GI Joe: Retaliation

In a little bit of What’s Up History, GI Joe: Rise of Cobra was actually our first review back in the summer of 2009. So what does that mean about the release of the sequel, GI Joe: Retaliation? Absolutely nothing. But it’s fun to remember the olden days. Retaliation switches gears as a (mostly) new group of Joes must deal with their terrorist nemesis Cobra infiltrating the White House. What does a Cobra operative impersonating the President do? Obviously they label the GI Joes traitors and order an attack on all of them.

The advertising pushed this attack heavily signaling a changing of the guard from the poorly received first installment. Presumably the viewers are then supposed to disregard the original characters. But what’s odd is that the scene also kills off new characters that have storylines introduced and never developed. The rest of the film follows the surviving GI Joes as they try to solve the mystery of the presidential imposter. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays the lead, Roadblock, and takes on most of the film’s heavy lifting. But beyond him, all of the minor characters go undeveloped. There is a possible love interest brewing between Flint (DJ Cotrona) and Lady Jaye, (Adrianne Palicki) but nothing is ever explained or comes from it. The same goes for Jaye’s friendship(?) with Bruce Willis’ character, Joe, a retired colonel.

But the film’s most glaring issue comes in relation to two of the most interesting characters. Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) continue their awesome ninja rivalry from the first film, but in a very weird way. Storm Shadow gets injured and goes to heal in the mountains (obviously). Snake eyes pursues him with Storm Shadow’s cousin, Jinx (Elodie Yung). But not before they go and waste time with Blind Master played by RZA. The few scenes with RZA are terribly written, terribly acted and completely halt the film’s momentum. I would have preferred they end up on the cutting room floor.

GI Joe fans will be happier with this effort than Rise of Cobra, but it’s clear that the series will not earn the notoriety of other franchises like their Hasbro neighbors Transformers. But that should be okay. The Rock came aboard and gave a performance that steadies the ship a bit. GI Joe has always been about keeping track of a ton of characters, but it would seem they were all killed off. This is Roadblock’s franchise now. It’s a shame he doesn’t speak in rhymes like he did in the original cartoon.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.