While Channing Tatum will anchor the G.I. Joe sequel to its predecessor, there seems to be a soft reboot thing happening by nature of the mostly refreshed cast. There’s no love lost here- I’m not really sure if I was laughing at or with the first film when I saw it the one and only time I ever will. What’s great is that JOE2 or whatever seems to be accumulating the start of a much more interesting cast with the additions of both The Rock and The RZA.

So first up is The Rock, who has been rumored to be in talks for some time. Confirmation has finally come from the man himself, who confirmed the news with his own particular brand of enthusiasm…

I think Dwayne will make an excellent addition to the Joe cast, and he’ll be a big factor for me walking into the film with some genuine enthusiasm. His operations as a titanic force of justice in the most recent Fast film brought a lot to the film, and I bet they’re hoping for some of that action goodwill here too. Johnson will be playing Roadblock, who’s canonically a black guy, but the Rock tends to transcend race anyway.

Not willing to put those recently perfected martial arts skills to waste, the RZA has also joined on as the Blind Master, a JOE martial arts training expert. The role should provide a nice stinger to his turn as director/star in his Man With the Iron Fists kung-fu film that will be completed this year. Frankly, while RZA is such a distinctive dude with a rawness that works in something like the occasional American Gangster, I’m still not sold on him as a character actor. We’ll see how that’s looking when his film is out there, but I can’t imagine he’ll stick out too much in a film like this.

It’s also worth noting that up-and-comer D.J. Cotrona will be playing the shotgun-wielding Flint, but we know what names you’ll be looking for in the marquee come next August.

Before these two cast-members if you were to ask me what I thought about this sequel, my response would be that I don’t think about it at all. While it hasn’t rocketed to the top of my 2011 lists or anything, the production has definitely made a good move with these two. Now we’ll see who fills out the rest of the Joes, and how well a dance-movie director takes on a big action blockbuster.

Source | THR and JoBlo

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