Spoilers:
I was really looking forward to this film and it pretty much falls flat on it's face.
What I Liked
- Duke & Roadblock's Early Interactions. I thought this developed their friendship really well, or as well as it needed to be
- Firefly was alright. Nothing spectacular, but I like that they had him kick Roadblock's ass to establish him as a bad man. I liked his insect bombs as well.
- Cobra Commander's Outfit was brilliant.
- I liked the prison warden. I don't know if he is suppost to be an actual Joe character, but honestly he was one of the more interesting characters in the film.
- The continued, comic inspired plot for Snake Eyes & Storm Shadow. They could have done way better with this but at the same time I'll give them points for trying.
- I enjoyed the dialog at times. Stuff like, "Destro, your out of the band" and "Thats for the tax hike!" when Firefly hits the president only to have Zartan respond to Firefly "Like you pay taxes"
- In general the carry over of the Zartan Plot from the first film. I liked the first film in general(it was mostly the over the top visuals that I didn't enjoy in that one) and the Zartan cliff hanger was in no doubt my favorite part.
What I did not like
- The lack of carry over of the original cast/ the way they were not carried over. There is a possibility that they could have found a way to make the cast turnover work, but just waving a hand and kinda pretending every Joe from the first film(minus Snake Eyes and Duke) basically never existed was kinda lame. Yes the door is left open for them to revisit those characters in the future, but it was too big of a shift, too fast.
- Killing Duke, for whatever reason, was absolutly the wrong move to do. The mass audience that helped make the first film the success financially that it was(like my wife) will not take well to this move. Irrelevent if you like him or hate him, Channing Tatum is a big star now that appeals to a mass audience of people who are not G.I.Joe fans.
- G.I.Joe kinda turned from a World Wide Organization to a solely American institution. No more characters from France and Morocco - just red white and blue through and through. While this might be truer to the whole "Real American Hero" aspect of the franchise - In Canada the toys I bought as a kid came with Canadian Flags. In Brasil they came with Brasilian Flags, so on, so forth. This was one of the things the first film really got right that ended up kinda messed up in this one.
- Zero explanation about why Storm Shadow is not dead. I have no issue with him coming back to life, hell he did it in the comic, but come on. Don't pretend that half the first film didn't happen.
- I would have liked to have seen more classic style G.I.Joe Vehicles alongside the more realistic stuff in this one. Yes we get to see modified version of the Hiss Tank & Fang, but I really wanted more than that. For instance we saw the Night Raven in the first film, but nothing in this second film really matches up with that level of cool. USS Flagg is another great example of a toy that made it into the first film that was awesome.
- Where did all the Joes goes? Them all getting wiped out minus 6 really didn't work for me.
- Who was with Joe Colton? This was a missed oppurtunity. Joe's team could have well been named, could have been Grunt, Zap, Flash & Rock ' N' Roll. Would have been a homage to that first toyline from 1982. Hell, Joe Colton could have been Grunt promoted up.
- Where is Stalker?
- 3D. This film was showing on like 14 screens in Winnipeg, all 3D. I had to go in the middle of the afternoon to the one theater in Winnipeg that offered one showing of 2D in the afternoon to catch it. If this is the way movies are going, frankly, I will not be going to the theaters anymore. I won't have 3D, which I hate, forced down my throat. I'll save my money while the studios continue to whine about piracy destroying their profits.
Maybe, just maybe, piracy isn't the whole problem they are having trying to attract people to theater .
Overall
I really didn't think much of this film, and think less of it as I think about it more - all of which is really dissapointing to me because of my like for this franchise and even how much I enjoyed the first film.
To me the first film had way more fan wanking moments than this one did. Stuff like mentioning "Real American Hero" or "Kung Fu Grip" that they did in the first film, well, there is nothing like that in this.
Now don't get me wrong, this has some small nods(like Major Bludd or a Zandar that didn't look like Zandar), but overall it felt like they were trying harder to make generic action movie #2 than something more G.I.Joe centric. The fact that it failed to adequatly explain so many of the changes from the first film, prefering instead to pretend more that the first film only existed in part, is a mjor fault of this one.
I loved the little nods from the first one like Dr. Mindbender and the Night Raven flight suit looking like Wild Weasels getup. This seemed to just have way less of those things as if these new creators, who claimed to be fans got a lot wrong, while Sommers(who never clained to be a fan) got so much more right in my opinion.
I'd give this a 2/5 if I were giving a ranking.
