The first trailer for Paramount/MGM’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the long-mooted sequel to 2009’s, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, has been released today and you can check it out here below.

While The Rise of Cobra didn’t bring in the beaucoup bucks the Transformers franchise has been reaping, that didn’t stop the studio from putting a sequel into production. Stephen Sommers, the director of Rise, was not offered the job of helming Retaliation. Instead the reigns were handed to Jon M. Chu, whose previous credits include…Step Up 2 the Streets, Step Up 3D, and the recent concert movie Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote the screenplay.

Returning from the original are Channing Tatum (the upcoming 21 Jump Street) as team leader Duke and Ray Park (X-Men) as mute ninja warrior Snake Eyes on the good side and Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) as Cobra spy Zartan and Byung-Hun Lee (I Saw the Devil) as Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes’ rival and Cobra’s top assassin. New to the cast are Dwayne Johnson (The Rundown) as Roadblock and Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) as Lady Jaye. The cast also features Joseph Mazzello (The Social Network), RZA (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai), Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone), Walton Goggins (Justified), and Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean) reprising his role from the first film as the U.S. President. Taking over for Dennis Quaid in the role of the Old Guy Who Still Kicks Ass is Bruce Willis as General Joe Colton, the original G.I. Joe.

The plot follows the G.I. Joe team when they’re framed as international criminals by the Cobra-controlled U.S. government and must go off the grid to clear their names and take the evil organization down. Sounds oddly like the plot of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but I’ll take the Rock and John McClane over Tom Cruise any day. Judging by the trailer the movie seems to eschew the tech-heavy comic book style of Rise of Cobra in favor of a grittier, old-school look. I liked the first Joe movie and Chu seems to have his act together in terms of shooting action sequences and delivering trailer-ready one-liners. Nice choice for the trailer music: a remix of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” I don’t see any signs of the Joes’ signature nemeses Cobra Commander and Destro though.

I do have an observation: Channing Tatum is in part of the first half of the trailer, but once Roadblock takes over Tatum vanishes. Is Duke taking a dirt nap?

G.I. Joe: Retaliation hits theaters on June 29, 2012.

Trailer

[Source via io9]