THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOLIERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
The G.I. Joe franchise has been a household name in Hasbro for making popular comic books, animated shows and successful sales in toy lines. Since their first animated film was in 1986, fans wondered if it were to have a live action adaptation like Transformers, a fellow Hasbro product. The wait ended when it came to theaters in 2009, around the time of the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I look back and ask myself if this film was worth making. And then I reply that it really wasn’t.
PLOT
The Rise of Cobra follows a dystopian future where advanced nanotechnology are designed for destruction. James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) of MARS wants to sell four nanomite warheads to NATO, resulting in a military escort led by Conrad ‘Duke’ Hauser and Wallace ‘Ripcord’ Weems. They get ambushed by Baroness, a member of the crime syndicate Cobra. When Duke encounters her, he recognizes her as his ex fiancé Ana Lewis. She attempts to steal the warheads but is stopped by soldiers of the international Secret Ops team of GI Joe. When she flees, Duke and Ripcord meet the team: intelligence expert Shana ‘Scarlet’ O’Hara, ordinance expert & field commander Hershel ‘Heavy Duty’ Dalton (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), communications specialist & hacker Abel ‘Breaker’ Shaz (Saïd Taghmaoui), voiceless ninja Snake Eyes and their superior General Clayton ‘Hawk’ Abernathy. They take the two and the warheads to a secret HQ in Egypt named ‘The Pit’. Although Hawk takes command of delivery, Duke convinces him to recruit himself and Rip because of his past relationship of Baroness. McCullen truly wants to use his technology to build an unstoppable army. This is being done with the help of a deformed doctor. With the warheads, they’ll be used to cause worldwide panic and begin a new world order. With his own tracking device, he summons Baroness to retrieve the warheads from The Pit with help from disguise expert Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) and ninja Storm Shadow, rival to Snake Eyes. When they attack the base and wounding Hawk, their second attempt of theft is deemed a success. They take them to Baroness’ husband Baron Daniel DeCobray and make him weaponize the warheads at his MARS base. Storm Shadow kills him afterwards. The Joe’s track down the antagonists to Paris, hoping to stop them from using one at the Eiffel Tower. They temporarily fail because the Tower does get destroyed, but Duke does hit the kill switch to prevent any more damage. This leads to Ana abducting him to a Cobra base in the Arctic Circle. During the trip, Duke apologizes for not being able to save her brother Rex (Joseph Gordon Levitt) in the line of duty and leaving her out of guilt. As for the Joes, they are arrested by French authorities when being mistaken as the terrorists responsible for the tower’s attack. Hawk is able to free them with the request that they don’t return to France again. They are also ordered to recall, but they move forward with a rescue mission before a given timetable. At the Arctic, Duke meets McCullen who explains that the doctor is the one in charge and plans to make him into a mindless henchman aka Neo Viper, with the use of his nanotechnology. The doctor reveals himself to be Rex who survived the bombing that allegedly killed him at the time. When he found scientist Dr. Mindbender, he became obsessed with the tech that he would perfect it after he survived the blast. He than claimed to expose his own sister with nanomites to keep her under his control, hence the long lasting alienation over him. When the Joes find the base, Snake Eyes destroys the second missile that would aim Beijing. As he confronts Storm Shadow and kills him for killing their master long ago, Ripcord destroys the final that aimed at Moscow and Washington with a prototype jet. Ana tries to free Duke but she is subdued from her nanomites. McCullen attempts to kill Duke with a flamethrower, but Duke shoots at it, resulting in having his face being disfigured from the flames. Rex and McCullen flee from him while Duke and Ana leave the base. Rex provides himself a new mask and names himself as the commander of Cobra. He than transforms McCullen’s skin with a silver like substance and names him ‘Destro’ after a 1600s ancestor. Duke corners them, resulting in their arrest. Ana on the other hand is placed in protective custody until the nanomites are removed from her body. The film ends in a cliffhanger revealing that Zartan is under the disguise of the President of the United States of America (Jonathan Pryce).
THOUGHTS
I had zero knowledge of this franchise ahead of this film’s release. With this in mind, I was marking in new territory that made me so excited. While I originally had a good time in 2009, I must admit that this hasn’t aged well. Being cool does not save this movie at the very least. I’m sure that director Stephen Sommers was a fan like many, but he has a hard time nailing what he had in mind that with co writers Stuart Beattie, David Elliot, Paul Lovett and Michael B. Gordon. With all of these names, you think things would be organized. But instead, this movie is all over the place. While there are moments that pick up the steam, that same steam would cool down in an instant, and that is never good. Because the visuals have aged badly, the action sequences do not hold up as much as I’d hoped. This and it’s sequel are so bad that they make every Transformers film by Michael Bay look like a masterpiece, and those films have a debatable fan base. The reason that this one isn’t as good as I remember because many story elements don’t make sense and not every cast member delivers. I think the one performance people generally enjoyed has to be from Channing Tatum. He stands out from the rest because he brings a commanding presence and makes Duke as noble as he’s supposed to be in this story. Like various protagonists before him, his vulnerability comes his guilt. He was so overwhelmed with the failure of saving the man who could’ve been his brother in law that he chose to abandon the love of his life, thus creating the stubbornness he had around others. There is a benefit to this guilt because it makes him more determined on the field. When encountering Ana again, he chose to stop hiding from the demon that haunted him. Because of how he chose to redeem himself, it becomes a reason to like him. In all honesty, I thought Dennis Quaid was a good choice for Hawk because he presents him as a firm and capable leader that cares for his troops. This guy has had experience on the field way before becoming a Joe, so I kinda don’t mind his origin ever being a possibility to be seen onscreen, if it was ever possible. The one side story that was more interesting than what Duke goes through goes through is the rivalry of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. These two hated each other since they were kids and every time they shared the screen, you feel their animosity. Although actor/marital artist Ray Park doesn’t speak a word as his character Snake Eyes took a vow of life, he is on point showing his proficiency of ninjutsu. Byung Hun Lee is the polar opposite whereas Storm Shadow is way more ruthless in comparison to his former brother in arms. While these actors impressed me, the others just couldn’t. Marlon Wayans is a funny guy, but I don’t think he was funny here as Ripcord. His performances in A Haunted House and Scary Movie are funnier than this. Rachel Nichols makes Scarlet interesting due to how her intelligence makes her unemotional, but that interesting backstory disappears when she meets Rip. I respect that this character is helping her see things in a new perspective and the actors probably had good chemistry, but it all felt unnecessary. I don’t think these two needed to be together and their time together is partially what ruins the pacing. I got nothing against Sienna Miller but just because she looks the part of Baroness, does not mean she was meant to play her. It makes me annoyed how they whitewashed this Russian character, which made me relieved that they fixed this in the Snake Eyes spin-off. Going into the story, the first thing I complained about was how Heavy Duty was not cautious about protecting the warheads when shooting at Baroness. Eliminating the threat is one thing, but protecting a dangerous weapon is way more important than that. If you want to talk about things that are stupid, it’ll be hard to top Duke wanting to fight a hologram of McCullen. McCullen may be the villain, but he’s not lying when he says he would’ve died had not the Joes intervened. And his line to Snake Eyes, “Looks like we’re all seeing ghosts today” just confuses me deeply because how could he know anything of him when he took a vow silence and is unable to share anything to him? If they know sign language, that would be nice to know. I also call bullshit on how he figured out Rex’s device that woke up Ana. We didn’t see the screen long enough to know if he hit the right button and let fate decide, which is annoying because it looked to easy for him. I didn’t want Hawk to die, but I think it would’ve been realistic if he died from Storm Shadow’s blade. He slashed right through his chest. How the hell did it not kill him? It just doesn’t sound right. It was smart on Snake Eyes’ end to wait on the train to take out Storm Shadow & Baroness. But hitting the tires would’ve made things much easier. You took out the henchmen and damage the rear end, yet they couldn’t shoot at the tires? I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s dumb of the Joes to not do that. On top of weird things that happen and isn’t questioned that've happened throughout this thing, it’s Scarlet ignoring Duke when he says Rex’s name. She doesn’t know who he is, so why isn’t she reacting to that? I know I said her intelligence makes her unemotional, but I assumed she was past it after the time she had with Rip. Saying all of this makes it hard to find any satisfaction throughout. To wrap up, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was not worth the time in comparison to Transformers. If you are a fan of this franchise, good luck getting through this.
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