Neither of the two firings getting a rise out of film bloggers this week appears to be of any concern. According to Movieline, Andrew Sarris will still be contributing, as a freelancer, to the movies section of the New York Observer, and Stephen Sommers will still be contributing, as a director, to the shittiness of G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra. While the first of these supposed dismissals probably isn’t (unfortunately) of interest to most readers out there, I’m going to take a look at the progression of commentary related to the latter story. I’d actually prefer to ignore the rumor-turned-non-story the way that Kris Tapley at In Contention has chosen to, but despite this being one of those “*chirp* *chirp*” slow news days, I have to devote this post to some hot film story of the day.

So here goes:

• The rumor began with a posting to Don Murphy’s message boards, which claimed the following:
  

  after a test screening wherein the film tested the lowest score ever from an audience in the history of Paramount, the executive who pushed for the movie Brad Weston had Stephen Sommers, the super hack director of the film fired. Removed. Locked out of the editing room.

• George ‘El Guapo’ Roush at Latino Review broke the story out, but he ironically included the following commentary:
  

  What sucks is everyone posting how bad this film is when they’ve never seen it, which is typical internet bullshit when you’re able to safely hide behind the anonymity of your keyboard. You can certainly say a film looks bad, and that you hate the director, etc. etc., but to say the film actually is bad based off a trailer and some TV spots? C’mon guys. Wait until the film is out, you’ve seen it with your own two eyes, then state your opinion.

• Alex Billington at First Showing understandably continued with the trash posting anyway:
  

  I’m actually not surprised to hear that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra scored so poorly at a test screening. Everything I’ve seen has looked awful - I haven’t enjoyed a single second of any of the footage I’ve watched (remember this?). I fear that this is going to be a huge embarrassment for Paramount in the end, which is quite a shame, because they don’t deserve this.

• Rodrigo at The Playlist also kept the negative buzz going:
  

  Was zero-times Oscar nominated hack Stephen Sommers fired from the upcoming, what looks like a total mess, tentpole, “G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra“?…perhaps it’s just further reason why it looks godawful. Even the geek constituents seem to agree. Is this another huge, expensive bomb in the making? We must admit we giggle when lowest common denominator splashes tend to fail loudly.

• Bill Gibron at PopMatters was glad to hear of Sommers’ canning:
  

  So, someone finally wised up. Some suit, probably lacking the usual double de-caf latte that keeps his brain in perpetual denial for hours at a time, finally saw the light and fired Stephen Sommers…There are a lot of unpleasant descriptions associated with the man behind The Mummy - hack, vacant, superficial, untalented…So it’s about time someone told Sommers to ‘suck it’.

• Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects found the whole thing obvious:
  

  This wasn’t a surprise for anyone involved beforehand… executives from both Paramount and Hasbro knew they were hiring a hack director renowned for making lazy CGI-laden popcorn fluff (Van Helsing, The Mummy). So why the panic attack now… less than two months before the August release date?

• The Moviezzz Blog argued that all this negative buzz is unfun:
  

  Naturally, every critic who reads this story is already writing their reviews. They are prepared for it to be a bomb and are trying to think up witty ways to destroy the film.

  Where is the fun in that?

  Why do people want to hate films more than like them?

• Mike Sampson at JoBlo.com noted that this rumor, true or not, only makes things worse for the action-figure-based-film:
  

  It all doesn’t bode well for a movie that was already struggling to gain any kind of buzz or traction among young males, the very audience it needs
  to make any kind of impact.

• Sean at Film Junk agreed that even if debunked the rumor severely hurts:
  

  The unfortunate thing is that even if it’s not true, people will be only too eager to believe it — and this is not the kind of negative buzz the movie needs right now. Especially after the most recent trailer had finally started to change some people’s minds about this project.

• Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere apparently got a confirmation from another source:
  

  My source says Sommers “was given total freedom but he melted down and has made the biggest bomb in many a moon. Paramount production chief Brad Weston is looking to bail and work for Peter Chernin with Star Trek as his coda because G.I. Joe will decimate the Paramount team and lead to many, many scapegoats.”

• Mark Graham at Vulture believes at least one person will benefit from all this:
  

  Wow, sounds like Paramount has another Love Guru–type stinker on its hands. However, since we always do our darnedest to find the silver lining in things, we’ll leave you with this: we’re pretty sure that Uwe Boll will sleep tight tonight knowing he’s no longer the worst director on earth!

• John at The Movie Blog offered a solution to the debacle:
  

  Paramount should hire ME to come in an fix the movie. Here’s what I’d do. Scrap all the footage Summers has shot, and string together 90 minutes of the “knowing is half the battle” videos G.I. Joe used to do and just show that on the screen. You know the videos… like this one warning brain damaged kids not to hide in refrigerators.
  [click here for the video]

• Erik Davis at Cinematical thinks this will all blow over in a couple years:
  

  Of course Paramount will try to deny there’s anything going on here (which kinda reminds me of all the hoopla surrounding Lexi Alexander on Punisher: War Zone), but if it is indeed true, then it kinda looks like Cobra is going to fall before they get to rise.

  But give it two years for the bad taste to go away, and I’m sure someone will try to reboot the franchise.

• Kyle Buchanan at Movieline had the first exclusive denial of the rumor:
  

  Sommers is not off the picture…Yes, we’re hearing that there has been tension between Sommers and the studio, and the film is being recut to better response, but Sommers is still present and most of the bad blood has been resolved. The reason for all the negativity? Sommers’ supposedly controlling nature and delusions of Michael Bay grandeur. Paramount isn’t very high on the film but still expects it to track better than predicted.

• ‘El Guapo’ at Latino Review also provided us with the horse’s mouth denial:
  

  Lorenzo: It’s very unfair to Steve, it’s completely untrue he was never asked to leave or been fired or any of that. That’s ridiculous. The movie tested very well.

  I hear it tested as good as the first Transformers.

  Lorenzo: Well listen, we tested very well and I don’t compare the movies because they are different movies, but you know I think its really destructive for a director…It hurts a guy’s career when people go around talking about that he was fired or he didn’t do a good job and truth is he did a really good job. People are going to enjoy the movie and the test audiences enjoyed the movie.

  He did a very good job the movie tested well and it couldn’t be more false that the studio in anyway did anything negatively to Steve.

• Kofi Outlaw at Screen Rant is dubious of the debunking:
  

  So, according to Bonaventura all is well with Paramount, director Stephen Sommers and G.I. Joe. Of course, in these kinds of situations (and this being Hollywood and all), it’s hard to tell who is being real, who is doing spin-control and who might be just another internet rumor-starter looking to stir up some controversy. No way to say for sure at this point.

• Alex Billington at First Showing also wrote another post questioning the denial:
  

  I think Paramount really wants to salvage what little buzz the movie has (if any). And the only official source claims that it did test well and that it has improved. But we keep hearing others say that they’ve heard from “sources” that some of this story is true. So what’s accurate?

• Rob Bricken at Topless Robot is disappointed to hear the truth:
  

  Unfortunately, as much as the G.I. Joe movie looks to be a nightmare of feces and dog-rape and you would think reasonable people would’ve fire the hack responsible yesterday, it appears to only be a rumor…Just cross your fingers and hope someone in charge tells somebody to CG a goddamn blue mask over Crunchberry Commander.

• Devin Faraci at CHUD.com wonders if the rumor was a “hatchet job” on the director, whom he defends following the debunking:
  

  Regardless, the movie’s still two months out.  I reserve judgment until I see it, but I honestly don’t want it to fail.  I want a good G.I. Joe movie.  Yeah I understand that Sommers has a lot to live down after Van Helsing.  But people all too often seem to forget that this is the same guy who gave us Deep Rising and the first Mummy movie.  So he can pull it off.  Whether or not he actually does remains to be seen.

• Meredith Woerner at i09 is also not ready to toss this thing aside just yet:
  

  So there you have it. Sommers still on — doubly confirmed — and people are as opposed to those silly power suits as we’ve been. But let’s not forget the film does have one Christopher Eccleston ace up its sleeve, so who knows? We’ll have to wait until it’s in theaters August 7th to truly judge these real American heroes.