|
Community Links |
Social Groups |
Pictures & Albums |
Members List |
Search Forums |
Advanced Search |
Go to Page... |
|
Thread Tools |
03-28-2013, 03:11 AM | #1 |
Cobra Black Ops
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: US
Posts: 24
|
As a testament to my undying love for GI JOE, I will proceed to expose the flaws in the franchise' latest big-screen outing. Be forewarned, I'm about to spoil the hell of it.
The following is a detailed summary of GI Joe: Retaliation interspersed with my commentary. Do not read unless you've seen GI Joe: Retaliation or you deliberately want to have the whole damn thing spoiled for you. From the outset it was no secret that the sequel was going to continue the story from the first film, and therein lies some inherent hurdles the sequel will have to deal with. As every die-hard fan of GI Joe knows, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra egregiously mishandled the GI Joe mythos. For starters, the relationship between Duke, the Baroness, and the man who would become Cobra Commander was absolute shit because it completely disregarded the characters’ established backstories (built through over 25 years’ worth of comics) in favor of a love-triangle plot that wasn’t true to character for any of them. So now we’ve got 3 principle GI Joe characters that are essentially that character in-name-only. But the atrocities don't stop there. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow didn’t fare much better in ROC. Instead of having a military history together as adults they are introduced as kids who meet each other and form a rivalry that intensifies when the Hard Master is killed, presumably by a 10 year old Storm Shadow. Any fan of GI Joe knows that Storm Shadow didn’t kill Hard Master, but the ROC feeds the audience the idea that a kid Storm Shadow killed him and then ran off to hang out with a megalomaniacal Scottish industrialist by the name of James McCullen. The handling of the rest of the Joe team was pretty bad, too. Scarlett, while cast well enough, was horrendously written. Her dialogue with Ripcord on the subject of emotions literally made me cringe in my seat when I heard it in the theater. Ripcord himself was a joke. Casting Marlon Wayans was a bad idea, especially as a tertiary character from the comics who for no good reason was promoted to Duke’s homeboy. (even typing that made me cringe) Heavy Duty was so-so, but Breaker’s nonsensical technobabble (try listening to him explain spherical trigonometry in reference to Destro’s shadow with a straight face, I dare you) was downright stupid. Now that I’ve recapped the first movie, let me rip the sequel a new one. GI Joe: Retaliation begins with the Joes, led by Duke, sneaking into North Korea across the DMZ to rescue a defector. Ok, I can buy that. Roadblock, Duke, and Flint sneak up to a chain link fence which RB proceeds to cut through using fancy sci-fi gloves. All of this happens a few hundred yards from a North Korean guard tower. Roadblock and Duke move beyond the fence, take out some guards, and find the defector, while Flint is told to stay put at the fence, which makes no sense at all. Flint decides while Roadblock and Duke are doing their thing to sneak onto the guard tower and somehow without being noticed manages to switch the NK flag with a GI Joe flag, which I guess he just happened to have stuffed in his back pocket or something. Yeah, real covert jackass. Next we cut to the US President (still Zartan) meeting with his military advisers on what to do about Pakistan, whose president has been assassinated and the country is collapsing into chaos. President Zartan orders the Joes to go into Pakistan to secure a nuclear weapon. The Joes raid the facility, acquire the nuke, and exfil without a hitch. This sequence works well enough. Flint shows off some parkour skills and typical action movie gunplay ensues. The Joes regroup in the Pakistani desert where Duke and Roadblock try to shoot a cupcake whilst waiting for further orders. Backstabbery commences when helicopters that Duke mistakes for security blow the bejeezus out of the Joe camp. Everyone including Duke take a dirt nap with the exception of Roadblock, Flint, and Lady Jaye. Those who abhorred Channing Tatum’s Duke in the first film I imagine will feel quite relieved by this development. I did. Intercut with this is President Zartan publicly announcing that the Joes went rogue, stole a Pakistani nuke, and because of that where “terminated with extreme prejudice” by the new special forces unit, Cobra. The real president is also revealed to be alive an in a mini-prison beneath a presidential retreat somewhere in VA. Meanwhile, the assassination of the Pakistani president is pinned on Snake Eyes, who is shown being led in chains to an underground prison in Germany, a prison who oddly has the very American Walton Goggins as its warden. Snake Eyes is revealed to actually be Storm Shadow in SE’s gear, and he’s imprisoned in a water-filled tube in the same room as Destro and Cobra Commander, both of whom oddly enough are never referred to by any other names. I know GI Joe likes its codenames, but that was a tad cheesy to hear the warden call McCullen Destro and Mr. Lewis Cobra Commander when the only people who knew they had those names were each other 5 minutes before they both got captured. Storm Shadow uses his mad ninja skills to slow hit heart rate to nigh nothing, and during the prison doctors’ attempts to revive him he wakes up, slaughters the guards and doctors, and shoots CC’s tube. CC falls out of the tube, losing the helmet of his prison tube garb in the process. You get a good 5 or so second look at CC unmasked, and he looks just like Rex from the first film when he pulled his mask down for a few seconds, he even has the metal plate on top of his head. Somehow inexplicably he pulls a mask out of nowhere and puts it on, making his voice sound almost identical to Jigsaw from the Saw series. I kept expecting him to say “I want to play a game.” Honestly though, I liked the voice. It works for me, though I still wish they had brought in Charlie Addler to do it. They had an opportunity to continue the trend of having the same voice actor for Starscream as Cobra Commander, and they missed it. (FYI, Charlie Addler was the voice for CC in the animated GI Joe: Resolute and GI Joe: Renegades series, as well as Starscream in the live-action Transformers movies.) Firefly shows up on his missile bike (the one seen in every trailer) and gives the prison a new front door. He walks in and gives CC and Storm Shadow a ride out. Cobra Commander and Firefly apparently have some history together, which makes no sense considering the Commander wasn’t commanding anything prior to his capture at the end of ROC. Firefly also has a southern twang which annoyed me all movie long. I love Ray Stevenson, and when I heard that he was cast as Firefly (my 2nd favorite baddie after CC) I was hoping that they’d give him ties to the Real IRA considering Stevenson was born in Northern Ireland and Firefly is a pyromaniac. It makes perfect sense and of course they didn’t go for it. The 3 of them escape on the Cobra private helicopter, which just happened to be parked outside, and Cobra Commander and Firefly go to a facility where a series of 7 weapons satellites collectively called Zeus are being assembled. They meet with President Zartan, who tells them that 3 Joes survived the hit in Pakistan. Firefly says when they turn up he’ll kill them. I’m assuming the weapon system is something commissioned by President Zartan, but the concept sounded more like a MARS type project. That’s another thing, we don’t learn what became of MARS Industries after Destro was incarcerated. I’d like to think that a lot of the personnel that weren’t killed in the arctic battle in ROC got recruited into Cobra, but that’s never said outright in the film. All movie long I kept wondering where Cobra was getting its personnel from. As far as I know there’s no Craigslist for evil henchmen. Cobra Commander and his new best friends are seen leaving the prison by the real Snake Eyes, who returns to the Arashikage skyscraper (yes, skyscraper) in Tokyo to report to the Blind Master that Storm Shadow is alive. The Blind Master, played by RZA, is so hammy and melodramatic it’s not funny. I’m happy that he had very little screen time. During this time, we see Snake Eyes train with Jinx, who is Storm Shadow’s cousin. They are then ordered to find and return Storm Shadow so he can answer for the Hard Master’s murder and reveal what Cobra has planned. Snake Eyes and Jinx find Storm Shadow hanging out with the Red Ninjas in their Himalayan bungalo (who are given no set up, introduction, or reason for being in the film) so that he can recoup from an injury he sustained during the prison break. After a lengthy dialogue-free action sequence Snake Eyes and Jinx manage to return Storm Shadow to the Blind Master. Storm Shadow is presented with the sword that he allegedly used to kill the Hard Master. Storm Shadow breaks the sword, revealing it to be a fake (according to Storm Shadow, “Arashikage steel doesn’t break”) Apparently that is enough to convince everyone of his innocence (cue eye-rolling) and it is quickly revealed that Zartan, in the guise of an old man, killed the Hard Master with the intent of driving Storm Shadow right into his arms so that he could mold Storm Shadow into a weapon. This makes no sense because at this time Storm Shadow is just a kid, and for Zartan to want him to be a weapon would imply that he and McCullen would already be planning the nanomite incident. That’s 20 years before RoC. Yup, does not compute. What’s worse is that Storm Shadows’ reason for joining Cobra in the first place is never addressed, and apparently everyone forgot that he destroyed the Eiffel Tower and killed who knows how many Joes in the Pit in ROC. Seriously, none of that is addressed. Oh, and the fact that he survived getting shanked in the heart and falling into freezing water at the end of ROC is never mentioned. What the hell, Zombieland guys? I’d also like to point out that in the comics the reason SS joined Cobra was to get close to Zartan so he could kill him as he knows he killed the Hard Master. SS had plenty of opportunities to kill Zartan in ROC, so why didn’t he? And how does releasing Cobra Commander help his case, unless SS truly is evil? (In the comics he is not) While the mountain ninja shenanigans are playing out, Roadblock, Lady Jaye, and Flint manage to return to the US and set up shop in an abandoned weightlifting/ boxing ring hole-in-the-wall. While there, Lady Jaye comes to the conclusion the President is an imposter, since that would be the logical thing to do. She uses some before and after photos of the president that highlight different mannerism to support her theory. The other two buy it and decide to test the theory by having Lady Jaye attend a Presidential fund-raiser under the guise of first a chief of staff and later a member of the press in order to get close to Zartan. Jaye nabs a hair and after some Mission Impossible tech is whipped out it is determined that the president is Zartan, whom of course every Joes knows. (cue head-scratching) Firefly attacks Roadblock when the later takes aim at Zartan as he leaves the fund-raiser, but is forced to run off when Jaye and Flint come to save Roadblock. Snake Eyes, Jinx, and Storm Shadow hook up with Roadblock, Lady Jaye, and Flint, who themselves have allied with retired General Joe Colton, whose house by the way is loaded with very cheesy gun racks disguised as kitchen cabinets and whatnot. Seriously, there were enough guns in his house to arm an entire platoon (I swear that’s not hyperbole) and I have no idea how anyone, retired military or not, could be in legal possession of such firepower. Seriously, he had an M2 .50 cal machine gun and a grenade launcher on a rack that came out of a closet. Better still, he had a fucking tank in his garage. I shit thee not, it’s in the movie. The plan they come up with is that Lady Jaye and Colton will go to the Presidential retreat in VA to rescue the real President. How they know he’s there or even alive is a mystery to me. Long story short they kill all the bad guys and save the real president. Roadblock, Flint, Snake Eyes, and Jinx all go to Ft. Sumter, where Zartan is holding a conference with 8 other world leaders from nuclear armed countries. During the summit President Zartan demands complete nuclear disarmament from the other nations, but of course they refuse. President Zartan then launches America’s nukes at everyone else, and says they have 3 minutes to comply. The other world leaders respond by conveniently whipping out their own footballs and launching their nukes. Zartan then hits the self-destruct on the American nukes in mid-flight, compelling the other nations to do the same. I assume the point of this was to symbolize the destruction of everyone nukes, but it didn’t work for me considering there are thousands of nukes in the world and each country only launched a handful. Anywho, President Zartan then whips out the briefcase computer that controls Zeus. Cobra Commander makes his grand entrance (with Firefly, Cobra Troops, Storm Shadow, and Red Ninjas in tow, which seems odd. Wouldn’t SS’ abduction by SE and Jinx from the Red Ninjas raise a few questions before letting him rejoin the Cobra club? I guess not. ) before the world leaders and demands total obedience or face annihilation. He uses Zeus to destroy London as a show of force. Just then Jinx and Snake Eyes shows up in the conference room with MP7s akimbo and Storm Shadow turns on Cobra. The world leaders run out unharmed while SE and SS take out the Red Ninjas and Cobra troops. Storm Shadow pursues President Zartan while Cobra Commander escapes in his private helicopter. Firefly takes the Zeus control case and is chased and eventually killed by Roadblock, who proceeds to use the case to enact the self-destruct on all the Zeus satellites just before they can fire on the other countries’ capitol cities. My, my. How convenient. Storm Shadow catches up to President Zartan and very quickly and anti-climactically kills him. As he dies He turns back into Arnold Vosloo. We don’t see Storm Shadow again after this. With the real president back in power, the Joes are reinstated and given promotions. Roadblock is the new leader of the Joes, Colton has come out of retirement, and Jinx is recruited. Roadblock vows to find and kill Cobra Commander for what he did to Duke. So, while I think this is a far better GI Joe film than its predecessor, it is still not without its flaws. The Storm Shadow plot is absurd as it ignores the events of the first film almost entirely save for his connection to the Hard Master. It is a most unsatisfactory heel face turn. Also, and this is a real pet peeve of mine, when there are scenes in a trailer that are missing from the theatrical cut. I learned recently that many scenes were cut out of the final film (thankfully, according to Jon Chu, they will be included on the Blu-ray) and there are several instances in the film where you can tell that something was cut out. The scenes of the Joes in the bar were missing, the scene of Cobra Commander hanging out of the helicopter and shooting at Roadblock were cut out, et cetera and so on. The movie as a whole also felt very rushed. Characters like Flint and Jinx actually had very little substance. The main players in this show were Dwayne Johnson, (no surprise) Jonathan Pryce, (expected considering he was acting for two) and Lee Byung-hun. I wish Firefly had been given more depth (as I alluded to earlier) and I wish Cobra Commander had more screen time. Lady Jaye worked just fine and Snake Eyes did what you’d expect from a mute ninja. And that’s another thing. With the Hard Master’s murderer finally dealt with, why stay silent? It’s not like a helicopter crash shredded his vocal cords… Last edited by Montross; 03-28-2013 at 05:01 AM.. |
03-28-2013, 03:34 AM | #2 |
I HAVE SPOKEN
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: U.S.
Posts: 1,173
|
I agree and I think you were generous with your review. That movie was complete crap and an utter disappointment! I hated so much about it that the only things I really liked at all were Cobra Commander, Lady Jaye and Joe Colton. I am truly baffled by what the hell they were thinking with this.
|
03-28-2013, 03:35 AM | #3 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: May 2008
Location: South Lyon
Posts: 308
|
Its just a movie. From what i read you mighta been so preoccupied with being critical that you missed some things. I saw SS after the zartan scene
Last edited by NightViper; 03-28-2013 at 03:40 AM.. Reason: sounded too dicky |
03-28-2013, 03:54 AM | #4 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: May 2010
Location: California
Posts: 377
|
I do love the fact that Colton is a total whack-job with guns hidden in literally every piece of furniture in his house.
|
03-28-2013, 03:57 AM | #5 |
Cobra Black Ops
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: US
Posts: 24
|
Quote:
It may be just a movie to you, dear sir, but to me it is so much more. GI Joe was 50% of my childhood (Star Wars being the other 50%) and it has been an active interest of mine ever since. It's also been a huge influence on my own work. (I'm a writer, FYI) |
03-28-2013, 04:15 AM | #6 |
Survival Specialist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Tacoma, WA
Posts: 555
|
Quote:
After Zartan's death SS gives Jinx the sword and then splits.
It may be just a movie to you, dear sir, but to me it is so much more. GI Joe was 50% of my childhood (Star Wars being the other 50%) and it has been an active interest of mine ever since. It's also been a huge influence on my own work. (I'm a writer, FYI) This movie was pretty good...not much of a plot but I thought it was good. It wasn't a "great" movie but it was definitely an improvement over the ROC crap. They stayed true to the roots for the most part and put their twist on it. The only issue I have is was too short, they could have made it another hour and I would have been really satisfied.
__________________
Buy/Sell/Trade: http://www.hisstank.com/forum/g-i-jo...eed-parts.html Feedback: http://www.hisstank.com/forum/buy-se...ml#post4284151 |
03-28-2013, 04:19 AM | #7 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Sylmar, CA
Posts: 315
|
I haven't seen the movie yet. I'll be watching it on Sunday, but I do see your point. I would also like them to follow the ARAH comic or cartoon story line. That won't stop me from watching it though. I hope they get to do another one and stick closer to the correct history of the characters. Or even better, they just go a different way and do something like "The Crimson Cloth".
|
03-28-2013, 04:21 AM | #8 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Cobra Island
Posts: 298
|
Just saw it and hate the fact Cobra commander wasn't utilized more and his "strong presence" Jon Chu alluded too wasn't as strong. Love the outfit just now how he turned out to be so little in the movie. The movie did feel rushed an explanation of things wouldve help liked with SS and the mtn battle was pretty weak over all.
The fact SS and SE barely fought pissed me off but nice seeing them fight together just wasnt long enough. I plan to see it again but I went into the movie knowing half the thing so I wasnt as excited. First time was eh at best however it felt kinda like ARAH at times. I might change my mind later who knows |
03-28-2013, 04:23 AM | #9 |
Survival Specialist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Tacoma, WA
Posts: 555
|
Quote:
I haven't seen the movie yet. I'll be watching it on Sunday, but I do see your point. I would also like them to follow the ARAH comic or cartoon story line. That won't stop me from watching it though. I hope they get to do another one and stick closer to the correct history of the characters. Or even better, they just go a different way and do something like "The Crimson Cloth".
I wouldn't base anything on what the rant summarizes....it's a good movie, entertaining and full of action. He has some points but what fun is watching a movie based on characters of your childhood if you're going to just tear it to shreds. Enjoy it, it's not the 80's, it's just a new story of old characters.
__________________
Buy/Sell/Trade: http://www.hisstank.com/forum/g-i-jo...eed-parts.html Feedback: http://www.hisstank.com/forum/buy-se...ml#post4284151 |
03-28-2013, 04:58 AM | #10 |
Cobra Black Ops
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: US
Posts: 24
|
Quote:
I happen to adore J.J. Abrams' work and was psyched that he took the job for Ep.7. What he did with Star Trek was nothing short of brilliant. I don't know much about Michael Arndt, but I'm optimistic. I am bummed that all of the post-RotJ EU material will be forever rendered as canon discontinuity, and I'm sure there will be parts of the new trilogy that I will take issue with, but until those films hit the big screen I will remain hopeful. |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
G.I. Joe Retaliation Massive Spoilers from Early Screening | feliu316 | G.I. Joe Live Action Movie | 40 | 03-27-2013 02:00 AM |
G.I.Joe Retaliation: The Stunts (Spoilers Warning!) | TheGabrielAngel | G.I. Joe News and Rumors | 11 | 07-10-2012 09:37 PM |
GI Joe Retaliation Spoilers...FOR REAL!!!! | mynameisash | G.I. Joe Live Action Movie | 88 | 05-27-2012 01:39 PM |
G.I. Joe Retaliation Roster - Spoilers for those interested. | Starfighter | G.I. Joe Live Action Movie | 29 | 02-06-2012 06:40 PM |
Possible Spoilers for GI Joe 2: Retaliation | krooklyn | G.I. Joe News and Rumors | 171 | 08-14-2011 10:57 AM |
|
|
Recent Off Topic Threads |
Last Movie You Watched? |
Hisstank Late Night thread... |
What song are you listening to? |
G.I. Joe March Madness 2024 Championship Battle Armor... |
2024 Toy Hauls |