Knowing that this post is part of the longest running column I’ve ever written in which I tag along with the At Odds with Wrestling podcast as they watch wrestling related things every week without a major PPV is half the battle. The other half is getting through some of these assignments. There have been some highlights. But there’s also been Low-Lights. I don’t mean to roast these selections, this isn’t a Barbeque. When there are so many good things to watch, rationalizing watching bad things is a mind bender. I don’t enjoy it, I dread knocking these bad assignments. Maybe next time it will be something better, but I don’t want to jinx it. 

This week we watched the second live action movie of a franchise that never caught on, G.I. Joe: Retaliation. G.I. Joe was my favorite thing as a child of the 80’s. Sure I loved Transformers, and He-Man, and the rest – but nothing compared to the Real American Heroes. My mom theorized that the Joe toys inspired more imagination. He-Man and Transformers, etc. have to take place within a certain set of rules and locations. Whereas G.I. Joe can have battles all over the earth, in the ocean, in space, and I’m sure anywhere else our grade school minds could conceive. There is a wealth of characters who can fight anywhere and even more that are specialized to any locale imaginable. These two opposing forces weren’t a team or a club or a unit, they were both literal armies. 

So why is none of that in the movies?! 

As a generic soldier action movie starring some recognizable people, it’s perfectly fine. As a representation of the G.I. Joe franchise, it sucks. I’m not going to mess with McGuffins here, except for one at the end, so this is a very simplified plot synopsis. A Joe team has a successful mission. The only Joes we’re introduced to by name are Roadblock (the Rock), Duke, Flint, and Lady Jaye. Maybe some of the other soldiers are Alpine or Bazooka or any one of the other hundred plus Joes there were over the years. They have some down time before flying out in the morning and oh no that’s when some planes and other soldiers attack. Duke dies, because that’s what he does in movies (hey everyone, Duke’s going to be ok!) while RoadRock, Flint, and Lady Jaye hide in a well. Rock seems like a well actually kind of guy. I will say, there’s a cool scene when an enemy soldier fires into the well and the bullets go past Rock in the water. The three survivors team up to get out of the well and now are on a mission to get back home and find out who attacked and killed most of the Joe team. 

Meanwhile, it appears the President of the United States has turned against GI Joe. He says the Joe team turned heel and his new covert group, Cobra, saved the day. That seems an odd way for a president to act. Oh, it’s Zartan in disguise. He’s out in direct sunlight too many times for someone who’s supposed to be Zartan. 

Mean meanwhile, the Joe remainder of the Joe team is being hunted so Snake Eyes turns himself in. Snake Eyes is put in a maximum security facility that also houses Cobra Commander and Destro. But wait, it’s actually Storm Shadow in disguise! Storm Shadow executes his elaborate plan to spring Cobra Commander and they decide that Destro can stay and rot. Also, most of the prison guards and the warden die along the way. Which isn’t really villainous because the warden was just this side of turning the hose on Pam Grier. 

Somehow while Cobra’s two main leaders were locked up, Cobra has done a bang up job of infiltrating every part of the United States government. The remaining Joes make it back state side and start some high tech yet still abandoned old tech guerilla warfare. Meanwhile Snake Eyes and Jinx fight ninjas in the mountains to rescue Storm Shadow. I’m jumping around a lot, but Storm Shadow turns face because he realizes that Zartan is the one who actually killed his master. 

All the Joes are now together and they recruit one more guy, the original Joe, as played by Bruce Willis. I remember General Joe Colton debuting in the comics (way back in issue 86) and it was a fun read alongside my uncles who had the original toys from the 1960’s. 

There’s a big fight. The Rock takes out Firefly, who has a better costume than Snake Eyes! (Turns out Ray Stevenson invested in his own costume for Firefly, because he liked the comics so much.) The Joes save the day. Cobra members die and don’t safely fall back to earth in parachutes. There are no red nor blue lasers, just bullets. Cobra Commander gets away and while the Joes celebrate the victory, there is the promise of another battle ahead. 

All of this sounds fine, so why does it miss the mark? 

For starters, I’m not a big fan of Rock waving his dick around (or LDS as Cody theorized). Companies, studios, promotions, and franchises existed before the Rock and will exist after. Know your role, play your role, and move on. Rock’s role is to be Roadblock. 

However, minus holding a giant gun, we don’t get Roadblock. For decades we’ve been asked if we smell what the Rock is cooking, and yet Roadblock doesn’t make a single dog or burger. Not a single rhyme is spoken. While Roadblock’s first figure and look was camouflage heavy, his second look had some good color to it which would have popped on screen. 

But where was that color? Snake Eyes is all black as a way to save money which just happened to also make him the coolest figure in the line. But his black only works as a counter to so much color. Jinx does a good job with her red suit while training and her yellow one in the mountains. As previously said, Firefly looks cool thanks to the actor, not thanks to anyone else on the payroll. Where’s Flint’s beret? Where is Lady Jaye’s spear? Hell, the last time she was in a dress or any sort of outfit like Adrianne Palicki wears, it was when Lady Jaye was in Destro’s family castle. I want t-shirts and jackets and outfits that make no sense for soldiers but look cool and sell toys. There’s a reason why Grunt, Breaker, and Zap get forgotten. Because they all looked the same! 

The closest this story gets to classic GI Joe is the absurd weapon. Zeus is a satellite system in orbit that can drop a metal rod and through the power of gravity alone, destroy a city.  All of the destruction, but none of the fallout of a nuclear weapon. The only thing more absurd than this idea is the fact that it is conceivable, and depending on what conspiracy rabbit hole you want to go down, can or does exist. Thor’s hammer, or the Rod of God. Which ranks right up there with the MASS Device. 

There’s glimmers of something here, but overall what makes GI Joe unique and beloved is stripped away for generic action. Ironically, I think the only way to get a true GI Joe action movie would be through more failure. The best live action Transformers movie is Bumblebee. It took years of racial stereotype robots in disguise, lack of any color, and King Arthur (?!) with diminishing returns before someone finally said hey what if we made it look like the cartoon and had robots that look different from each other. I think we need one or two more bad Joe movies before someone finally looks at that animated movie opening and thinks to put that on screen.