera while delivering the cheesetastic lines like "a real american hero." There's heaps of "yo joe" calls and past references to the cartoon, which is fun for fun's sake.

But with the good came the very, very bad. The film gets a little bogged down by excessive flash backs and spoon fed foreshadowing. I literally thought Sienna Miller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were going to bust into a "foreshadowing is fun" musical number when she tells Duke, after only implying it 1,000 times before, "I'll marry you if and only if you watch out for my baby brother [JGL] in Iraq." Surely nothing will go wrong now. And special attention needs to be paid to the god-awful Norton Anti-Virus plug in the middle of the film. The enemies highly technological science based is guarded by Norton — sure, yeah.

Also, I think I need to take note of Stephen Sommers' continual use of the damsel in distress plot line. In Van Helsing, The Mummy (1 and 2), and now in G.I. Joe there are at least one, if not multiple, scenes where the main female character is left unconscious, or seriously incapacitated, and at the mercy of evil. Then it's up to the hero to save the literal damsel in distress.

Each movie the women go under and are shlepped around by the hero, no seriously there are multiple "carrying the lady" scenes in all of his films. I got a little mad when the male characters had an entire conversation over one female characters limp body about what they all need to do to "fix" her. And I got even more pissed that Sommers pretty much pulled the rug out from under all of his women whenever they solidified themselves on screen as warriors.

For instance, after an entertaining fight between the Baroness and Scarlett, Ripcord finds a weepy Scarlett staring in the mirror at her face cuts and scrapes upset about her tiiiiiiiny scars and that she lost a fight. He comforts her and there's this strange sigh of relief that Scarlett has now dropped her hard exterior shell to find comfort in the menfolk, it was kind of bullshit, especially since she was clearly fine and General Hawk had been all but left within an inch of his life down the hall, but gross scars. Oh and there's not a single moment like this or the men, they are G.I. Joe heroes after all, not girls. Sigh.

That being said, I gotta admit there are moments where I just gave in to my damsel fetishisms and thought, "Carry me away from all of this, Duke." So while Sommers needs to work out some of his, "girls don't always need to be unconscious in all of your movies" issues, and I'd like him to not resort into turning women into girls with weepy "why me" moments, there were still moments where he plays that damsel card pretty well. But I'd like him to stop now.

As for the "big reveal" well it is titled The Rise Of Cobra, and the film is pretty much a giant build up to the big Cobra Commander reveal, which was sadly, horribly disappointing. Why JGL was cast in this movie I will never know. He's a great actor but all I got out of his performance was one blinking eye and a limp. It was look-around-the-theater-in-dismay angering. Honestly if they spent longer with him it could have tanked the entire feature, but thankfully they didn't. So don't worry there's plenty of Snake Eyes to go round.

Even though the film had handfuls of flaws, I left the theater fist punching the air, swooning over my new found attraction to shirtless Byung-hun Lee, and with a smile. It took me a minute to remember a lot of the details, because this isn't the type of movie you keep with you forever, but it is the classic summer fare that rescues sticky pedestrians on a hot day with explosions and movie theater air conditioning. G.I. Joe is silly, but it's worth seeing because... it's fun. Remember fun? Fun was what you were looking for when you shelled out $10 to see Transformers 2 and left with a headache. G.I. Joe will hopefully bring back fun movies that at least attempt to be entertaining and coherent and not just an excuse for Michael Bay to visit Egypt to shoot a movie.

Maybe my expectations were already so low that it had no where to go but up, still I felt like the audience and the actors were all in on the joke when Duke drives his motorcycle in the rain, through a graveyard, with sunglasses on (and a leather jacket, of course). It's self aware but not in an annoying Scary Movie way, in a now watch me blow the shit out of this bunker and then ninjas are going to fight on top of it kind of way.

Will I buy it on DVD or see it again in the theater, nah, once was enough. But I will tell you to go see it for an escape from your mind for and hour and 40 minutes. So now you know and...ah you know the rest.

You guys had great chemistry in the film. Were there any funny moments we didn't get to see of you two, goofing off as a couple of Joes?

Marlon Wayans: There's some stuff, but we pretty much stuck to the script.

So you guys are toys now...

Wayans: I'm about to go raid Hasbro. I saw this one doll that had the accelerator suit. It's like RoboCop. It was running. I was like, "I need this for my son."

Speaking of RoboCop and science fiction, you guys are really growing in this genre. Were there any superheroes that you two were rumored for, that didn't end up being true?

Wayans: I was actually supposed to play Robin, in Batman Returns, about 15 years ago. But there was too many characters. I was cast, I was paid and everything. I still get residual checks. Tim Burton didn't wind up doing three, Joel Schumacher did it and he had a different vision for who Robin was. So he hired Chris O' Donnell.

Are you happy that you didn't wind up being Robin in that movie?

Wayans: No, look — I get why they picked Chris O' Donnell, because it would be messed up to have Batman and you've got Robin, and his bulge is somewhat bigger than Batman's. Batman would have a serious problem with that.

Channing Tatum: [Laughs] I was rumored to play Captain America. Actually, I would love to play him, but I've read Will Smith is going to do it.

Are there and superheroes you would like to play in the future, since you didn't get to play Robin and you don't think you're up for Captain America?

Tatum: I want to get recast as Snake Eyes.

Wayans: I would like to do the Mask. Jim Carrey did one, Jamie Kennedy did two. I would like to do three.

Tatum: There's a darker superhero called Plucker. I want to do that, badly. I'm trying to set it up now. [Channing is linked to this project as the producer].

Wayans: I want to play Plastic Man — that would be fun too....

In the movie...

Wayans: I want to play the Brown Hornet, from Fat Albert. I want to play the Brown Hornet and be buff on top, and just have really skinny legs. I could get Tracy Morgan to play Stinger.

You guys do a lot of ridiculous stuff in G.I. Joe, what was your favorite moment?

Wayans: Right here [points to Tatum]. We had a great time filming together. On set, off set....

Really? That was more fun that driving a motorcycle through the rain, with sunglasses on?

Tatum: My Top Gun moment? [Laughs].

Wayans: That was so ultimate sexy. I was so like, "oh I wish that was me!" But see here's the difference. White guys in the rain look cool, if I was in the rain my afro would all small, skin would be all dry, it would not be a good sight.

Yes she's really reading that on the treadmill and yes they are really falling all over each other half naked and sweaty. There's something for everyone apparently. I take back everything I ever said about this movie maybe being "good bad." That is bad, bad.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is out August 7th.

We were lucky enough to get a copy of Max Allan Collins' novelization of G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA. And we had not fully appreciated the dementia of this storyline, which really is all about nanotech and how it'll eat the world.

In the G.I. Joe universe, nanotech can do almost anything — turn regular people into super-soldiers, control your mind, devour the Eiffel Tower. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie's script was actually written by nanobots, which sliced up a million other action-movie scripts and mashed them up into a wonderfully incoherent mess. There are undigested scraps of Sho Kosugi movies and bad war movies floating around this gray goo of a story, and it's nice to watch them sail past.

This might actually be the most prominent nanotech action movie ever — I'm straining to think of another movie where nanotechnology is so central to the plot.

The central villain of the movie, of course, is the Scottish James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), an arms merchant who secretly hungers for power. In a flashback, his ancestor gets tortured by the French by being fitted with a searing-hot metal mask, and so McCullen has a special hatred for French people. When we meet the present-day McCullen, he's selling the NATO brass on his latest weapon — nanomites, which are basically nanomachines that eat anything metal, until you hit their "Kill Switch" and turn them off. They can disarm an opponent without the need for bloodshed, and so one NATO suit jokes that McCullen may be the first arms merchant to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

But McCullen, of course, has other plans — after he delivers the nanomites to NATO, he launches an attack of his Neo-Vipers to steal them back. The Neo-Vipers are supersoldiers who have been enhanced by nanotechnology — which also controls their minds. At one point, McCullen gloats that his troops still have their own thoughts, but they're incapable of doing anything but obey his orders. The convoy escorting the nanomites is led by Conrad "Duke" Hauser and Wallace "Ripcord" Weems, and they're the only ones who are prepared when the Neo-Vipers attack.

The convoy gets wiped out, but luckily the G.I. JOE squad shows up — an international team of super-experts who don't officially exist, but appear as if by magic when they're needed. There's Heavy Duty, who's heavy and does his duty. There's Scarlett, who has red hair. There's Cover Girl, who's blonde. There's Breaker, who... uh, breaks things. And there's Snake Eyes, a ninja who's taken a vow of silence. And then their leader, General Hawk. The JOEs save the day, but Duke is loath to hand over his hard-won nanomite cargo to them, so they take him and Ripcord back to their secret base. And of course, Duke and Ripcord wind up joining the team, to the sound of people shouting "Yo JOE!" (That's their rallying cry.)

Meanwhile, McCullen has his own colorful squad. There's Zartan, a fiendishly exotic killer who can impersonate anyone. The Baroness, who turns out to be Duke's ex-fiancee — but now she's married to a Baron, who's not allowed to touch her, or a ninja will kill him. (Seriously, it's a running subplot: if her husband so much as kisses her, the always-watchful ninja will kill him. Try bringing THAT up in marriage counseling.) There's the ninja, Storm Shadow, who's taken a vow of nastiness towards Snake Eyes. And finally, the Doctor, the fiendish nanotechnology genius with a crazy mask who makes the whole wacky operation possible.

When Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes finally face off, Storm Shadow hisses in Japanese, "You took a vow of silence... Now you will die without a word." Sho Kosugi, eat your heart out.

There's also this great bit, towards the end:

Heavy Duty told them: "You know the mission: Find Duke..."

"...grab the warheads," Rip said.

"And kill all the bad guys," Scarlett said.

"Roger that," Heavy D said.

Snake Eyes, of course, said nothing.

But they all knew that when it came to killing bad guys, he was the man.

Snake Eyes can't talk, but he can send text messages, which is kind of cute.

Eventually, we learn that the reason why Duke and the Baroness are no longer together is because Duke got the Baroness' brother killed on a mission. Except that there's a shocking twist, and if you can't see it coming a mile off, I have no hope for you.

Last year's summer movies were all about the relentless advances of weapons technology, and what they cost us. Iron Man was about a remorseful weapons maker, Incredible Hulk was about a remorseful military experiment, and The Dark Knight bemoaned the fact that all of Bruce Wayne's fancy armaments only spurred on the homicidal maniacs. This year, though, it's gung-ho militarism season, spearheaded by toy movies — literally, movies based on toys.

The advantage that G.I. Joe has over this summer's other Hasbro movie, Transformers 2, is that its human characters are action figures. In Transformers, the robots were toys but the people were just standard movie characters — almost every movie nowadays has an Italian Jewish male stripper who blogs about killer robots, after all. But in G.I. Joe, every single character feels like an action figure walking around — reading the novelization is like watching a five-year-old play with figurines, while a middle-aged guy narrates portentously. In other words, it's probably the most perfect action-adventure novel ever.

So because this is all about toys, there are lots and lots of loving descriptions of military hardware, from flying drones to fighter jets to a stealth van called the Scarab. You've already seen the ridiculous Iron Man-esque power suits which Duke and Ripcord wear in one crucial Paris sequence, but the story is loaded with insane hardware. Scarlett gets to wear a special combat suit, which renders her totally invisible.

At one point, Collins refers to Heavy Duty as wielding a massive "machine-gun-cum-grenade-launcher," which put a mental image in my mind that I don't think he intended.

When the Vipers attack the convoy, they arrive in a super-armored stealth ship called a Typhoon, shooting pulse lasers that fling the dead bodies of Duke's Special Forces squad "like discarded refuse." And then there's this great description of the Baroness, who shows up on the scene:

The neckline of the body armor exposed the upper part of her swelling bosom, an exposure of flesh that arrogantly dared bullets to try for her, as if she could walk blithely across the battlescape.

Even amidst an army of plastic characters and silly dialogue, the biggest problem is probably Ripcord, who's played by Marlon Wayans in the movie and is exactly as emasculated as you might have feared. Towards the beginning, when the convoy is attacked, Ripcord gets startled by a shape coming up behind him, and squeals "like a Girl Scout whose cookies had been snatched from her" — before he realizes it's just a stray cow. Later, in the big Paris chase scene, Ripcord runs through a lingerie store and winds up with a bra on his powersuit helmet. He's the one who spouts the jokes about "kung-fu grip," and he's the dumb one who needs everything explained to him. He's constantly saying things like "I'm livin' a brother's dream, man." To be fair, though, he does get to save the day in the end, and he has a quasi-romance with Scarlett.

Here's my favorite passage in the whole book, after the JOE squad gets back to their base:

In his stateroom, General Hawk was in the office area, at his desk, humming a jaunty military tune.

He was going over the paperwork regarding the new JOEs, Hauser and Weems, when a crisp knock came at the door. He rose, answered it, and found his lovely blonde aide, with the smart tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir."

"Not at all, Cover Girl."

"I just need you to sign here, here, and here..."

He did so.

Then she said, "And here, and here."

This he also did.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"No, sir, just this..." She gave him a rare, unguarded smile. "And another thirty-six pages."

He grinned at her. "Maybe you should step inside."

She hugged the smart tablet to her, and began to say something, but it never got said, because the tip of a Katar dagger thrust through the tablet, having taken a path through Cover Girl's back.

As she fell to her knees, eyes large with the shock of dying, the figure of Zartan in camo-cap and jacket revealed the source of the blade.

Her name is Cover Girl... but she gets stabbed in the back. Get it? Get it??

A lot of the violence is amazingly sexualized, actually — there are several scenes between Duke and Baroness where they're so close they can feel each other's breath, as they grapple or wield guns at each other, and it's the nearest and hottest they've been since they used to make love. When the Baroness and Scarlett have their inevitable girl fight, Collins describes the two women as being "locked in a violent embrace." There's a flashback where the young Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes train together and vie for the approval of their teacher, the Hard Master.

Oh, and I should mention that Max Allan Collins is one of my fave writers, and he does a great job with an incredibly silly story. His Ms. Tree is one of my favorite comics of all time, and I love his work on Batman. Here, he occasionally manages to channel the great Mickey Spillane, his idol with whom he collaborated on the underrated Mike Danger series, with some very loopy prose and action-packed jaw-gritting.

It all explodes into a James Bond villain-esque climax where McCullen plans to wipe out three major cities and do something unspeakable to the U.S. president. (And it ends on a genuinely lunatic cliffhanger, which I won't spoil.) The nanotech threatens to devour everything, unless our heroes can hit the kill switches, or unless Ripcord can shoot down the nanotech warheads in mid-air. And as you've probably heard, James McCullen's face gets hideously scarred, and he winds up with a new mask made out of nanotech. A mask made out of nanotech! Sadly, it doesn't reshape itself into new forms or create emoticons or anything.

In the end, that's the thing that still gives me hope for G.I. Joe — with Christopher Eccleston playing McCullen/Destro and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing The Doctor/Cobra Commander, all of this over-the-top growling about using nanotech warheads to blow up the world may actually cure our recent villain ennui. Like so much else about this film, it really depends on whether flesh-and-blood actors can fully embody the plastic miens and jerky-limbed heroism of the toys of your youth. If not, you can always buy the newest line of toys and zoom them around your bed while you read Collins' musky prose.

The G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie novelization, by Max Allan Collins, is coming out, and one fan at General's Joes was lucky enough to snag an early copy (at Target no less). We rounded up the most important spoilers and reveals, which we can generally assume will be in the movie, as these books are usually a translation of the script itself.

First up everything is shiny and new. We live in an international world after all. No more dirty Vietnam War-esque Joes: these Joes are from around the world, which explains why Heavy Duty is British, Cover Girl is Czech, Breaker is Moroccan and the Pit is in Egypt. And since it's set in a hype modern "We Are The World" future, that means more room for gadgetry, says the fan reviewer:

It has a bunch of sci-fi gadgets in it like holograms, accelerator suits, jetpacks, invisibility suits, pulse rifles, nano-mites, brain downloading, robotic "spy fish", mind control, and lasers.

That's a lot of tech stuff, but more on the nano-mites later...

So what was good about GI Joe? Not surprisingly, the fan loved Destro, who is being played by Christopher Eccleston, so let's go ahead and assume that this part is in the bag. Destro and MARS are the big villains, and COBRA only shows up at the end, to make it seem more menacing and awesome. And instead of the Cobra Commander, we get a new character, Rex aka the Doctor, who is described in the novel as "Lord Byron as mad scientist." (???). He eventually becomes the Commander, and at the end of the book, the Commander sticks it to McCullen aka Destro, turning him into the villain we all know and love.

The reviewer goes on to describe General Hawk as "pretty awesome," which is how I would picture him, I guess. But just how awesome is he? Star Wars Prequels "awesome"? Because that's how nervous I am right now about this film.

Other good things? In the book (and probably in the script), the Joes poke fun at their accelerator suits calling them, "hi-tech football pads or Japanese robots," and this was probably written BEFORE they saw the CG horror that are these suits on screen. So the film-makers set out to make them look like hell? This kind of self-awareness is not a good thing.

The book is supposedly rife with a few sad puns and bad jokes. Like Marlon Wayans talking about "kung-fu grip." The Joes regularly shout "Yo Joe!" and in one scene, "Go Joe!" But this is an action movie after all, and those moments are actually important, so I don't see that as a negative. They insist that the shape shifting Zartan is to be taken seriously — and he actually takes the place of a big character in the end, thus setting up an even bigger role for him in the sequel. We're guessing it has something to do with the next big reveal... which is the death of a "code name" Joe during the big action sequence at The Pit. (Apparently it's someone who will only get one action figure.)

There are four big action sequences: a convoy attack at the start of the movie, an attack on The Pit, the Paris sequence with the nano-mites attacking the Eiffel Tower, and the final battle at the underwater MARS facility.)

Now for the really bad, according to the review. The Nano-mites, which you've seen eating up the Eiffel Tower in past trailers can do anything, "mind control, eating metal, shapchanging, Destro's mask, super soldiers, you name it…they can do it!" Which sounds like the world's laziest writing tool ever.

Also my beloved foot-soldier Neo-Vipers are all a bunch of mindless drones that can apparently DISSOLVE? No, that's just not okay. I can understand just making them robot-y nothings, but giving them the ability to dissolve? Yechh, no.

This really sounds like a jumble of bad with light helpings of good on the side. Let's hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Eccleston can pull it off, because it sounds like there is a lot going on.

GI Joe The Rise of Cobra will be in theaters August 7th.

Latino Review reported that over on Transformers producer Don Murphy's message boards, a commenter (named Endchimes) made a bold statement:

After a test screening wherein the film [G.I. Joe] tested the lowest score ever from an audience in the history of Paramount, the executive who pushed for the movie Brad Weston had Stephen Sommers, the super hack director of the film fired. Removed. Locked out of the editing room.

The anonymous source added that editor Stuart Baird was brought in to fix the film without Sommers' involvement.

According to our own inside sources, the rumor is false. In fact, Sommers was hard at work on GI Joe planning today. He has not been cut out of the editing room and he has still been involved in the film. Our sources also maintain the rumors of poor test screenings have been over-exaggerated and that test screenings have been very positive.

G.I. Joe Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went on the record with Latino Review to also put down the rumors as well. Addressing the editing room drama and on how it's been testing with audiences:

Nothing that doesn't happen on every other movie, which is that you constantly work and work and work and you make it better and better. We had a delay on visual effects so we waited a long time to finish the movie but that's the only thing. I don't really know why that would be interpreting it negatively but I guess it was....

Everybody was happy, the studio was happy, the filmmakers were happy, the audience was happy with the movie. We had three test screenings, three different times and tested it and each time it just got better and better. We started off in a good place and we ended up in even in a better place, which is what you hope on a film from testing it.

So there you have it. Sommers still on — doubly confirmed — and people are as opposed to those silly power suits as we've been. But let's not forget the film does have one Christopher Eccleston ace up its sleeve, so who knows? We'll have to wait until it's in theaters August 7th to truly judge these real American heroes.

Top picture from Modlight.

Avatar:

More dirt from E3. Here are some shots of the model of the "Heavy Loader" armor that was on-site. More at the link. [Collider]

Iron Man 2:

Director Jon Favreau appeared on Jimmy Fallon, and... he didn't reveal much. They're filming scenes set at Hammer Industries, the company run by rival industrialist Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). [IESB]

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra:

Here's a new TV spot, pretty similar to what we saw at the MTV Movie Awards the other day:

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

New concept art gives a much better look at this movie's main villain. Who looks more and more like Doctor Who's Sutekh, the more I see of him. [TFG2 via Seibertron]

Ooh, and here are some new TV spots, with a bit of new footage here and there. The first one is the one with all the Megan Fox:

Harry Potter:

Warner Bros. gave Snitchseeker.com an exclusive pic from the new film, showing Harry, Hermione and Ron in the boys' dormitory. Bigger version at link. [Snitchseeker via IESB]

Paul:

More details about Simon Pegg's alien road-trip movie. Sigourney Weaver's on board, and she may play an old crackpot whom Pegg and Frost meet, who claims to have witnessed the crash of Paul's ship and pulled him from the wreckage. The duo are on the run from government agent Lorenzo Zoil (Jason Bateman) and they accidentally kidnap a Christian girl (Kristen Wiig). [Slashfilm]

Planet 51:

Some new details about this animated film, which we've written about a lot, but not lately. The Rock plays Chuck Baker, who's the 37th sexiest person in America, but he wants to break into the top 10 by discovering a new planet. When he lands on Planet 51, he thinks it's an uninhabited rock (he can't scan it from orbit?) and does a "one small step" style Moon landing thing.

Then he realizes it's a 1950s-esque planet full of green humanoids. He runs and hides in the local observatory, where he meets Lem (Justin Long) who explains to him that he's the alien here. Lem helps Chuck avoid the military force who are hunting for him. The main difference between the aliens' 1950s USA and ours is that theirs is flying-saucer based, with saucer-shaped houses and cars. (They used saucers to visit us years ago.)

The film has lots of in-jokes, like the aliens' dogs resemble the xenomorphs in Alien. They have a pet that resembles the Mars rover. And there's an E.T. nod. Jessica Biel plays Lem's love interest, Neera. Gary Oldman plays General Growl, the military man hunting Lem. And John Cleese plays the wise Professor Kipple. [Sci Fi Wire]

Twilight:

Here are a few more New Moon pics, including shirtless Taylor Lautner. [Twilight Sweden via SpoilerTV-Movies]

Meanwhile, the movie series is casting three new characters for the third movie, Eclipse. Riley's a handsome, clean-cut college boy who becomes a vampire after he's victimized by Victoria, as part of her attempt to murder Bella Swan. The Clearwater twins, Seth and Leah, will be played by Native American or First Nation actors. A tall, gangly 19-year-old with a happy grin, Seth idolizes Jacob Black (Lautner). Leah is the only female member of the "wolf pack." She's tall and slender with beautiful skin and short black hair. She'd be lovely, except for her perpetual scowl, due to a broken heart. [On The Flix]

Heroes:

Tim Kring sent out a "Heroes All Access" newsletter to fans and revealed that "we're all very excited" about season four. (What do you mean, "We"?) But actually, his description of the themes and storylines of the next season does sound pretty intriguing:

One of the big issues we'll be exploring is how should a person with abilities live his or her life. Should they try to assimilate by hiding their abilities, or should they live more honestly, exposing their powers to the world?

Claire will be at the forefront of that issue, starting college in Washington, D.C., and trying to discover, as all college kids do, who she really is. But re-adjusting to normal life won't be easy, especially when Claire is caught in the crossfire of her parent's divorce and a mysterious suicide on campus.

Meanwhile, Peter and Nathan are trying to get their lives back on track. Peter is trying to be a hero in the purest sense - saving on life at a time. But that means cutting himself off from friends and family. It's only when Peter makes a romantic connection with a fascinating new "powerful" woman that he'll find out that life means staying connected to others. Nathan is discovering new things about himself everyday, mostly due to the fact that he's actually Sylar.

Matt will have to live with the guilt of what he did to Sylar; making his attempts to live a normal life with his wife and child virtually impossible.

Noah Bennet (HRG), with the help of Tracy Strauss, Angela Petrelli and all of our Heroes, is tasked with forming a new COMPANY. But that new organization won't be concerned with conspiracies and prisons anymore. It will be about people. Finding them. Connecting to them. And figuring out why so many of them have been seduced by another "organization" out there that treats people with abilities in a fascinating, dangerous and potentially deadly new way.

[Next On Heroes]

Meanwhile, when Claire goes to college, she'll meet a "quirky" student, played by Madeline Zima (Californication). Gretchen is an "edgy outsider" who becomes Claire's roommate, and appears in several episodes. [Hollywood Reporter, Thanks MissMercyStreet!]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

I'm going to have to go ahead and give them major props for having a character drive a motorcycle, in the rain, wearing sunglasses, that come off to reveal a horrible scar... whilst driving through a graveyard. I mean, it doesn't get any more melodramatic than that. See, he's sad because he's surrounded by dead people, and he's wet. I wish they would have just left the whole suit thing out from the get-go, so true moments of terrible movie-making, such as said graveyard scene, wouldn't be eclipsed by the general out-of-place feeling the suits give off.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be in theaters on August 7th.

I'm not against bad action movies in any way. Michael Bay and his boom-boom flicks have a place in my heart right next to Herkermer Homolka's accent. But this clip is just not selling me on the power suit. The shiny Master Chief meets Starship Troopers sportswear look is just not working for me.

Granted, this is just a clip, and my expectations for terrible movies that I love are very, very high. It can still be saved. I have complete faith that Sienna Miller's Baroness accent followed by some crazy pants monologing from both Destro (Christopher Eccleston) and Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) will make this a fun "popcorn" movie that deserves it's place next to my Time Cop DVD, but still.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be in theaters on August 7th.

The folks over at Topless Robot pointed us in the direction of this monstrosity. This, my friends, is the face of the live action Cobra Commander:

I know: he looks like a silver scuba instructor. Poor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who is playing this foe to the Joe crew) is going to have to work with chest tubes and what looks like some sort of green popsicle gun. My problem with it is it's too complicated, too silly. Even that fake ripped chest plate is disappointing. Here is the full toy:

GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra is released August 7th.

G.I. Joe:

Are you ready to pump up the volume? Here's the first look at the new movie's M.A.R.S. Troopers. (Apparently it stands for Motorized Attack Robo Squad in the toys, but here it stands for Military Armaments Research Syndicate.) Bigger version at the link. [Hisstank]

Harry Potter:

Here are a few new Half Blood Prince pics. [Movies Spoilers]

Push:

Dakota Fanning plays "Cassie Holmes, a snarky, teenage “watcher” who can glimpse images of the future," and it's the most grown-up, mature role she's ever played. [MTV]

Battlestar Galactica:

The first reviews of the midseason opener are online, but they basically contain no details other than "It's great! And there are a lot of twists!" [Chicago Tribune and Star-Ledger]

Meanwhile, here are some new promos, with the "You Will Know The Truth" tagline. (Dave Eggers should totally sue.)

Lost:

Josh Holloway says you'll see a new side of Sawyer this season — a more take-charge, leader-y side, and he also gets to be more heroic in the wake of his selfless plunge into the ocean last season.

Meanwhile, Michael Emerson says the island did travel in time (duh) and after Ben turned that wheel, he appeared in the desert two years later, as we saw in an earlier episode. And Emerson says he would "make myself nuts" if he tried to get a handle on all the moments in the past, present and future of his character. "I'm not even sure how many continents I have visited this season." And the reason why the Oceanic Six have to return to the island has to do with something Ben did, which "went really wrong." Also, Emerson thinks Ben may die, but he'll also survive to the end of the series. (He could both die and last until the show's end, thanks to all the time-flipping.) And here's a cute picture of him! [The ODI]

Are you ARG-crazy? Well, if you were, you'd have been playing around with the website for fictional Ajira Airlines, which eventually lets you see some stills (previously released) plus a picture of LAX departures, a flight plan to Guam, and the letters "N824," which may refer to Frank Lapidus' helicopter. [SpoilersLost]

Doctor Who:

Rumor patrol: Word has it a designer has done "extensive work" on seeing how CG versions of the Martian Ice Warriors would look — but it's not for any particular episode, necessarily, just so the show's producers can see what the Warriors would look like, for future reference. Or possibly, they're showing up soon. In related rumor-mongering, fans claim that Neil Gaiman denied that his episode for season five will feature the Ice Warriors. (In fact, Gaiman says there's nothing to deny, because there's nothing in the pipeline, and it's all pure speculation.)

Also, Mark Gatiss has an Ice Warrior story called "Cold" in the Doctor Who Storybook 2009 (and past storybooks have yielded stories that later became episodes, including "Blink.")

Oh, and there's also still talk of the production team having created animatronic Sea Devils, but there's also a rumor the Sea Devils have been written out of the 2009 specials, in favor of the Hath, those fishy guys whom the Doctor's daughter was fighting. And maybe Jenny will be back at Easter? Or not? [Doctor Who Forum]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

TV Guide talked to producer Josh Friedman, and he had a few hints. Sarah may or may not have been hallucinating when she saw a UFO, but her shooting of that guard and the fact that she got shot will "haunt the show." Meanwhile, the suicide attempt by Riley the cat-fancy girl will expose all sorts of lies and hidden relationships — including Jesse's relationships to Derek and Jesse. [Sarah Connor Society]

Knight Rider:

Your favorite show! Here's a new teaser:

[KRO]

And here's the description for episode 1x14, "I Love The Knight Life":

Mike (Justin Bruening) and KITT (voiced by Val Kilmer) are trying to track down a stolen serum that maximizes the recipient’s physicality before it gets into the wrong hands. With the help of the lab’s research assistant, Billy (Paul Campbell) learns some information about the serum that will help Mike when he takes on the now powerful thief. Meanwhile, Sarah (Deanna Russo) is overwhelmed with her new duties and quickly learns how much work it will take to reinstitute the Foundataion for Law and Government.

[SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

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.