G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Paramount Pictures, 2009
By Sean Kelly
A few weeks ago, I took a look at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which I thought was highly entertaining despite its flaws. I have the same feelings for this film based on another Hasbro franchise; though I think that there might be a few more flaws in this one.
G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra is directed by Stephen Sommers, who got his start with a couple of Disney movies before making it big remaking Universal’s monster franchises with the first two Mummy movies and Van Helsing. Now, Sommers was presented with the challenge of adapting the “All American Heroes” to the big screen.
The biggest challenge for Sommers was handling the G.I. Joe purists. Like Transformers, many fans of the franchise probably already had an idea of what the film should be like and would be bothered by the smallest change made to this impossible vision. As such, it is no wonder why they were outraged when they found out about the “accelerator suits.” However, despite all that outrage, the suits were only used during a single action sequence.
The film does have something resembling a story involving stolen warheads filled with these microscopic robotic termites (called nanomites) that devour anything they come in contact with. However, the story is just there to bridge the many action scenes within the film — not that that’s really a bad thing. But one thing that did get to me somewhat were all the flashbacks. The film opens with a flashback dealing with the ancestor of James “Destro” McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), which is excusable. I also didn’t mind the flashbacks detailing the history between Duke (Channing Tatum) and the Baroness (Sienna Miller). However, I didn’t think that the film really needed TWO flashbacks detailing the rivalry between Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park). I’m sure some lines of dialogue would have sufficed.
The cast were okay enough in their roles. The G.I. Joe team in the film is now international and I believe the only main members of the team other than Duke and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) who were American were Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) and General Hawk (Dennis Quaid). On the villainous side, Eccleston was good as the pre-Destro McCullen, even though the Baroness was the main on-screen villain for most of the film. However, I do have to say that the scene-stealing villain was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Doctor, the brains behind McCullen’s nanomite project, who will go on to become known as Cobra Commander. Sommers also gave small roles to cast members from The Mummy, including Brendan Fraser as a sergeant during the Joe’s training, Arnold Vosloo as the master of disguise Zartan, and Kevin J. O’Connor as Dr. Mindbender.
In the end, I have to say that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra turned out to be a decent enough film. My only real issue is that it was an origin story and the Cobra organization doesn’t really form until pretty much right at the very end — so I guess the titles is really literal. Hopefully the inevitable sequel will make up for any flaws that the first film had.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that the accelerator suits are actually faithful to the GI Joe canon. They were used in the GI Joe: Sigma cartoon series.
Also to my surprise, this was a positive review. I thought GI Joe was, like Transformers, fun but terrible. Except unlike Transformers, the latter far outweighed the former. Fans of the cartoon SHOULD really like this film, because it was almost as silly.
On the other hand, Storm Shadow was awesome.
It is a positive review, but I was also being very critical of the film. Essentially my review is based on the hope that the film was setting up for a better sequel.