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G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra Looks Explosive

GI Joe [1]Vancouver – I saw the movie trailer for G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra [1] for the first time today, and I have to say that it looks very impressive. This is a movie that we will be sure to catch on the big screen, because all of those visual and CG effects look incredible. I went and checked to see who was behind all of those great effects, and I wasn’t surprised to see a few Vancouver companies listed – with a few from that other movie place further south along the coast and some on the other side of the Atlantic.

It would appear that CIS Vancouver [2], Stan Winston Studio [3] both contributed to those disintegrating buildings, massive traffic problems, huge explosions and more that we will get to experience this August when the film is released. Two other studios with Vancouver locations are also listed in the credits, but according to MPC’s site [4], it was the London studio which worked on Rise of Cobra. The Frantic Films [5] web site does not list the movie at all, although they are heavily listed in the show’s info page on IMDB [6], so at the time of this writing I am unaware of which Frantic Films studio produced the assets.

Not being one who actually played with G.I. Joe toys or watched the cartoons when younger, I can’t vouch for how close they stick to the storyline, but Scott says that they don’t appear to have changed too much with the characters other than Duke now being a brunette and wandering around without a shirt. Naturally we can’t say anything about the actual storyline, as we have yet to see the movie.

I am hoping that in the near future we will be able to attend an ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver [7] session which will feature the local companies who worked on this film, because I certainly want to hear about their processes, trials and successes – of course that holds true for many of the great films which have been digitally enhanced by our Vancouver production houses – it is truly amazing to look through all of their filmographies and see just how many of those big screen (and small screen) “wow” (not World of Warcraft) moments were created in our fine digital media community.