Joseph Gordon-Levitt Won’t Be Returning For The G.I. Joe Sequel

 

Hey, they’re letting me talk about G.I. Joe again! The first film fell flat with critics, but it won over its share of fans and eventually went on to earn a worldwide box office total of more than $300 million. Even the movie’s defenders admit that’s it’s not a perfect movie, simply fun. One of its more imperfect features is the treatment of Cobra Commander. For all of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s considerable talents, he still couldn’t make the lousy writing on that character work, not on any level.

That’s probably a big part of the reason why Gordon-Levitt won’t be back. He said so himself in a recent interview with Collider. You can go check out the video at the source, but his response is brief and to the point: “No.”

The previous film’s ensemble is reportedly being scaled back for the sequel, with only Channing Tatum (Duke), Ray Park (Snake-Eyes) and Byung-hun Lee (Storm Shadow) confirmed to be returning. Unless the movie, which is said to bear the subtitle Cobra Strikes, turns out to be some kind of smaller-scale spinoff, it seems reasonable to think that some key roles may be re-cast. It’ll be great to see some additional characters introduced, but it’s hard to imagine Cobra without Destro or Cobra Commander. There’s also a fairly huge dangling plot thread left over from the first movie involving Zartan.

Beyond them, however, bring on the new blood! Starting with Tomax and Xamot …