Updated! Scroll down for the Destro news.
Now this is more like it. Stephen Sommers isn’t casting young across the board for G.I. Joe. He’s signed Dennis Quaid to play General Hawk, the real leader of the Joes. Once the team’s recruiter and eventually their commanding officer, having Hawk on board makes sense out of Channing Tatum’s Duke.
I’ve thought for years that Quaid was right on the cusp of becoming a fully grizzled old tough guy. Sommers isn’t the director to make that happen, but I believe Quaid can at least light up whatever scenes he’s got. I’m now looking forward to his stuff as much as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s. Hopefully Quaid won’t be wasted on trite father figure interactions with Tatum.
In a much more predictable move, Arnold Vosloo has also joined the pic as the renaissance man Zartan. He’s not renaissance in the same way Viggo Mortensen is, but he looks great in a vest. Furthermore, Zartan’s command of language, appearance and ventriloquism makes him a formidable opponent and highly capable fill-in puppeteer. They love him at the Muppet workshops in Florida, since he’s hungry to work when not off assassinating political figures.
And pulling from my immense trove of G.I. Joe arcana, I dimly recall a plot point in one issue of the comic where Zartan snuck into the Joes’ hideout disguised as Ripcord. Will we witness a Vosloo to Wayans CGI meld in the flick?
UPDATE: Now IESB is reporting that they’ve got primary bad guy Destro pegged as well. It’s British theater actor David Murray, an actor familiar to most from…well, nothing. Not a big deal, that; the character should spend most (make that ‘all’) of the movie in a metal mask, so it’s easy to see why Sommers might not go with a known personality.