Transformers and G.I. Joe Don’t Need a Crossover

At the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) has a meeting with Agent Burke (Michael Kelly) who reveals that this supposed job interview has a greater purpose. It turns out Burke works for a secret agency that will now help take care of the Diaz family and is very interested in what transpired with the Transformers down in Peru. As the scene wraps up, Burke hands Diaz a business card and reveals that he’s a member of G.I. Joe.

With that reveal, two Hasbro/Paramount franchises finally became one in their live-action incarnations. Since then, a screenwriter was hired for this potential crossover blockbuster while Chris Hemsworth was once rumored to headline the feature. But even though Paramount and Hasbro might be high on this potential endeavor, the world doesn’t need a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover film.

Transformers Movies Don’t Need More Humans

Across seven live-action Transformers movies and shifting directors, one criticism has endured above all: they keep centering the human characters above the robots. Despite the Autobots and Decepticons technically being the titular characters of this franchise, the focus is always on folks like Noah Diaz, plucky high school students, or Texan inventors. The humans get center-stage across the Transformers saga while the robots play second-fiddle to their derivative drama. A big crossover with G.I. Joe would just exacerbate this problem by integrating more human characters than ever into this saga.

Transformers One’s tremendous creative success displayed vividly that these robots could anchor a full-length motion picture. Who needs flatly written human characters when you can have Optimus Prime and Megatron? A big G.I. Joe crossover would be a massive step backward for the Transformers on the big screen after Transformers One. Plus, for G.I. Joe fans, it’s doubtful characters like Duke or Snake Eyes would get much to do in a script that has to juggle so many characters.

While Transformers and G.I. Joe are both owned by Hasbro and famous for launching beloved ’80s cartoons, crossing them over just wouldn’t yield much entertainment for either fan base. There’s a reason crossovers between these two universes have been limited in other media to just a handful of limited-run comic storylines. There’s not even a precedent for this in the world of television cartoons. Juggling these two sagas only has a chance in the long-form realm of comics, where characters have time to breathe; in a fast-paced feature film, this crossover would just collapse in on itself.

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The Time Has Passed For G.I. Joe & Transformers

From a cynical marketing perspective, this crossover also doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps in 2011, when the Transformers were riding high at the box office and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra launched to respectable numbers, this crossover seemed inevitable. Over a decade later, the demand just isn’t there anymore. Rise of the Beasts and Transformers One both came up short at the worldwide box office. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, meanwhile, flat-out collapsed at the box office in 2021. It’s doubtful that combining these two sagas for one theatrical movie adventure would inspire much passionate fervor, especially since this crossover would almost certainly have to introduce an entirely new version of the G.I. Joe mythos. This mash-up would almost certainly come off as a random, desperate cash grab rather than a natural blending of beloved worlds. If there isn’t much demand to see just the Transformers on the big screen anymore, it’s doubtful that throwing in the Joes is going to make much of a difference.

Perhaps down the line, some filmmaker will come up with a can’t-miss idea for how Optimus Prime and Duke could meet on the big screen (check out the current Image Comics run for a good example), and everyone who doubted this crossover will be stuffing crow down their throats. For now, though, the prospect of a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover just sounds like a poor idea, cinematically. It especially sounds dismal considering that it would just accentuate recurring human-based problems that keep plaguing the solo Transformers movies. There are ways to improve movies about those robots in disguise. Having them meet up with Snake Eyes is not one of them.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now streaming on Prime Video and Paramount+.