Director Jon Chu on the set of “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.” Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures/MGM/Skydance Productions.
With G.I. Joe: Retaliation in theatres now, action junkies across the country have the chance to get an early fix before summer blockbusters start rolling in.
Before release day, the Niner Times had a chance to get inside the head of director Jon Chu and find out what inspired the man behind “Step Up 2: The Streets” and “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” to switch over to action films.
For Chu, the chance to work on a completely different type of film than he had ever directed before felt like he had pulled off an incredible feat.
“Getting the job, I definitely felt like I tricked the adults in giving me this movie,” Chu said. “I mean, I did like the biggest con job to make them think that dance and action were exactly the same. So when they gave it to me, I had to catch up real quick.”
Chu was aided in part by having action legend Bruce Willis star along with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and heartthrob Channing Tatum.
For Chu though, a lot of the difficulties in making an action movie so full of explosions and other special effects meant much of the direction before filming meant trying to communicate images and ideas in his head long before they could come to fruition.
“Pre-production on this one was long, and detailed,” Chu explained. “And you’re not even making anything yet. You’re just drawing images, and you’re communicating with packets of Photoshop images to the different departments, so they all understand what’s in your head. So when they go off and create, they’re creating in the same vein that you’re creating.”
The goal for Chu was to make the characters of the famous franchise accessible to newcomers while still offering a throwback to the fans of the old cartoon series. However, he did not want it to be so familiar that it turned off older audiences. Rather than produce a cartoon converted to live action, Chu added in a tangible grit to make the audience sense that these characters could be real people.
“You want to feel the grittiness of the fights,” Chu said. ”You want to feel that they are not cartoon characters, that they are real human beings. This may be a crazy world, but they are real human beings that are really getting injured. People can die.”
After “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” was panned by critics, Chu had the daunting task of trying to reinvent the series while still connecting the storyline.
Chu admits that he did want to make changes, but explains,”I think that’s sort of in tradition of G.I. Joe is to reinvent itself every time it changes format, or changes a person to come in – for the toys, or the cartoons or the movie itself.”
For those unfamiliar with G.I. Joe, Chu believes it is more accessible once a few truths of the fiction are accepted. A lot of the combinations are a little odd, admittedly, but once the viewer extends their disbelief and enjoys the movie as a movie, he believes they will go along with it.
“So you may have to make a leap of faith that ninjas can exist with soldiers in this world, because if you don’t know anything about G.I. Joe, it’s a little weird,” Chu admits. “But that’s – I think we throw that at you early enough in the movie that you jump on board, and that you go with the ride.”
Love it or hate it, Chu is thrilled at the chance to bring his vision of G.I. Joe to life. Because he was able to approach it from a fresh perspective having never directed an action film, he feels that he was able to approach the direction in a more light-hearted and fun way.
“…G.I. Joe the brand needed that thing to come in and be all balls-out, and just throw it all against the wall and just say, ‘This is – we embrace this crazy, unique film. And people may hate it, or people may love it. But we are what we are.’ And I think because I didn’t have that past, I could just go for it. And it was a freeing experience, actually, through that process.”