This new recasting info and new director is great news, it means ARAH!
First off you have no need to cast big name actors to play Cobra Commander or Destro now that their origin is told and their faces will be hidden from view.
Replace Destro with a character actor with a strong voice and Cobra Commander with a character actor that has a pitchier voice.
Hell they could be stunt doubles with their voices done by professionals like Frank Welker and Mark Hamill.
And Zartan now looks like the president instead of the guy from the Mummy.
Start the movie a few years after the end of ROC. Have a prologue tell us that the refusal of the Joes to follow UN orders as well as the mayhem caused on the streets of Paris has resulted in the UN disbanding GI JOE.
The Joes are scattered, most returning to their original duties.
Duke is dismissed from his duties and leaves the military all together.
Other than that we know very little of what happened after the events of ROC, except that General Hawk and Ripcord were assassinated by Firefly and Major Bludd (causing Duke to leave the army in the first place).
Baroness has been put away in a secure off the books black hole of a prison for her role in helping Cobra Commander escape, as well as for her unstable physical and mental nature.
Snake Eyes goes to Japan to set things in order now that his enemy is finally dead, only to find his enemy still alive.
Falcon is introduced as a hotshot playboy who also happens to be an officer in the army. His lack of discipline and devil may care attitude cause him to not advance in rank as quickly as his abilities and pedigree would suggest.
Yes, i said pedigree, because Falcon is the son of the deceased General Hawk.
His fathers death causes a change in him, he becomes obsessed with becoming the officer his father wishes him to be, and he is driven by the single minded idea that his fathers death was the result of a conspiracy within the US government... one that goes all the way up to the oval office.
Falcon now a Lieutenant finds Duke and shows him the diary of General Hawk. The general was suspicious of the president due to the series of decisions handed down in the wake of ROC. Decisions which facilitated the events that lead to Cobras escape and the death of Hawk.
Falcon asks Duke to lead a small team he has put together, that General Hawk trusted Duke, and that he himself did not have the combat experience to lead such a team into combat.
The team is Flint, Lady Jaye, Roadblock, Wild Bill, and Shipwreck.
Duke has been dismissed as an officer, so his only way back into the military is to enlist. Because of his experience he is made a First Sergeant. Falcon has ties in the pentagon that could get Duke reinstated as a Captain, but Duke refuses.
Scarlett is unavailable after the CIA put her in deep cover within the Russian mob.
Snake Eyes cannot be located but eventually finds his own way back and joins the team and the action.
The end of the movie has General Hawk avenged, the news that he is not actually dead but in a paraplegic coma. The president/Zartan exposed, the schemes of Destro/Commander thwarted, and General Flagg reinstating the GI JOE team as an all US special ops division that recruits the best of the best from within the American military.
Call it... GI JOE 2: A Real American Hero.
The third movie could start with a montage/dream sequence of the still comatose General Hawk remembering the first time he was tasked with creating a special ops team, the genesis of the first GI JOE.
That team was Hawk, Stalker, Gung Ho and Leatherneck... all but Hawk killed by his lifelong nemesis Major Bludd.
This dream helps General Hawk recover from his coma, but he is now confined to a wheelchair.
GI:JOE Images - http://dailysportspages.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5523