In an update to my summer blogging of movies, I saw G.I.JOE Retaliation tonight. To begin with a brief backstory: I went to go see 'Rise of Cobra' in theatres, the day after it was released. I loved the G.I.JOE cartoon growing up, and I have the action figures. I may not have been raised in the 80s (missed out on being an 80s kid by 22 days, in fact), but thanks to my cousins who were, I have a massive love for all things Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Transformers, Diehard (and other action movies of its ilk), and, of course, G.I.JOE.
My favourite character, by far, is Cobra Commander. In the cartoons, he was kind of like Dr. Claw, and more or less every bumbling supervillain of cartoons; menacing, but no real threat that he would ever really succeed. I mean, come on, it's a kid's tv show. But, nonetheless, he was awesome, crazy bad guy though he was.
Fast forward to the 'Rise of Cobra' movie of a few years ago, and I was just so sad at how bad it was. Pretty much everything about it was bad. The casting wasn't terrible, but I mean, casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander, and then messing up his voice AND his iconic costume? That's a terrible offence. At least Zartan and Destro were entertaining, but that was a consolation. I think the only good part about that first movie was Ray Park as Snake Eyes, which was awesome because of his outfit and the fact that he HAS NO DIALOGUE. Park does have experience in that regard, seeing as how Darth Maul has so little of it, but whatever. He's awesome (I met him, shook his hand and everything. Such a nice dude).
'Retaliation' fixed all of those problems. Firstly, the Rock (Dwayne Johnson) was Roadblock, Adrianne Palicki as Lady Jaye, some dude as Flint, Ray Stevenson as Firefly, Ray Park back as Snake Eyes, and Bruce Willis as General Joe Colton (the original Joe). The cast was much better...and, let me say, it's not as if Channing Tatum was a bad Duke. He wasn't. It just was that he was surrounding by so much bad. Though Sienna Miller as the Baroness...um, yes please.
Anyway, the movie was great. As usual, it was a lot of explosions, gunfights, and action, and it was great. They even did up Cobra Commander right, which I loved. The plots of these things are always so crazy, and the bit about the Zeus satellites and having everyone blow up their nuclear armaments was a bit much, but at the end of the day, I chuckled and enjoyed myself. By the way, the scene where Snake Eyes and Jinx fight a legion of enemy ninjas while flying around on cables on the side of a mountain. Fantastic.
8/10
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