Hey, they're letting me talk about G.I. Joe again! The first film fell flat with critics, but it won over its share of fans and eventually went on to earn a worldwide box office total of more than $300 million. Even the movie's defenders admit that's it's not a perfect movie, simply fun. One of its more imperfect features is the treatment of Cobra Commander. For all of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's considerable talents, he still couldn't make the lousy writing on that character work, not on any level.

That's probably a big part of the reason why Gordon-Levitt won't be back. He said so himself in a recent interview with Collider. You can go check out the video at the source, but his response is brief and to the point: "No."

The previous film's ensemble is reportedly being scaled back for the sequel, with only Channing Tatum (Duke), Ray Park (Snake-Eyes) and Byung-hun Lee (Storm Shadow) confirmed to be returning. Unless the movie, which is said to bear the subtitle Cobra Strikes, turns out to be some kind of smaller-scale spinoff, it seems reasonable to think that some key roles may be re-cast. It'll be great to see some additional characters introduced, but it's hard to imagine Cobra without Destro or Cobra Commander. There's also a fairly huge dangling plot thread left over from the first movie involving Zartan.

Beyond them, however, bring on the new blood! Starting with Tomax and Xamot ...