Super Bowl Spots for The Dictator and G.I. Joe: Retaliation; Channing Tatum Discusses Duke
Posted 02.02.12 by Ryan
Some people watch the Super Bowl for the football, while others watch it for the commercials. Companies spend millions of dollars on these ads, so Disney has released a twelve second teaser for The Avengers and a 9-second preview for John Carter. Yet, for reasons we don't understand, Paramount has decided to release the full-length TV spots for their upcoming sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation and the comedy The Dictator.
Starring Sacha Baron Cohen, The Dictator will "tell the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed," according to the studio. Cohen plays General Aladeen, the ruler of the Republic of Wadiya, and the Super Bowl ad is mostly comprised of the character's arrogant behavior, but, outside of an introduction by Cohen, the footage is taken from the movie's first trailer.
The ad for G.I. Joe: Retaliation uses some footage from the sequel's first trailer, but also adds some new footage as well, showing Dwayne Johnson in bad-ass mode as Roadblock, and Bruce Willis, who plays General Joe Colton, the original G.I. Joe.
Conspicuously absent from the ad is Channing Tatum, who returns in Retaliation as Duke, the character he played in 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Tatum was also only briefly in the first trailer, arriving in the beginning only to be seemingly killed off. In an interview with MTV, Tatum would not admit to Duke's fate, revealing that he "hadn't seen the final cut" and wasn't sure how much Duke would appear in the movie. Tatum would reveal that he thought the sequel would be superior to the original.
I think that the movie is going to be better than the first one. I think that [Retaliation director] Jon Chu has a younger, hipper sensibility. [Rise of Cobra director] Stephen Sommers is great, I really enjoyed working with him, but I think this movie is going to be a little hipper. A little bit more edgy.
Retaliation was written by Zombieland screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and costars D.J. Cotrona as Flint; Adrianne Palicki as Lady Jaye; Ray Park as Snake Eyes; Lee Byung-hun as Storm Shadow, Ray Stevenson as the mercenary Firefly; and Elodie Yung (District 13: Ultimatum)as Jinx. Retaliation opens June 29th.
The Dictator was written by Cohen and former Seinfeld writers Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel and was directed by Larry Charles (Borat, Brüno). John C. Reilly, Anna Faris, Megan Fox and Ben Kingsley co-star. The Dictator opens May 11th.