GI JOE: Rise of Cobra (Spoilers Ahoy!)

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, the sinking ice bothered me until I saw that it had metal bunkers and tunnels and shit sticking out of it. You don't have to add a lot of weight to ice to sink it.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I've now actually seen this movie, and even though generally I'm not a fan at all of blowed-up-real-good, the-only-virtue-of-this-movie-is-excitement movies, I don't regret seeing it, and it was an enjoyable way to spend 2 hours. It was structured pretty well ('The most powerful man in the world' - the characters think it's McCullen, the audience thinks it's Cobra Commander, they're both wrong), there were very few offensively stupid moments, the only things cringe-worthy were between Scarlett and Ripcord, McCullen was a cool character, Stormshadow was badass with great lines, Cobra looked kind of like Keanu Reeves with the wig for most of the movie and I like his extreme over-the-topness, and his motivations didn't make any sense at all, so yeah.

[FSTargetDrone]

I generally enjoyed it too. Like CaptainChewbacca, I noticed that at least some of the ice chunks had wreckage on them (the ice seemed to turn upside down as it sank, at least in some cases) and I thought there was a nice mix of banter, humor and action. None of the characters really bothered me.

But yeah, the mask was just silly. Blank, rounded faceplate or dark blue hood aside, there just wasn't anything particularly interesting about the mask. They should have gone with something else. If I didn't know beforehand who the character was going to become, nothing about it says THIS IS COBRA COMMANDER to me, putting aside for the moment that he announces himself as such. It's just a generic Bad Guy Mask, I guess.

[VT-16]

Loved the film, but I have a question: Who was the guy with the President? At first I thought the bodyguard was Zartan, but I guess he was already decked out as the President, so he was the third guy in the room?

I had hoped it was either the Cobra Commander or Serpentor or something, but that's just a reaction to the "reveal", which was somewhat disappointing.

[neoolong]

One of the neo-vipers. You see the scar behind his ear I believe. There was the president, Zartan from the other room, and the neo-viper bodyguard who killed a bunch of people in the room.

[Havok]

One of the Neo-Vipers. When they introduced them, the say that there are 20 of 21 present. They also do a close up on the little Cobra emblem/nanomites on his neck that they all have just so the audience gets what is happening...

[FSTargetDrone]

I wonder how the dead Secret Service men in the President's safe room/bunker were explained away? Perhaps any investigation there was hushed up...

Also, I think the weakest CGI was that of the Joes' aircraft entering and leaving the Pit, as well as parts of the Pit itself. The Cobra stuff was all quite good.

[neoolong]

Put the real president in the chamber that Zartan came out of. Kill the neo-viper bodyguard and Zartan says that the bodyguard killed everyone but that he managed to overpower and kill the bodyguard.

[Elessar]

Put the real president in the chamber that Zartan came out of. Kill the neo-viper bodyguard and Zartan says that the bodyguard killed everyone but that he managed to overpower and kill the bodyguard.

No need to have the neo-viper killed. So long as the President says that he was attacked and his bodyguard defended them, that's all that they need.

I mean, seriously, who would honestly think "Maybe they switched the President with a his exact duplicate?". You'd be laughed out of the White House.

[neoolong]

Bah, in my version, President Zartan makes out like a badass.

[SAMAS]

Yeah, but why waste a perfectly good Neo-Viper?

Just blame it on one of the victims.

[Big Orange]

By no means a great movie, but a step up from that Revenge of the Fallen abomination, I give G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra a tolerable 5/10; fairly witty and unpretentious explosive bollocks. The CGI was rather cut price in places - the quality of CGI to render the submarines, aircraft, and underwater base reminds me of the CGI used in fairly old sci-fi TV shows like Babylon 5, Voyager, and Enterprise.

I really liked Sienna Miller, Christopher Eccleston, Byung-hun Lee, and Saïd Taghmaoui. Jonathan Pryce and Arnold Vosloo are dependable as always. Sommers got a thing for Kevin J. O'Connor. David Murray was absolutely terrible in that 15th/16th century flashback though.

Even though we saw the Cobra emblem on the side of McCullen's luxury submarine, MARS Industries is the enemy organization, and its mercenary soldiers could've been called the Iron Guard or something. The elite Neo-Viper's armoured helmets are cheesy.

[Vympel]

This was the worst piece of shit I've seen all year.

Where to begin?

Ah yes - the first flashback - utterly pointless, it wasted time and set the tone for the numerous gratuitious and unecessary flashbacks that followed - especially those between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow - everytime one of their tedious flashbacks came, it had my friend shouting "WHO CARES!" and I couldn't help but agree.

Everything in this movie looked cheap as all fuck - it was like I was watching some B-grade movie run amok in an insufficiently rich person's bank account - the sets, the (awful!) CGI, and the costumes.

Oh man, the costumes.

After the Paris car chase scene, we burst out in open laughter when we saw the ridiculous outfit and cap that Marlon Wayans was wearing - he looked like the guy from the Village People!

Their choice of costumes was bizarre - where ordinary modern day combat uniforms would've been perfectly sufficient, they instead went with weird molded rubber / black leather outfits that looked ridiculous - Stephen Sommers apparently doesn't comprehend that said outfits are not a good look in broad daylight. It works for Batman because he's mostly gallavanting about in the evening.

At the end, when the 'team' is walking triumphantly side by side through the Pit, I burst out laughing. They looked that bloody silly.

Snake Eyes' costume was especially weird - why the hell would you put him in black rubber for? Just give him a black outfit that's similar to fucking Storm Shadow, plus his visor! Why the hell did he need black rubber for? And why are there fake lips on it?

The plot - I'm sorry, what the hell did they do to the Baroness? Was it so essential that she have a romance with Duke and actually be brainwashed to be with Destro? Was the audience meant to care about this?

If so, the ploy utterly failed, because Channing Tatum is the worst actor in the history of the universe. The delivery of every line was flat as a fucking tack, with no range whatsoever. This guy's a fucking dialtone. What were they thinking?

And then you've got ... Wayans. This guy was so out of place in this movie it was insane. I didn't laugh at a single one of his stupid lines. He sucked.

Speaking of the script, the underwater climax blew chunks. I get the feeling future film makers will look at this abomination of a climax and swear off doing undersea combat ever again. Even if it didn't look cheap, from an action point of view it just didn't work on any level. It didn't help that in the final stretch this movie turned into Van Helsing all over again - drawn out, loud, overbearing and tedious. I was making snide remarks about what I was seeing more than I was paying attention to the plot, so the whole bit after Destro gets injured and they're escaping and then Duke and the Baroness are escaping and the submarine and Ripcord in his Blatant Firefox Ripoff and blah blah blah all became a blur of nonsense.

That's not to say it was all bad though. The Paris chase scene was genuinely good, if overlong - and with the exception of Tatum and Wayans, all the actors put in performances that were appropriate to the movie they were in. I especially liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt as The Doctor/ Cobra Commander.

I give this misfire a 1/5.

Blah.

[Stofsk]

So you didn't like it then?

[Oskuro]

He's probably trying some reverse psychology trick on us.

[Vympel]

Oh, another plus for this abortion of a film - I'm still going to get the action figures, because unlike the characters in the film, they look awesome.

[Drooling Iguana]

Unfortunately it looks like the only unmasked Destro figure that they're releasing for this movie is a convention exclusive, so I won't be able to put together a 1:18 scale 9th Doctor.

[neoolong]

It's still in stock at Hasbro's online shop.

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm not going to pay $30 for a head.

And HTS's Canadian shipping is stupidly expensive.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtYLOuVi9Ik

That was a freaking awesome vid. Superherohype has a cast-list, and I find it hilarious that they got bigger names for the spoof than they did for the movie. Olivia Wilde as the Baroness would've been AWESOME in the film.

[Big Orange]

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had vastly superior CGI to G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, I give you that.

Also a handful of things about this movie still bug me:

* Storm Shadow had serious misgivings about Zartan ruthlessly stabbing a female soldier in the back, but a few scenes later he was participating in the ruthless, vengeful attack on Paris. He even fired the nano-warhead at the Eiffel Tower - women and children could've easily been among the casualties that were literally eaten alive by that nano crap and crushed or plunged to their doom when the Eiffel Tower was felled. Not forgetting the casual shooting of an unarmed bystanding to make a point.

* Why "weaponize" the nano-warheads through elaborate and dangerous means, when the nanomachines were in vessels shaped like RPG rounds and intended to be fired?

* On a related note, how the heck did the French scientist/businessman have such a gigantic laboratory beneath a normal office building in the middle of Paris, an underground facility so big, it rivals the CERN complex? Logistics/safety/planning problems ahoy, especially in a commercial district.

[Stark]

Oh man, you think Storm Shadow being a vicious, brutal murderer is somehow inconsistent with a personal dislike of killing women AND you think that's a major plothole in the gossamer veil of a story?

What you should really be asking is why shooting tiny robots with high-veloctiy particles made them BETTER.

[Zor]

One thing that i have been thinking about is do the Nanomites eat people? I from what i saw of Paris they seemed to gorge themselves on Metal (cars, the tower, lamp posts and so forth which makes sense as far as self replication) but i did not recall any shots of them actually eating people (which would in most scenarios surely have led to an R rating). However i have only seen the film once.

Zor

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

One thing that i have been thinking about is do the Nanomites eat people? I from what i saw of Paris they seemed to gorge themselves on Metal (cars, the tower, lamp posts and so forth which makes sense as far as self replication) but i did not recall any shots of them actually eating people (which would in most scenarios surely have led to an R rating). However i have only seen the film once.

Zor

I'm pretty sure the ones which attacked Paris were meant to be the standard variety that only ate metal (though since they took off whole car-roofs I guess they must eat other non-organic stuff) while only Cobra Commander was using/ had access to/ modified them to work on living things in various weird ways.

[Stark]

The nano tech is clearly not very rare itself - the specific nanos that were in the weapons were different, but Rex had all kinds of essentially 'medical' robots.