G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is one of the worst, if not THE worst movie I have ever seen

By Vanessa Ho







When I posted my review of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, I wrote that I grew up playing with the toys. But I also played with G.I. Joes. Now, I didn't love playing with them as much as Transformers, I mean action figures didn't do much except move their legs, arms and heads around vs. Transforming robots.


Nonetheless, I played with them. I don't remember all the names of the toys that I had. I remember playing with Scarlet, Gung Ho and Zartan.


When the first Transformers was a box office success, it was inevitable that their would be a G.I. Joe live action film. There as a 1987 animated movie based on the TV cartoon but that was a real dark and twisted movie that I didn't like at all.

Since I wasn't as big a G.I. Joe fan as a Transformers fan, I really had no desire to see this film but I got a chance to see it for free thanks to Norton (who had a product placement in the film).


The movie didn't screen for criticts and that usually is a sign that the movie sucks. And I had low expectations going into the screening. And I wasn't disappointed in that fact.


First off, all of the acting is terrible. Everyone delivers their lines so stitly that it was laughable. In particular, Rachel Nichols was particularly wooden as Scarlett (although I liked seeing her crossbow weapon) and Dennis Quaid was particularly bad and I expected better from him. But what can you expect when the dialogue was just terrible. I laughed everytime Quaid's General Hawk said "We still got Joes out there" and when he said the G.I. Joe tagline: Knowing is Half the Battle, it came so early and out of the blue that it was laughable and when Channing Tatum as Duke, who was equally wooden, repeated it back, it was also laughable.


Also disappointing was their interpretation of Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). At first he looked like a burn victim with a bad toupee with a half mask that was reminiscent of the medical droid in Empire Strikes Back. Then he ended up looking like Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi and his mask at the end was the iconi pure silver blank mask but he ended up looking like a silver Elephant Man. Also, they re-dubbed Gordon-Levitt's voice as Cobra Commander. What a waste of a talented actor who was so great in (500) Days of Summer.

His henchmen looked either like the Death Eaters from Harry Potter or men with a bug helmet on their head. But it was cool that to see that these henchmen were controlled by Cobra Commander that on their necks you see the Cobra symbol appear on their flesh.

The basic plot of the movie is the G.I. Joes trying to stop some guy name McCullen (Christopher Eccleston -who was so over the top campy) from stealing and then using these weapons he developed called nanomites from destroying the world.

His henchmen include Duke's ex, the Baroness (Sienna Miller) and Storm Shadow (Leey Byung-hun). It actually was laughable when the kept on saying Storm Shadow in regular conversation as if his name was Steve. Of course Storm Shadow as this rivalry with the Joe's Snake Eyes (played by Darth Maul aka Ray Park) as was made apparent with numerous flashbacks employed in the film.


That was also laughable. You can tell when a flashback was coming when one of the characters looks deep in thought.


If I can say one good thing about the movie is the action and fight sequences. I enjoyed the fight sequence at the beginning of the film, the fight at the G.I. Joe headquarters and the chase sequence in Paris, although it did drag in places and the end fight scene.


There were a lot of things that reminded me of Star Wars for some odd reason. You had McCullen's underwater layer that reminded me of Gungan City, home of Jar Jar Binks.


Anyways, don't waste 2 hours and 15 minutes of your life seeing this movie, even the trailers playing in front of weren't interesting.


The only good thing I got out of it was a free T-Shirt!