See actor Željko Ivanek appear at the end of “Rise of the Beasts” like what seems as a middle manager for a random office job before revealing himself as a member of GI Joe wasn’t exactly as changeable as Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury appearing in the “Iron Man” post-credits scene… but for fans who only dreamed of seeing this crossover come to fruition, well, maybe it did. For those wondering who to take credit for succeeding after so many previous failed attempts, look no further than director Steven Caple, Jr. In the Geek Culture interview, di Bonaventura explains:
GOOD, [director Steven Caple, Jr.] very early on, I talked about “GI Joe” and my reaction was, “Look, we’ve been thinking about it a lot. I am very open. What do you think, how do you think it works? “, and he wasn’t sure at the time. So what happened was we kept coming back to ‘GI Joe’ and we were like, ‘Why? Why would they know?
He refers to the fact that at this point in canon, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), Bumblebee, and the rest of the alien Transformers are meant to be big secrets, known only to a handful of individuals in 2018’s “Bumblebee” and “Rise of the Beasts” who have been made aware of their presence on Earth so far. So how did the filmmakers make it work with the introduction of the GI Joe? It’s actually fairly easy.