“Movie” Review: G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra

Massive Note: I give A LOT away, consider it a *Spoiler* warning!

During the early half of my childhood, I remember watching a cartoon called G.I Joe. Looking back on it now, I realize that I only watched it for the guns and explosions – a common thing in American television – in fact thinking back on it, I always thought it was a Action Man show, since I had no idea what G.I Joe was. After about 3 episodes, the broadcaster for some unknown reason cancelled it. Anyway, towards the end of an episode there would be a PSA (Public Service Announcement) teaching kids the good and bad things, which were common in children shows at the time such as Captain Planet, Sonic the Hedgehog etc.

By now you must be thinking what all this has to do with this “review” well at the end of the PSA, a fairly popular catchphrase is spoken at the end: “And knowing is half the battle!” And now, I wish I hadn’t known about this movie.

This movie SUCKS! In fact I’m not going to bother doing a “review” of it. I’m just going to rant and pick out some of the flaws in it. And Yes, this will be very very biased. So stop reading if you want a fair
opinion.

Rant 1 – The overall direction of the movie.
The movie’s direction/set out is pretty damn boring. You get the story, then a flashback, the story, then a flashback etc… A lot of the time the flashbacks are pretty useless because the audience have already figured it out. Sibling rivalries, death of brother etc. To be honest for a movie that was based on a cartoon, based on a series of toys, I never expected this movie to have so much back-story. They are a special force that deals with terrorists etc. They blow shit up, beat up bad guys, END.

Rant 2 – The characters
Out of all of the characters in the movie, about 3 of them were given a full back-story, hence they take most of the flashbacks sequences. To be honest, I was only really interested in the silent Ninja/Snake Eyes. Which was pretty disappointing.
The sudden romance between 2 of the characters; Ripcord and Scarlett was weird. They probably have the least amount of interaction between each other.

Rant 3 – Story
The overall story sucks. Set in the future nanomachines are the new hype on warfare. These nanomachines can eat through metal and something, i really didn’t pay much attention. Basically the bad guys steals it and tries to take over world! Simple stuff really. Except for the fact that these nanomachines can control people’s minds and can alter their facial appearances! So why the hell didn’t they just change their own faces into a powerful person like the President and walk into the White house and just kidnap or mind control the actual president themselves? Which is what they did AT THE END of the movie! Making the movie a waste of time.

I think I’ve covered the overall flaws of the movie, I could probably go on, but I would rather focus on some of the most ridiculous scenes in the movie:

1 – The bad guys find out where the G.I Joe headquarters is (some desert place). So they somehow drive these big drilling machines through the desert and smashes into their base for infiltration. Why does G.I Joe radar not pick this up? How does huge drilling machines be the same as a “small turbulence” (movie quote)

2 – In the same scene, during the infiltration of the headquarters, there was only 1 guard in the base. This is a military base, why is there only 1 guard in the whole base? Better yet, why does nobody else hear the rocks getting smashed through the wall or the rocks that fall onto the ground, when the drilling machines smash through underground. Now that i think about it, there was actually another guard there, but he died in less than 3 seconds. Movie wise, I would say that he would be standing there for more than 10 minutes, which he could have used to like, I don’t know;  maybe shoot the intruders? Or better yet inform everyone else.

3 – There’s a car chase scene within Paris that spans from the The Place de l’Étoil to Champ de Mars to blow up The Eiffel Tower with their nanomachine rocket, which i don’t see why they didn’t just use a normal rocket or just fly in with their spaceship thing, that even attack helicopters can’t destroy, I mean they could have kept that nanomachine and loaded it into a warhead, like they did during the climax of the movie. They would have had 4 warheads to destroy the major capital cities. The G.I Joe’s barely took out 2 – there were 3 of them originally, 1 was taken down by the ninja whilst the other 2 were taken down by plane, except the 2nd one had like 5 seconds remaining upon impact. Therefore if they hadn’t had wasted that one rocket on the Eiffel tower, the bad guys would have succeeded.
Also, in the same scene, during the car chase. They literally smash through buildings, cars and streets, basically everything to chase the bad guys. And they basically try to pass it off that NO ONE was in those buildings and such, or the fact that hundreds of people may be dead or seriously injured. 1 of the guys literally jumps THROUGH A MOVING TRAIN, in their robot suit thing, coincidentally NO ONE was sitting on the window chairs or standing near the window where 1 of the guys jumps THROUGH. How is that even possible!?
ALSO IN THIS SAME SCENE, the bad guys go in front of the moving train and the train collides onto the side of their car. The car SUFFERS NO MAJOR DAMAGE how is that possible? And that’s not the worst of it. The car somehow flies through the air doing at least 5 rotations and ignites into flames and scrapes along the road. Even that’s not the worst of it, the bad guys literally come out of the car, with 2 bruises on their faces and runs off IN PERFECT CONDITION, no limping or anything. Their clothes all clean and white too, no dirt no nothing. By the end of this scene, the French government arrests them, but they SET THEM FREE without any form of punishment.

4 – The Ninja in black/Snake Eyes Flashback 1 and 2. in the first flashback we find out that he’s dome white kid living in the streets of Tokyo eating rats. Sneaks into some house, steals food and fights another kid. The other kid’s master comes in and basically tells the kid to stfu and talk english. (Which is actually really funny) Then in the second flashback they all talk in Japanese and the 2 kids become “brothers” Even though they blatantly show that they hate each other. Then the other kid stabs and kills their master. Other kid runs off joins the bad guys. Because of this, Snake Eyes took a vow of silence, never to speak again. Wierdo.
I should have put this in the previous rant but whatever: in the car chase in Paris, Snake Eyes clings onto the bottom of the bad guy’s car and does virtually nothing to stop it. When he FINALLY reaches the roof, he just stabs his sword and shoots his gun, through the roof of the car.(Best way to not break the nanomachines and to not spread them throughout the city /sarcasm)

5 – I know this is supposed to be a prequel of some sort, but did they really have to put Destro (Main bad guy) at the END of the movie? In fact the bad guys don’t even acknowledge themselves as Cobra. (Evil team) And when he does show up, he gets arrested and sent to jail in less than 5 seconds. Anti-climatic enough?

Ok, this is getting way too long and you’re probably bored from reading it now, if not before or bothered. There are much more and i mean MUCH MORE things wrong with this movie. Such as the age rating or a lot of the scenes etc. Overall, movie sucks even if it is supposed to be aimed at 12 year olds, I assume. But when, even the 12 years olds starts to asks their parents why and how the bad guys survived that car chase scene, the fire rotating car blah blah, then clearly the director/script writer fucked up. And yes there was 3 of them sitting behind me in the cinema.

So if you like Giant explosions and mindless violence with no logic at all – The Good old American way – then this movie might be to your liking.

I watched the watchmen

All right all right…everyone is making reviews about this movie, but I’m not going to make a review of the plot at all, but I will try to analyze some characters and try to show you their view of the world, starting from no less, Nite Ow-…RORSCHACH:

Rorschach was scarred on his childhood, the reason?No, it’s not that they parents divorced or that his puppy was killed; it turns out that his mother was a prostitute and his father is missing.But the “worst” part, is that his mom didn’t care at all if he saw her…ehm… “doing business”, in fact, she shouted to him “I should have aborted you!”, it’s not exactly what every child wants to hear from mom, but it’s probably the best and longest conversation between both.

So, now to Rorschach mind:

As I told you his past (not all, just childhood), I’ll try to understand his concept of  “justice”.Rorschach was since from his childhood picked on by bullies, and lived among the “filthy”, so he didn’t had the best life while a kid, but it seems that when he got matured enough, his “justice”, would be nothing, but (physical) punishment.This philosophy of his, was probably because where he lived, people were often arrested and/or beaten, so he didn’t “learn” any other way to do justice, but with his own hands (and feet).One thing that I think it’s “funny”, it’s that his concept of justice, it’s A LOT similar to Kira (Light Yagami – Death Note) justice, “punish the guilty, save the innocent”, which is a simple way to take justice, that is also considered, a childish vision of justice;it’s not because someone is in jail, that you can walk in his cell and break his legs because he deserved it, there’s also the possibility of the guy being innocent.So, even that Rorschach is considered the most “realist” or “pessimistic” character, we can’t deny that his concept of justice it’s not proper for someone who DO justice.But his morbid justice, wasn’t like this all the time, he actually, used to put them in jail;that was before the little missing girl case (that I’m not going into details), that really deformed his mind and made him realise how cruel can a human being be to another human being, that’s really a shock for someone who always tried to follow the society’s concept of justice and believing it with all his might; when he found out that the girl was killed, mutilated and probably raped, he got insane (even that he doesn’t shows it), his rage was too strong, and to top that all, the murderer used the kid’s bones to feed his dogs, Rorschach couldn’t take it, he killed both dogs and the murderer in that night, extra crispy (if you have read the comic you’ll know what I’m talking about).

Some of his “friends” consider him paranoid, which is half true, because he’s the one with the attitude, but maybe, the wrong attitude.

Rorschach is one of the most clever characters that I’ve seen, and personally, one of my favorite even that I don’t share the same vision of Justice that he follows.

Now that I’m done with Rorschach, it’s Nite Owl time.

Nite Owl is one of those good ol’ super heroes, he fights for society’s justice, always get the bad guys on jail, and repeat the cycle.

In fact, this is the second Nite Owl, the first one is retired and works on an old car’s fix shop.

Nite Owl’s concept of justice is pretty much what I said, beat ‘em up, to jail, cycle.But one interesting thing, is that he’s always trying to convince Rorschach to give up on being a “hero”, that he should take care of his own personal life (which he has practically none, because at the whole movie/comic we see Rorschach unmasked, but as a street hobo, holding a big sign saying “the end is near”).Both used to be partners, but as you can assume, Nite Own gave up on being a masked hero, and tried to have a normal life, but he half succeeded on it.

Also, being partner of Rorschach, made Nite Owl realise that there’s not only the bad guys with the black cowboy hat and the good guys wearing the white hat, in fact, Rorschach is the one who wears the grey hat, and Nite Owl the white hat, the town sheriff.

As Nite Owl was supposed to be their “leader”, he was totally aware of either Rorschach and the Comedian actions, and he didn’t do anything at all with them, but trying to talk reason into their heads, if he really followed the “cop justice” he would try harder, even if that means a beating, I have two explanations for his actions.

1- He was actually learning from both Rorschach and the Comedian actions to what was the real justice and the “American dream”.

or

2- He’s trying to ignore their actions since he’s not a masked vigilant anymore and because also, they are their friends.

But one thing is right, Nite Owl never really changed his vision of justice at the whole movie/comic (unless, of course, at the very ending).As we can see, he’s the “old schooll super hero”, and always will try his best to do the right thing to everyone, even if that means to kill millions of people -STOP!-, at this time, Nite Owl saw that by killing millions of “innocents”, saves billions of “innocents”; this really got into his mind at the end of the movie, and he ultimately agreed with that extreme peace action, which I consider, when he got really mature at the super hero subject.

Well, at this point, I’m only making these two psychological analyzes, the next are:

The Comedian, and Jon.

Thank you