Director Jon Chu Discusses 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' Cast & Changes

Jon Chu believes he has made a G.I. Joe movie for people who don't know anything about G.I. Joe and that includes getting Bruce Willis, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the cast and making a sequel that G.I. Joe fans are going to enjoy. The Hollywood Reporter was able to throw some questions at the director and below are some of the highlights of the interview. You can check out the whole interview by clicking here.

THR: What was the process of getting Bruce Willis to appear in G.I. Joe: Retaliation?

Chu: He was always our dream guy to play Joe Colton, the original Joe, [but] I didn’t necessarily know if he would ever do something like this. It’s such a very specific brand -- the character Joe Colton exists, but not really. But the question I keep getting from people like my mom is, “Well, who plays Joe?” And there is no Joe, but we had this character Joe Colton that we built into the movie that would help bring it back to the basics. That was a big part of the movie -- these guys don’t have laser guns; they are relearning how to be a soldier on the ground, how to be a leader, how to make moral decisions, all those things, reset it all. And Bruce is the guy [to anchor that].

THR: It was a great thing to get Dwayne involved as well.

Chu: That is what took us the longest. We were already doing design work -- the costumes, the set work. Everything was like closing in, and we did not have a cast yet, but we all knew that it was important to find the right guy that would set everything up. And when you look out in the landscape, who is that masculine action hero that isn’t just a pretty boy? Dwayne is that, and he’s charming, and he’s family-friendly. So when we met and sat down with him, we connected really quickly.

THR: What prompted the decision to reboot the cast and everything? Was it really unavailability, or was that a choice you and/or the studio came to?

Chu: Part me, part not me. And by the time I came in, they had a script already -- but not fully there, and we added a lot of things. Like Joe Colton wasn’t in the movie. We added that and Roadblock and things like that that weren’t just in there yet, but we knew we wanted to create a different world. You can’t discount the first movie at all -- it was huge, and people loved it -- but for me what I love about Joe is that everybody has interpreted theirs different ways.