G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

G.I. Joe, or Action Force and then G.I. Joe the Action Force as it was known in the UK back in the day has it’s first film out and it’s suffered a lot of negative press and I have to set the record straight here.

It is an excellent popcorn film

You read that right. This film is not without its faults and I’ll get on to those later but first and foremost, this is a fun film.  Well paced action that really deserves to have a sequel (which is cleverly set up at the end).  Seriously, that Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is one of the top 10 movies of all time and this has been somewhat a failure is a mystery of the highest level.

G.I. Joe is superior to TF:ROTF in every way but one, the CG… Thankfully whenever there isn’t some terrible CG going on and you have got real people beating and shooting the heck out of each other, it is a thing of absolute beauty. No blurry mess of generic metallic robots. The Joes and Cobras interact with each other and their enemies (well except Snake Eyes but he’s under a vow of silence but he gestures and that is far less annoying than Bumblebee’s radio communications.

The Good

It is based more on the somewhat serious comic rather than the hilarity of the cartoon which is a good thing, as much as I love the cartoon, taking Cobra Commander serious when even Destro is calling him a buffoon because of his bungling and his ludicrous plans would not have made a good movie…

Characters within this film actually make sense for the most part, Zartan is done superbly, both in acting and the way they give him his powers of changing face and the way it is implemented.   Storm Shadow and Snakeeyes don’t dominate the film but still get their backstory put across and thankfully the accelerator suits  pushed in the adverts account for about 5 minutes of film.

The action is plentiful.  There are action scenes on land, under water and in air, we have bullets, sonic weapons and swords.  There are also plenty of little nods to the source material like Knowing is half the battle.  With that much going on it would be hard to wreck the film and I give credit to the director, this is well paced, he gets the story across and doesn’t bog it down with needless scenes, it’s similar to Iron Man in that you never go long without something great happening.

The Bad

I mentioned the CG earlier, it is generally fine but there are bits, which aren’t even all that often but which smack of some corners obviously being cut in production.  Also Cobra guards do seem to exist only to be slain by Snakeeyes, and Cobra security in general is minimal. As for the  Neo Vipers, well the Joes are so awesome they lose all menace far too easily.

Other than that, there is the continuing theme of film writers being unable to grab hold of basic concepts such as  distance or time, basic maths which has been a bane of films from the stupid but enjoyable Terminator Salvation to the outright rediculous lets run across a desert instead of catch a ride in Bumblebee and the utter lack of time it takes to get anywhere fail of TFROTF.  Seriously, my maths and geography aren’t great but I’m fairly sure fire a missile at mach 4 then fly a jet after it at mach 5 then turn around and fly after another missile that’s been going mach 4 in the other direction the entire time and you have fail… But never mind, we’ve seen worse.

The What?

Now these could have gone under bad but are just too mystifying and don’t actually affect the film unless you are a Joe fan. I watched it with someone who hadn’t read the comics, collected the toys or watched the cartoon and he had no idea about these.

Ripcord is now black, and a major character instead of the old comic character being a bit part at best. I can’t even remember if Ripcord made it into the old cartoon series he was so unimportant.

Accelerator suits, why use these in the first film? they were late in the comic series and from now on at all times you just think, well if they had one of those suits….

And then the for some reason, instead of the well established relationship triangle of Snakeyes, Duke and Scarlett, this film decides to make it Snakeeyes, Ripcord and Scarlett.  Why? so they could have Duke have a prior relationship with the Baroness… Well it gives this Duke some character as well as allows Ripcord to have some character so I’m happy to let it slide.

If there was one thing that I could change in this film, it would be to change Cobra Commander’s mask. It’s only in it for a minute but my God, he has a couple of iconic masks in the comic and cartoon and they created a horrible new one instead of using the cloth or curved reflective masks. Terrible but if that’s what annoyed me most, a 1 minute cameo that can easily be changed for the sequel I think you can see that that is a pretty good film.

Verdict

The major changes to characters may really upset some hardcore fans, but I know some hardcore fans that call this AWESOME. Why, because it still feels like a G.I. Joe film, the major changes work within the film and it as entertaining a film as they come.  Turn off the brain and enjoy. Go to the cinema and make sure you have popcorn. I’m now waiting for the blu-ray and the sequel as  this film not only had a good ending, but it has an ending that sets up another film superbly. This film rocked oh, and Yo Joe! (sorry I had to)