Still haven't made time to watch this yet.

I paid $19.99 before coupon as well. They're not bad mindless action films, but since GI Joe was so much after my time, I have no clue as to the characters and why the changes from film to film.

I knew he'd return but the film didn't even acknowledge his previous "demise". The way the scene was done in the previous movie (though the filmmakers already had in mind he'd return) it was to make it seem as if it was final. His return should have been treated with more awe rather than a shrug and business as usual. That's actually my issue with the sequel. Even the major character deaths felt rather unimportant.

The Storm Shadow thing bothered me at first too. Now I just figure he was taken to the same healer lady after the first film.

It's pretty clear that Chu was forced to work within a lot of the constraints that Stephen Sommers dumped on the franchise in Rise of Cobra. I'm sure that he would have preferred to just ignore it completely, reboot the series and start over fresh. But he wasn't allowed to.

Sommers absolutely destroyed many of the iconic characters in the franchise - characters who deserve to be part of a new movie. The Baroness is completely unusable now. If Chu is forced to adhere to the continuity of Rise of Cobra, he's going to have to take some great liberties to find ways to bring those characters back.

Duke was supposed to die in the 1987 animated movie, until Hasbro panicked (due to negative feedback from Transformers: The Movie) and had the ending rewritten to dub in a new off-screen line of dialogue explaining that he'd only been in a coma and would pull through. The character's death in this movie is a pretty clear reference to that, as if to say, "This is what was supposed to happen." Even the staging of the scene is pretty similar.

I bought the Extended Cut at BB and I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed the little bit extra that it added.

One question, what is the "choose your side" thing before the movie starts? Is that Extended v Theatrical Cuts? If so, it'd be nice if they actually wrote that somewhere on the screen.

As someone who enjoyed both movies, I actually liked the first better, I'd really like to see the Joes from the first flick back in the third, even if it's just a cameo. And Duke has to be back. That's a necessity IMO.

All that is is the menu type. One is red and the other blue; and IIRC the menu sounds are different. Otherwise, everything else is the same.

How about the nanomite treatment not having been too successful, making her sanity questionable and maybe even leaving her in a coma. She wakes up, a little crazy already, finds out about Duke dying and goes batshit and rejoins with Cobra? They could even have her just locked away because of how crazy the nanomites could have made her and Cobra Commander breaks her out or something? There are people who are paid to write this sort of thing. Doesn't seem too hard.

I just want Guy Pearce as Tomax & Xamot in the third one.

It's a six-of-one/half-dozen-of-the-other type of thing for me. The new pre-credits scene destroys Roadblock's "Motherf..." joke and kills the pacing of the intro. It also makes the actual credits sequence, which introduces the characters again, redundant. The longer Snake Eyes/Jinx training scene is better than the condensed version in the theatrical cut, but it's awkwardly placed right after the credits. The beginning of the theatrical cut flows much better. Also, the storyline about Jinx constantly needing to prove herself to Snake Eyes makes Snake Eyes come across as kind of a prick.

The gag with the President's kid is stupid and should have remained on the cutting room floor. The subplot about Roadblock going rogue is awkward and doesn't really work. Most of the other additions are take-'em-or-leave-'em. They neither help nor hurt the movie significantly.

The only place the extended cut is definitively better is the final confrontation between Storm Shadow and Zartan, which is much more coherent in this version.

Overall, I think I'd default to watching the theatrical cut.

Duke is dead. G.I. Joe has a massive character roster to draw from. He's easily replaced with another character in a leadership role. Lt. Falcon or General Flagg would be obvious choices. As far as we know, Hawk is still alive, so they could bring Dennis Quaid back. Of course, there's Bruce Wills as well, if he'd agree to return.

There are a lot of options for this.

I support this suggestion.

The sequel already is a reboot since little to nothing was carried over. Heck, the facility where CC and Destro were held was even completely changed so you don't even have that to fall back on. The only carryover is Zartan as President but the whole SS story doesn't jive since they don't even bother to acknowledge when he found out Zartan killed the Hard Master. For a movie where Chu focused so hard on the ninjas, they all felt very poorly written.

And that's not to claim that ROC was a masterpiece of writing. That movie's script was being written while it was being filmed and part of it was even written during the writer's strike.

If even Larry Hama has gone on record saying that the changes don't matter much, people shouldn't get all worked up. And Baroness is easy to bring back. Have her go evil again and end of story. So she now has a back story with Duke instead of Destro. In the end of the day, it's no big loss. And it's not the first time that Scarlett was paired with someone other than Snake Eyes. Heck, G.I. Joe: Resolute paid homage to both her love interests and made it into a hastily resolved love triangle. ROC just chose a new love interest. Big deal.

Oh and the character changes weren't Summers' fault. Blame Paramount. Their execs wanted everything changed and one of them even insisted on ditching Snake Eyes' mask because said executive personally did not like masked characters. Hasbro had to intervene at that point.

Very old news and unimportant. Duke and Optimus Prime (as well as Cobra Commander and Megatron) were meant to die in order to introduce new toys. It didn't go over well because Prime was more beloved by fans than Hasbro anticipated. And at the very least, Duke's intended death in in the '87 animated movie was far better than his matter-of-fact death in G.I. Joe: Retaliation. They couldn't even send him off properly.

Face it, Chu had as many missteps as Summers. The only thing Chu got right was the new costumes for Snake Eyes and Cobra Commander (the latter coming across as a nobody in his own organization).

I'd like to see Falcon brought in personally by General Hawk. Maybe even not have the other Joes know that Falcon is Duke's half brother and assume he's Hawk's kid. That could work as a homage to the original intent for the character in the animated movie before they decided to make him Duke's half brother.

Theoretically... How long were Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint in the well? Who's to say, Duke didn't take off his dog tags and put them on another charred body. Maybe he took out a Cobra trooper, and snuck back with them to spy on Cobra Island which has yet to be revealed.

I mean, they brought back Storm Shadow after the was sliced up, and then fell into the icy depth of the ocean... With no actual explanation!

fitprod

His body wasn't really charred. There was a full head shot of him when Roadblock pulled off his dogtags that was pretty clearly Channing Tatum without much battle damage. Sorry.

Now if they wanted to have the Baroness secretly back with Cobra (retconned into Retaliation) having made a clone of Duke that she brought to the battle and switched with the hurt, but still alive, Duke so she could kidnap him and nurse him back to health... Wait a second, what is this a cheesy 80s cartoon made to sell toys?

Just make the 3rd one the one where Cobra tries to use rock music to take over the world and get it over with.

C'mon, guys. Most of your ideas here are even worse than the ones the writers of these movies came up with.

Duke, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were also carried over, and the movie opens with Cobra Commander and Destro in prison.

Chu selectively ignored things that he felt he could get away with (like Storm Shadow's apparent death), and tried his best to course-correct the characters (especially Cobra Commander) and storylines, but he was still obligated to frame this is a direct sequel to Rise of Cobra.

You can use comic book logic to explain away Storm Shadow (he didn't actually die, he was saved at the last minute off-camera...), but Sommers' version of Baroness is just unsalvagable. That character is in no way the Baroness. If Chu wants to use the Baroness in another movie, he can't use Sommers' version, which means that he'll have to really stretch to explain why she's so different than her last appearance.

I don't disagree with you on this. I thought that Retaliation was a big improvement over Rise of Cobra (which I consider unwatchable), but it was still a mediocre movie.

Larry Hama is just happy that his name wasn't on the movie. Like many authors, he considers the movie a completely separate entity from whatever he'd written - which is easy in this case, since Rise of Cobra wasn't based on any of his comics.

I'm not the sort of fan who insists on a dogmatic adherence to the original comics, but nonetheless Rise of Cobra threw away too many core components of the franchise. Most of the characters in that movie were unrecognizable. You wouldn't make a Batman movie in which Batman is a vampire, would you? That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of the material.

Chu had missteps, but nowhere near as many as Sommers. That isn't even debatable. Sommers is a slack-jawed moron (literally - watch the behind-the-scene footage of him directing on set with his tongue hanging out of his mouth), and has admitted that he didn't even know G.I. Joe existed prior to being hired for the job. Chu was at least familiar with the property, cared about it, and wanted to make a good movie out of it. He didn't entirely succeed, but he tried.

Falcon is only Duke's half-brother in the animated movie. In no other continuity (comics, file cards) are they related. I don't think there's any need to revive that plot point. Falcon is supposed to be an officer in the Green Berets. His depiction in the animated movie as a dumbling doofus was an embarrassment.

I thought Chu had as many missteps as Sommers too

As far as Baroness... fuck it, just release Destro and have him say he needed a "new" Baroness to work with him.

That example doesn't even go far enough. It would be more like if Batman wore all green, didn't have a mask, sang sea shanties in every scene, had both parents still alive and kickin', and planted trees everywhere he went instead of fighting crime.

Who wants a G.I. Joe movie where the big money sequence has zero tanks, zero planes, zero guns, and just a boring, white van with dudes in super-armor running around at 120 mph? COBRA has nanites eating Paris, and they send five Joes. Of course, COBRA's invasion force at that point consists of, like, one SUV, so I guess it makes sense.

Well, in all fairness, it wasn't a full scale invasion. It was meant as a clandestine operation. Which is why only five Joes would be sent. It'd be a bureaucratic and political nightmare to get authorization for a full on military response in the heart of Paris. Technically, Joes weren't even authorized to be there. That's why the Alpha Team was officially disbanded and required to return to their respective countries of origin for reassignment back into their original branches of military.

And the big money sequence was the underwater battle, although I do feel the accelerator suit sequence was more fun than the big finale.

The underwater battle, in which icebergs sink to the bottom of the ocean, because neither Stephen Sommers, nor the six credited screenwriters (and probably a dozen more uncredited), nor any of the 150 VFX people working on the scene, was aware that ice floats in water.

There is no defending that movie.

Retaliation also has some stupid stuff in it, but nothing even remotely that stupid.

Oh, I think they were fully aware of it but didn't care because they thought it looked "cool" or something.

It's funny that I decided to watch both films back to back today, since my copy of Retaliation just arrived in the mail, and I still enjoyed the first movie more. Yes, it's got it's faults but, for a movie that was being written on the fly, the narrative is far more coherent than the sloppy sequel. I also had a good laugh when, while showing the sequel to my mom, she asked in the form of a complaint "did Michael Bay direct this?" when Firefly and Roadblock have their first fight. She was genuinely shocked when I told her Jon Chu directed the movie because she thought he of all people would no not to rely on excessive shaky cam and fast edits.

Actually, they excused the sinking ice due to all the steel construction built into the ice pack (you know, from Destro's fortress that was built into and under the ice pack. That's what weighed it down and made it sink.

And Roadblock with the tanks has to be the most mind bogglingly retarded action sequence masquerading as a climax that I've seen in decades. Also, President Zartan alludes on a few occasions that Joes all over the world were slaughtered. This suggests that Cobra is an even larger organization that originally seen (in fact, Cobra Commander's relationship with Firefly makes it seem like Cobra had been established for many years prior to the events of ROC) yet they didn't have much of an army defending the White House. Did most everyone go on vacation when CC was making his big coup? And, if Zartan did indeed train Storm Shadow and make him the man he is today, why was Zartan cowering like a pussy instead of actually fighting Storm Shadow. That moment called for a big fight and they could have easily glitched his nanites (or do any other shape changing nonsense) to replace Price with a more physically fit fight performer.

The movie has some good stuff like the first 20 minutes and the mountain fight (after the underwhelming fight between SE and SS/Jinx and the old lady) against all those ninjas. But for the most part it feels like a well-intentioned but unfortunately cobbled together mess. At least it still manages to be fun. Hopefully the next film will finally iron out all the kinks.

Not a great choice.
I would like to see those ginger twins they used in Gremlins 2 and T2.

You're joking, right?

That excuse doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you watch the scene. Lots of empty chunks of ice unencumbered by anything plummet to the bottom of the ocean like rocks.

I'll remind you that the movie also has submarines flying around under water like fighter jets, and an actual figher jet that can fly at Mach 20,000 from Moscow to Washington DC in five seconds and only responds to voice commands in Celtic.

Rise of Cobra is dead stupid. The movie isn't "turn off your brain" entertainment. It's "shoot yourself in the head to stop the pain" torture.

I don't disagree with any of this. The destruction of London (presumably killing millions of people) also felt out of place given the tone of the rest of the movie and was handled almost dismissively. Roadblock's pushing the self-destruct button on the satellites at literally the last second was also exceedingly lame. Why were the satellites rigged to explode in the first place?

Even so, the movie's still not as stupid or awful as Rise of Cobra. Rising to the level of mediocrity is a huge improvement over that garbage.

It seemed odd that the Zeus satellite had such an involved and time-consuming clamping process to ready the tungsten rod which apparently only needed to drop from space.

Also, while I was able to suspend my disbelief that Cobra would supplant the Joes as a special forces unit under the President why was the military not present for such an important gathering of world leaders?

Nitpicking aside I enjoyed Retaliation. Hopefully it's a reboot in the right direction moving forward.

Clearly, this guy designed the Zeus satellites: