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Originally posted by: Shin Densetsu @ Hisstank.com

Quote:

Moviehole had a chance to talk with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura producer of blockbuster movies this summer, including the upcoming G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra:

Drew: When it came time to work on GI Joe was it the Hasbro mythology or the cinematic potential that appealed?

Lorenzo: It's interesting because it depends on your age. It seems if you're 40 or 45 and older you think, 'Oh GI Joe, that's that American army solder thing'. If you're younger you understand it has nothing to do with that. And I'm older so I knew there'd been a comic book and an animated series but I wasn't aware it was a fantasy movie of good guys versus bad guys. They had no geo-political military or jingoistic agenda so it was an education I was happy about because if you want to make a big entertaining movie it's hard to do that trying to make political statements at the same time.

So it's a very age specific thing and whether it's fortunate or unfortunate for our movie it's people under 40 who go to the movies. But GI Joe's been around for a long time so there's a great awareness of the title and in a way it's sort of comforting for people.

Drew: Because the mythology wasn't as familiar as other properties like Batman or Superman did that present a marketing or a scripting challenge?

Lorenzo: Yes, but it's almost the same with every movie. I've worked on a few of the Batman films and you still have to make that version of that Batman story cool. You almost have the same drill with every kind of movie and the movies that win the day are those where the marketing seems to be able to communicate that when you execute them well.

Drew: What made Stephen Sommers the best director?

Lorenzo: Stephen has a great sense of fun and he likes to spend a lot of time with his characters. In this case, the comic book never really killed off any characters, so there was an incredible intertwining of the stories. Their back stories are staggering, so we had to have somebody who really wanted to juggle that demand but you don't want to get it bogged down by not being fun. Those two things really made him the right guy.

Drew: Did the strong mythology and such interrelated characters make it tricky?

Lorenzo: It is a bit tricky. Two things happen anytime you take on an established mythology with a strong fan base. One, they feel very strongly about a lot of characters, and no movie can support all the characters that the core fan would probably want it in. I mean, there are 32 Joes in the comic book, and you couldn't make a movie with 32 characters. So the first challenge is to whittle down the number of characters to where you could do an effective job at portraying them - in my experience that's somewhere between six and ten. Second, when you choose your characters and the relationships between them are so extensive, you have to really think about the evolution of these relationships through the movie and the plot has to then serve those.

So far audiences really like the fact that we spent a lot of time with all these characters and they've given us a good pat on the back for it.

Drew: You mentioned a sense of fun. Were you conscious that you wanted a little more of it than in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek?

Lorenzo: Each property has to be happy with what it is. I don't think you can say 'this one we're going to do this, this one we're going to do that'. Each decides for itself. The material has its own mind if you would In GI Joe you've got Ninjas, hot female and male characters, people with fiancés on the opposite sides of good and evil, guys that grew up as orphans together on opposite sides of good and evil. If you try to be serious about it you'd get bogged down. Instead you play it for fun and you're actually allowed to go deeper into the emotionality of it. There are certain movies where that's just the right thing to do, but it wouldn't have been right for GI Joe.

Read More: Lorenzo Di Bonaventura Sheds Light On The Making Of G.I. Joe Rise Of Cobra @ G.I. Joe - HissTank.com.