After an exciting opening featuring a great, powerful rendition of the GI Joe theme and a fierce battle between the Joes and Cobra before the Statue of Liberty, we get treated to a ludicrous story about a city full of giant bugs called Cobra-La, which spawned Cobra Commander and had a hand in the creation of Serpentor, reaching out to Cobra to get them to capture the latest in sci-fi technology, the Broadcast Energy Transmitter or BET, so that they can use it to cook up some giant spores floating over the Earth to turn us humans into ugly monsters while the Cobra-La folk hang out safely in their ice dome. Only GI Joe, the real American Hero, stands in their way, and with many Joes incapacitated in some way or another, it's up to the Rawhides - including Duke's smart ass half brother Lt. Falcon, female Asian martial artist Jinx, silent Chuckles, cynical Tunnel Rat, good natured Law and his dog and the in movie only sports man Big Lob - along with Sgt. Slaughter's Renegades - Mercer, Red Dog and Taurus - to step in and lend a helping hand.
I use to watch this over and over as a kid because it was the easiest access I had to GI Joe when I couldn't catch the reruns, but even as a kid I thought it sucked, mostly because the Cobra-La thing just didn't gel in with the rest of what I knew about GI Joe. Apparently having Cobra Commander be a scion of Cobra-La stemmed from an idea one of the show's writers had that CC was really just a front man for a much larger, more sinister organization. Even by 1980s kid show standards this whole movie's plot was just a little too far fetched.
Still, I think this was a little bit better than the Transformers movie, but like Transformers the GI Joe movie suffers from trying to push out the characters we already loved in favor of new characters we never got to know very well (like the Transformers movie, this was supposed to bridge the gap to a 3rd season, but GI Joe's 3rd year never happened), which takes a lot of fun out of the movie.
There's also the thing about Duke - they say he went into a coma, but after taking a friggin snake javelin right in the heart, the man was clearly dead. Apparently they had to change the death, originally set because Duke was being phased out of the toy line and the writers were tired of fighting with the toy owner Hasbro to keep him in the show, because of the backlash to Optimus Prime's death in the Transformers flick. Personally I think GI Joe could have gotten away with killing Duke (not that I wanted him to die); Optimus Prime need not have died. Too bad, because the brush with death, right when Duke rasps "Yo... Joe..." for the last time (and let's face it, no one yelled "Yo Joe!" better than Michael Bell, with Duke easily being the best role of his voice over career) was actually proving to be very touching, but the coma line ruins it. The writers themselves admitted it sucked and have pointed out that if you watch it without sound and go just by the reactions of Scarlett, Falcon and General Hawk, and the way our favorite rugged blonde man's head rolls to the side and his grip loosens, then it's quite evident that Duke dies.
The thing about Falcon being Duke's half-brother was also a bit tacky, though Don "Miami Vice" Johnson read the part fairly well, especially since they really look nothing alike; Falcon was originally supposed to be General Hawk's son, and they really should have stuck to that. But with the beret he could have passed as a relative of Flint's.
Flint, so prominent in the cartoon, has very little to do here, sadly, as do many other beloved GI Joe characters.
On the plus side, the animation is great, the action sequences are above par and so is the music. The opening is probably the best thing about the movie (and probably would have made a better plot for the movie).
I use to watch this over and over as a kid because it was the easiest access I had to GI Joe when I couldn't catch the reruns, but even as a kid I thought it sucked, mostly because the Cobra-La thing just didn't gel in with the rest of what I knew about GI Joe. Apparently having Cobra Commander be a scion of Cobra-La stemmed from an idea one of the show's writers had that CC was really just a front man for a much larger, more sinister organization. Even by 1980s kid show standards this whole movie's plot was just a little too far fetched.
Still, I think this was a little bit better than the Transformers movie, but like Transformers the GI Joe movie suffers from trying to push out the characters we already loved in favor of new characters we never got to know very well (like the Transformers movie, this was supposed to bridge the gap to a 3rd season, but GI Joe's 3rd year never happened), which takes a lot of fun out of the movie.
There's also the thing about Duke - they say he went into a coma, but after taking a friggin snake javelin right in the heart, the man was clearly dead. Apparently they had to change the death, originally set because Duke was being phased out of the toy line and the writers were tired of fighting with the toy owner Hasbro to keep him in the show, because of the backlash to Optimus Prime's death in the Transformers flick. Personally I think GI Joe could have gotten away with killing Duke (not that I wanted him to die); Optimus Prime need not have died. Too bad, because the brush with death, right when Duke rasps "Yo... Joe..." for the last time (and let's face it, no one yelled "Yo Joe!" better than Michael Bell, with Duke easily being the best role of his voice over career) was actually proving to be very touching, but the coma line ruins it. The writers themselves admitted it sucked and have pointed out that if you watch it without sound and go just by the reactions of Scarlett, Falcon and General Hawk, and the way our favorite rugged blonde man's head rolls to the side and his grip loosens, then it's quite evident that Duke dies.
The thing about Falcon being Duke's half-brother was also a bit tacky, though Don "Miami Vice" Johnson read the part fairly well, especially since they really look nothing alike; Falcon was originally supposed to be General Hawk's son, and they really should have stuck to that. But with the beret he could have passed as a relative of Flint's.
Flint, so prominent in the cartoon, has very little to do here, sadly, as do many other beloved GI Joe characters.
On the plus side, the animation is great, the action sequences are above par and so is the music. The opening is probably the best thing about the movie (and probably would have made a better plot for the movie).