Yo, Joe!

So after weeks of speculation, it has been officially announced that Stephen Sommers (director of The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and (ugh) Van Helsing) will be directing the G.I. Joe movie.

Not a fan of Van Helsing at all, as you can tell, but I enjoyed the two Mummy movies. And these lines from the Variety article give me some hope; for those who don't know, for the longest time, the rumor was that the studio and the producers wanted to fit in Action Man in the movie somehow, due to the fact that the U.S. Military isn't the most popular or marketable entity in the world right now (for obvious reasons):

Hasbro's Goldner said that the mythology of G.I Joe was fleshed out during the 1980s through 155 issues of Marvel Comics, as well as an animated TV series. There are about 30 core characters, good and evil, that can be exploited in films.

"Marrying Steve's vision with 25 years of this brand mythology feels like a great way to go forward," Goldner said.

and

"My experience with beloved properties is that characters, attitude and tone are even more important than plot," di Bonaventura said. "Paramount showed a great deal of confidence in Stephen's take, and our ability as producers to get this up and running for a February start. His passion for the characters and the world convinced the studio this was something they couldn't resist."

So now, in the initial movie, give me (at the very least) Hawk, Duke, Snake Eyes, Roadblock (that part is just screaming Michael Clark Duncan), Lady Jaye and Scarlett from the Joes and Cobra Commander, Destro, The Baroness, Storm Shadow, Tomax, Xamot and Zartan from Cobra, and the Nation will be quite happy.