Max Doomsday Reviews "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra"

As a lot of you know, I've trashed this movie pretty hard since the first teaser aired back in February. Since then, I've complained about the look of the film, scrutinized the first full trailer, and addressed rumors of behind-the-scenes turmoil. But I'm not going to rehash all my problems with the movie here today. Suffice it to say, I wanted to see G.I. Joe adapted as a military-action drama similar in tone to the Marvel Comics series, while the producers of Rise of Cobra seemed intent on making a cheesy, generic superhero movie, barely recognizable as anything having to do with the G.I. Joe toyline of the 1980s. And that's just what they did. So let's talk about the quality of the film, itself.

Rise of Cobra is a big-budget B-movie, the kind of thing the people at the Sci Fi Channel would be proud to call an "original" ... back when they were still proud to call themselves the Sci Fi Channel. There is no standard by which Rise of Cobra is a "good" film.

The script, little changed from the pre-Writers' Strike version that leaked earlier this year, could've been written with a crayon (or, in lieu of a crayon, with something fresh from the catbox). The dialogue ranges from the cringe-inducing to the unintentionally humorous.

The plot involves a second-rate Bond villain (Christopher Eccleston) using experimental nanotechnology in a half-baked scheme for world conquest. His cronies hijack the nano-MacGuffins from an army convoy led by blonde, boring alpha male Duke and his standard comedic black sidekick, Ripcord. Duke and Rip join up with the ultra-secret G.I. Joe Team to get the weapons back. Along the way, in awkward flashbacks, we learn about the unlikely past associations between the people on both sides of the conflict.

The problems don't end with the writing. The CGI looks shoddy and amateurish. This movie reportedly cost close to $200 million. Where'd that money go? Certainly not into the Superman IV-quality special effects. It didn't go to pay the slumming B-listers and future Starbucks employees in the cast, either.

The most remarkable performance was probably Dennis Quaid as the gruff G.I. Joe commander, Hawk. Trying to channel John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and George C. Scott, he went from cliché to parody to self-parody as the movie rolled along.

The actor whose performance I dreaded the most, Marlon Wayans as Ripcord, turned out to be one of the film's bright spots. But then, it's hard not to shine when most of your time on screen is spent surrounded by people with little-to-no presence or talent.

Nowhere is this truer than with Channing Tatum in the lead role of Duke. In the 1987 animated G.I. Joe: The Movie, Duke briefly falls into a coma. Perhaps the producers of Rise of Cobra had that in mind when they cast Tatum, a man clearly suffering from the effects of some sort of head trauma. He delivers his lines as if his mouth is full of sawdust and has all the personality of a sack of concrete. He was every bit as awful as I expected him to be.

On a related note, how come in every picture I see of this guy, he either looks like Vanilla Ice or George Michael?

Rounding out the cast of Rise of Cobra are a collection of stock characters: the frigid object of Ripcord's desire (Rachel Nichols); the small, excitable foreign man (Saïd Taghmaoui, with bonus points for cheesy moustache); the uber-serious, hardass black man, designed to offset Ripcord's minstrelism (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje); the vapid femme fatale (Sienna Miller) ... you get the idea.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the typical creepy, disfigured mad scientist, a bastardized reimagining of my favorite G.I. Joe villain, the Cobra Commander. I loved Gordon-Levitt in Brick and The Lookout, and I actually liked him here, as well. He would've been great in a silly sci-fi movie that didn't have the name "G.I. Joe" slapped on it, where he wasn't supposed to be the Cobra fucking Commander.

And that brings me to an important point about Rise of Cobra. After all the vitriol I spewed at this movie over the last six months (including in the preceding paragraphs), you probably think I hated it. But I thought it was kind of fun. Maybe it's because my expectations were so low, or because this year's Summer Movie Season was so miserable, or because I've had plenty of time to accept that this would be G.I. Joe "in name only." But I have to admit, seeing Rise of Cobra was a trashy good time.

Back in June, when I reviewed the soulless, joyless Transformers 2, I compared it unfavorably to a Godzilla movie. The point was, while both Transformers 2 and a Godzilla movie are examples of bad filmmaking, and while a Godzilla movie obviously has much lower production values than Transformers 2, a Godzilla movie has an element of cheesy fun that I can enjoy, which Transformers 2 lacks. Rise of Cobra has a similar element of cheesy fun. It's a live-action cartoon, a Big, Dumb, Loud Action Movie. I'm not someone who can't appreciate one of those now and then. (For proof of that, look no further than my review of Rambo.) Rise of Cobra had a couple of exciting set pieces and some satisfying one-on-one martial arts battles - with action I could actually follow. I enjoyed it. The movie succeeded in obtaining that coveted and ever-elusive so-bad-it's-good status.

I may never watch Rise of Cobra again (unless, of course, I decide to buy it on RiffTrax), but I don't have unpleasant memories of it. That's not something I can say about Transformers 2, or even about a couple of this summer's other duds, Terminator: Salvation and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Tomorrow, I'll have one more thing to say about Rise of Cobra before I leave it behind. This is something I teased up before when I discussed The Baroness, Scarlett, and Cover Girl - the systematic disempowerment of strong female characters in this film. In the meantime, if you want to read about the histories behind the characters in Rise of Cobra, the links are conveniently set out below. And now, I think I'll go pop in my DVD of Godzilla v. Mothra. All this talk about Rise of Cobra has put me in the mood for it.

The Joes Part 1: Duke, Hawk, Heavy Duty, Breaker, and the controversy over an "international" G.I. Joe Team.
The Joes Part 2: Ripcord, Scarlett, and Cover Girl.
The Joes Part 3: Snake-Eyes.
Cobra Part 1: Destro and The Baroness.
Cobra Part 2: Storm Shadow and Zartan.
Cobra Part 3: The Cobra Commander.