Director’s Statement
This is NOT the GI Joe movie you’ve all been dying to see.
This is NOT the GI Joe movie you’re dying to unsee.
This is the GI Joe movie I saw in my head more than 25 years ago. I watched the cartoons, read the comics, and collected the toys when I was a kid. Eventually I moved on from GI Joe but from that franchise came my love for war movies – Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Band of Brothers – and my deep respect for the armed services and the men and women who serve.
Through working on this film – a process that took a year and a half – I realized the significance that GI Joe played in my childhood. Batman works alone, X-men was about strength in diversity, Transformers was pure awesome robots. But GI Joe was about a team of heroes working together, taking care of one another, never giving up, and staying until the fight was won. That’s what I saw in my head, kept in my heart, and what I’ve tried to put into this film. As adults we’ve lost some of our innocence and, tragically, some of our idealism. We know heroes don’t dodge bullets by doing cartwheels. Sometimes they get hurt, sometimes they don’t come home. But under layers of dirt, grime, and blood, the hero is still there and he still sacrifices. And it’s under those same layers of dirt and blood, that the spirit of GI Joe will always live.
The other thing I wanted to capture is that feeling from when I was 8 years old lying the floor with my action figures. I’d line up my GI Joe figures next to my Star Wars figures next to my He-Man figures and next to my Autobot Transformers. It didn’t matter that the toys were of a different scale, possessed inexplicable powers, came from different brands, or lived in different universes. The ONLY things that mattered was that Good was about to defeat Evil, and that it was going to be SOOOO AWESOMEEEE.
So in a way, this is not the GI Joe movie I saw in my head 25 years ago. The film started that way, grew up like I did, got dirty like the world around us, but finds itself once again like the inner kid we all have within us.
Why did I make this film?
I thought Rise of Cobra was great for cinematically introducing the franchise to a new generation of kids. Seeing my 9 year old neighbor talk enthusiastically about Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow is a great thing to see. But for myself – and for what I’ve come to realize is a legion of older fans who grew up with the characters – I wanted to see a GI Joe tailored to me. To me, the show’s always been about what it takes to be a hero, and how a team of heroes “never give up and stay ’til the fight’s won”. As a 36 year old adult with kids who watched the twin towers come down right before my eyes (I was on the Jersey City side of the water that day), I know heroes don’t defy death by doing cartwheels through incoming fire (the 80 cartoons did that!). I know that heroes sacrifice, that they don’t always come home, but that they will always fight for freedom where ever there’s trouble. So in my Black Hawk Down styled GI Joe Fan Film, the hero is there, under a layers of dirt and blood.
I filmed Operation: Red Retrieval with a Canon 7D and two lenses over the span of 6 non-consecutive days. Out of pocket, I spent roughly $2000 on the whole thing, most of that went to creating costumes, paying for train fare, and buying food for my actors. I assembled most of the costumes myself, but also networked with GI Joe cosplayers for some of the characters. Via the internet, I also networked and recruited stunt people from M Night Shamalan’s Last Airbender movie, the fight choreographer from Machine Girl, and other filmmaking enthusiasts from NYU FIlm school and elsewhere in the NY/NJ area.
Editing and digital effects were all done by me in Final Cut and Adobe After Effects.