As if 2011 wasn't already bad enough, now comes news that director Stephen Sommers will not be returning to direct the first sequel in the G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra franchise. But while his first film did gangbusters at the box-office and was widely regarded as "not as bad as it could have been," don't despair just yet. In fact, this news opens the door for the perfect pinch-hit director to take over and work his magic.
Yes, of course I'm talking about Sommers' last franchise-replacement, The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor director Rob Cohen.
Look, the fact that this franchise even exists is pretty dumb, so when choosing a director for the sequel, it's important to bring in someone who will crank the stupidity up to 11. And Cohen is our man. I'll admit I wasn't so interested in the guy during his successful days of directing male-adolescent wet dreams like XXX and The Fast and the Furious. But in his recent work, Cohen has become so audacious with his straight-faced stupidity that I fully endorse him to take on any and all worthless franchises that Hollywood has lying around.
Take his flop Stealth, in which a plane with a mind of its own goes on a killing spree and (Spoiler!) Josh Lucas more or less starts a global war with Korea in order to rescue Jessica Biel. The first hint of the plane's twisted mind comes when some colonel reports that the plane has been downloading music off the internet. When asked how much music the plane has downloaded, the colonel replies, "All of it." Evil! Then, despite the fact that crazy plane has all of the music on the internet, it still only blasts Incubus as it levels skyscrapers with machine guns.
Now, let's take a look at what happened the last time Cohen took over a franchise that Sommers started. In The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer, Cohen injected the dying franchise with the exact shot of life it needed: Field-goal kicking Yeti-bros. Take a look at the clip and then imagine what Cohen would come up with for a G.I. Joe sequel.