When one company owns multiple major franchises, it’s only a matter of time before a crossover situation occurs. Such is the case with the latest Transformers film, Rise of the Beasts, which ends with a reveal that’s not really that surprising when you think about it for two seconds or longer.
Spoilers for Rise of the Beasts are necessary to explain!
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At the end of the film, Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) is back in New York and looking for work. One of his job interviews is not quite the usual meeting with HR: Agent Burke (Michael Kelly) wants to work with Noah and “the big guys,” by which he means Noah’s new robot friends, of course. When he hands Noah a card, it has… the G.I. Joe logo.
Look, I haven’t even seen this movie and I immediately want to know why the military bros didn’t help the robots fight the planet-devouring Unicron. Were they just hanging out in their bunker, waiting to see what the Transformers could handle? Are they that indifferent to loss of human life?
Anyway. Apparently director Steven Caple Jr. pitched the idea—which is not the first Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover; that happened in the comics in 1987. To keep the secret close, the scene was shot last, and there were two versions, so test screening audiences saw Agent Burke (if that’s even his real name) hand Noah a card that read “Sector 7,” another covert organization in the Transformers universe. Entertainment Weekly says, “There was only one copy of the G.I. Joe business card, and Caple took that himself from set for safe keeping.”
Caple told Entertainment Weekly of the Rise of the Beasts sequel, “It is definitely gonna incorporate some Joes characters, but it won’t go into, maybe, the true origins of the Joes.” That, presumably, is a tale for a while different series.
