First things first — because this is what most of you want to know — G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a better G.I. Joe movie than its predecessor, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Havings said that, let’s address Retaliation director Jon Chu’s question, asked conspiciously over the end credits to the tune of The Heavy’s “How You Like Me Now?”
I liked you an awful lot, G.I. Joe: Retaliation. But I wanted to love you.
Retaliation was pegged early on as a soft reboot of the G.I. Joe franchise. In fact, there appeared to be so little in the way of carryover from Rise of Cobra that a lot of people where left wondering if it might completely ignore the events of the first film. Changing the formula seemed like the right move, but a bold move, nonetheless. Especially when you consider that Rise of Cobra, despite being critically panned, was a box office success. But having seen it twice now — in standard and in 3D — maybe the filmmakers weren’t as bold as we were led to believe, because if you just ignore the marketing and fan chatter, Retaliation is a full-on sequel to Rise of Cobra and it never tries to hide it.
Following a by-the-numbers action opener reintroducing Duke (Channing Tatum), and some new Joes — Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jaye (Andrianne Palicki), Flint (D.J. Cotrona), and Mouse (Joseph Mazzello (and our first Justified connection)) — we get a video game style recap that covers the events of the first movie and updates us on the current Joe status quo. A mention of the “nanomite wars”, Duke’s promotion to team leader, and the underground imprisonment of Cobra Commander and Destro that sets things firmly in the existing continuity, and with that, we’re off and running — welcome to G.I. Joe II!
We find Zartan, Cobra’s resident master-of-disguise, still masquerading as the President of the United States. It’s a plot point that requires actor Jonathan Pryce to play both the POTUS and Zartan, and it’s obvious Pryce had a blast doing it. In fact, Pryce is so good in the role and gets so many good lines (“I know they call it a waterboard, but I never get tired of it.”), you almost feel bad for Arnold Vosloo, the actor who portrayed Zartan in Rise of Cobra and in Retaliation, albiet mostly as a special effect without a speaking role this time around.
Presumably acting on some unknown contengency plan to revive Cobra, President Zartan pins an assassination on Snake Eyes and sets Duke and the Joes up for an dessert ambush, killing most of the team by Cobra death squad — Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint being the only survivors. And thanks in part to his penchant for dropping bombs and blowing things up all the time, the President’s approval ratings are at an all-time high, so no one suspects a thing when he replaces G.I. Joe with an all new special operations force codenamed COBRA.
Really. He calls it Cobra.
With G.I. Joe out of the way, Cobra set their sights on freeing Cobra Commander. Now, undoubtably, people will tell you that the best part of Retaliation is the mountain battle between Snake Eyes and the red ninja clan, and I’ll admit, it’s pretty awesome. But for me, Retaliation doesn’t get any better than Operation: Free Cobra Commander. This sequence has it all: a multi-billion dollar underground prison with only two inmates, the amazing Walton Goggins (second Justified connection), a ninja bait and switch, pickeled Destro, mad-science fiction, Firefly’s motorcycle that turns into, not one, but six seperate missiles. Guys, say what you want about ninjas and snowflakes, but it’s a playset come to life on the big screen and it’s the best part of this movie. Hugely entertaining!
Whlie Cobra’s busy getting the band back together (sorry, Destro), Roadblock, Lady Jaye, and Flint are back in the US, speculating on who attacked them, and in Retaliation’s most astonishing leap of logic, Roadblock and the team come to the conclusion that the President was behind it, and they’re off to — I kid you not — kill him. Admittedly, I’m not exactly up to the minute on rank and file or who’s who in the military, but really, Roadblock? The only person you can think of that might’ve orchestrated the attack on the Joes is the president? And right there is where Retaliation starts to kind of unravel, and by the time the RZA shows up as the Blind Master in his penthouse dojo, the narrative just goes out the window.
Continued belowIt’s hard to say if it’s the RZA’s acting (starring the RZA as… the RZA?), or the slapdash introduction of Jinx (Elodie Yung), and how quickly Snake Eyes’ mission to capture Storm Shadow comes together, but none of it feels like it fits in with the movie we’ve been watching. Yes, we’ve seen Storm Shadow by this point, and we’ve met Snake Eyes and know that he’s a Joe, but that’s about it. In the film’s defense, I completely understood what was going on, but I’m a lifer and would be embarrassed if I didn’t. But if you don’t know G.I. Joe, you probably aren’t up on Storm Shadow’s family tree, and I imagine the whole scene was just plain weird and out of sync with everything seen up to that point.
But it’s in there for one reason, and one reason only: to set up the movie’s much hyped battle between Snake Eyes, Jinx, and the Arashikage ninjas tending to Storm Shadow. Since this is comics website, I’ll assume most of you recognize this entire sequence serves as an homage to Larry Hama’s most famous issue of the classic comic, “G.I. Joe” #21, “the silent issue.” And I won’t even pretend like I didn’t go full 11 year old at the awesome spectacle of it all, because I 100% did. From the shuriken versus uzis hallway showdown between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, to the video game style wire race, to the eventual avalanche climax, Retaliation rolled out the kind of big budget G.I. Joe that every fan dreamed about since the credits rolled on Rise of Cobra, and director Jon Chu deserves the round of applause he gives himself for bringing it all to the big screen.
But as fun as the mountain fight is, it’s probably the most egregious example of where Retaliation goes wrong. Here, the filmmakers are so committed to making a movie for the fans that they forgot other people might be watching it. The lead-in to the scene and everything after is basically its own little, super-stylized short film that eventually catches back up with the rest of the plot, without ever really explaining why we’re supposed to care about any of it. And the film takes a very similar approach to just about everything else that comes after. Some guns are handed out, some fights happen, and characters hideout in broad dayligh, and by the time Cobra Commander takes a group of world leaders hostage in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Chu and company are hoping that you’ve completely forgotten about the crazy satellites we never see going into space, or the fact that Storm Shadow and Jinx are in the room when Cobra Commander presses a button that destroys London. By the end of it all, there are so many toy, comic, and cartoon homages running rampant on the screen that the whole thing can barely hold itself together, and I’m not quite convinced that it does.
But still, somehow, it’s impossible not to be completely entertained by the Rock as Roadblock. Outside of Terry Crews, he’s the only guy who could’ve pulled off the role, and god almighty, the man’s smile is infectious. As dumb as things get, he keeps smiling and I was right there, grinning ear to ear with him.
And Channing Tatum’s much maligned performance was nowhere to be seen. He’s on record saying he wasn’t thrilled about returning to the franchise, but you’d never know it from Retaliation. Every second he and the Rock are on screen together is surprisingly funny and you honestly believe these guys are bros. Genuine bros.
Storm Shadow’s badass, and despite everything, has some surprisingly honest growth that we hopefully haven’t seen the last of.
Adrianne Palicki’s Lady Jaye has a nice arc with the original G.I. Joe Colton, played deftly by Bruce Willis. And while neither character gets the kind of depth I would’ve liked to have seen, compared to Flint and Jinx, they’re practically the stars of the movie.
More than Roadblock, the real star of Retaliation is Cobra Commander’s suit. Every second he’s on screen, he looks just amazing. And even when his plan’s falling apart, he swaggers like the boss of the world. His voice never quite hits Chris Latte epicness, but this is also a Cobra Commander who doesn’t shout “RETREAT” in the face of defeat, but instead just catches a chopper and flies off into the sunset. And it’s especially cool that Cobra Commander says “Hoorah” — just tossing that in there.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is full of plot holes big enough to drive a HISS tank through. It’s hard to come out of the theater and not wonder why Snake Eyes didn’t just take out Cobra Commander when he spies him escaping the prison? Or why would Cobra build a network of death-dealing satellites that could be destroyed with the push of a button? The list goes on and on. But at the end of the day, it’s more fun than it is bad, and unlike Rise of Cobra, still manages to feel like G.I. Joe somehow. And now, with a massive win at the box office, and a third movie that’s already greenlit, there’s hope somebody’ll get it more right next time. Third times the charm.
