G.I. Joe 3 Had Plans To Introduce Transformers Says Former Director

Thanks to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other shared franchises, movies are becoming more interconnected than before. In the future, franchises like G.I. Joe and other Hasbro titles may find themselves in a shared cinematic universe - and it seems like that possibility almost came to pass recently. While IDW may be bringing Transformers and G.I. Joe together through comics, the director last attached to G.I. Joe 3 is now saying he wanted the blockbuster to crossover with Transformers.

Speaking to Collider, D.J. Caruso chatted about his recent work on xXx: The Return of Xander Cage and how the upcoming film forced him to move on from G.I. Joe 3. During the interview, the director shared details about what his vision for the threequel involved, and it seems like Caruso felt like something was missing from the franchise.

“Before I started this movie I had a couple meetings with Dwayne and the studio about what could happen with G.I. Joe. The franchise has been fairly successful, but there’s something about it that’s just not fully, fully clicking,” Caruso said.


When asked whether the Transformers were the missing link, Caruso said yes.

“Well yeah but they’re not ready to do [G.I. Joe meets Transformers] yet,” he explained.

“That’s exactly what they should do but they’re not ready to do that because in fact the script that I was developing, the two worlds sort of collided at the end and when they read it they were like, ‘We’re not ready to do this yet.’… They will eventually collide those two worlds and it’s probably when Mr. Bay decides he’s done with Transformers.”

Of course, Michael Bay has been attached to the Transformers film franchise since it began. The director will bow out from the series with Transformers: The Last Knight.

Transformers: The Last Knight stars Mark Wahlberg (Planet of the Apes) as Cade Yeager, Isabela Moner (100 Things To Do Before High School) as Izabella, Josh Duhamel (Life as We Know It) as Lieutenant Colonel William Lennox, John Turturro (The Big Lebowski) as Seymour Simmons, and Tyrese Gibson (Furious 7) as Robert Epps, as well as Jerrod Carmichael (Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising), Anthony Hopkins (Thor: The Dark World). The voice cast includes Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane) as Hound. Megan Peters

 

Sounds like we dodged a bullet.

 

And I hope it never happens. At least not in the live action movies. Now if it was a new cartoon in its own universe, than I'd be more open to it.

 

It's going to happen if the TF films remain successful. They're throwing everything into these films and they're fairly heavy in the US Armed Forces usage given how much screen time Bay has given them in the past few films.

Such is the price of success.

 

A crossover sometime in the future would be fine. But they need to get the GI Joe franchise back up and running again FIRST -- not try to use a crossover with Transformers to jumpstart the moribund Joe franchise. Because that won't work.

 

I still think a live action crossover like this will not end well. A marvel cinematic univers is still just marvel as in marvel characters. It's not crossing over with anything. You don't see Disney ding Marve/Starwars lol. I just think things like Transformers and GI Joe should stay their own things in the movies.

 

They've already done Marvel/Transformers in the IDW era, however.

 

And it was the best TF material IDW has produced, imo.

 

Honestly, that goes against the entirety of what G.I. Joe Retaliation was setting up.

Retaliation was basically setting up what seemed like a small covert-ops group basically going after Cobra Commander. This would no doubt wind-up with them facing off against Cobra Commander and Roadblock finally ending things with the gun he was given by Colton to avenge Duke.

Transformers would have been a massive insult to that storyline and to the franchise as a whole. If you want to do Transformers in G.I.Joe then do a reboot.

 

You know I can't help but wonder something, how would Michael Bay handle GI Joe if given the opportunity. While he has been getting better concerning Transformers, since GI Joe is a military force it sounds like that would fit better since he does love the army.

Of course this doesn't mean I want to see the two franchises crossover and from what I got from the interview, it seemed neither did Michael Bay. I feel like the inclusion of GI Joe would make the film too bloated and hard to balance concerning characters, leading to one overshadowing the other.

Though the pitched idea of a reboot set in WW2 sounds fine. This is because while the film would plan to have events that tie into Transformers, we wouldn't have to worry about to many characters. Putting it in that setting makes it impossible for Optimus and many other Transformers characters to appear to avoid contradicting the storyline. So GI Joe would be able to put more focus on developing their characters and still create a storyline that is tied into the Transformers franchise.

 

Well that would've been a disaster. You can't just randomly say "Oh yea, you know those first two GI Joe movies? You know all the stuff that happened? London getting nuked, etc? Well that actually happened at the same time the Transformers came to Earth." lol

 

Some crossovers should just stay in comics and cartoons, imo.

 

GI Joe needs a reboot anyway. This time have GI Joe and COBRA in it.

 

I totally agree.

 

Well he is the director that is responsible for how the Jem movie ended up like so I find it believable that the idea was a bad one. My brother still hates GI Joe Retaliation to this day because he said it was beyond stupid that they decided to kill off Duke only in the second film when Duke is pretty much the face of GI Joe. Recently his hatred of the film only grew when he discovered that his other favorite Joe, Shipwreck, was in the film but only for about five seconds with only one line before getting killed off in the attack. So it doesn't surprise me at all that his plan for a crossover between the two films would had been a mess. Actually correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I once heard that he also wanted to include Jem in the crossover as well. Even that screams bad idea, Jem doesn't fit in with either Transformers or GI Joe simply because the themes in her franchise don't properly align with those of GI Joe and Transformers.

 

Only for the cartoon. He's completely unimportant otherwise. And a terrible, boring character. Hawk > Duke.

It was a much worse decision for them not to bring back (and fix) Destro and the Baroness. They are much more important to the franchise than Duke is. Not that it would have been possible to fix Baroness after what they did with her and her backstory in the first movie.

 

Well my brother grew up with Sigma 6 and the original GI Joe cartoon so that's kind of the reason why he sees Duke as the face of GI Joe. But I get what you're saying since GI Joe is about multiple characters. Yeah I admit I found it stupid how they built up Destro only to toss him to the side in the sequel, I get the feeling that the director and writers and no sense of continuity. Heck it makes the Transformers films' continuity problems seem small in comparison. Baroness in the first film even confused me, while I was never a huge fan of GI Joe, even I knew that the Baroness was portrayed right.

I always have a rule when it comes to different incarnation of characters, it's alright to change up things but only as long as the core element of the character remains. It's why I'm okay with Transformers Animated and even the Transformers film characters despite the huge differences.

 

It's kind of funny that people say it would be a disaster when we've already had GI Joe vs Transformers, it's just that they were called NEST instead of GI Joe. When you look at the NEST characters they were GI Joe characters in everything but name. Lennox ends up as a better Duke than what the GI Joe movies gave us.

 

The Rock's ego is not ready for someone bigger stealing his screen time