Superhero Media: GI Joe - Retaliation

Ok, so why wasn't this the first film? Like, seriously, Retaliation is actually quite enjoyable, enough so that I've watched it more than a couple of times, whereas Rise of Cobra was affectingly dull. It appears that lessons have be learned, as the film opens with a fast-paced action sequence where GI Joe wrests Pakistani nuclear weapons from insurgent control after the country falls to civil war. Even without the bleeding-edge, near-future technology, this is a pretty cool set-up for any modern speculative wargaming for those interested in that kind of thing. From there, the Joes are betrayed, leaving only Roadblock, Lady Jaye, Snake Eyes and Flint alive to seek justice. Soon joined by Jinx and Bruce Willis (the original Joe), the leaner, more polished cast makes for far more engaging action. Cobra have replaced POTUS with Zartan and are disarming the world's nuclear weapons for nefarious reasons.

As I mentioned in the Rise of Cobra review, I'm not much of a GI Joe fan, but even I can tell that more effort was put into making Retaliation a better adaptation than the first film. There's a clear embracing of the absurdity of the source material, a factor I keep promoting as needed for this kind of thing, with more ninjas, Hiss Tanks from the toy line and absurd action scenes taking over the third act. Cobra are comically villainous, with Zartan quipping "The call it water-boarding, but I never get bored", and the master of the Ninja temple is played by the RZA, because why the hell not? In fact, there is an extended sequence where Snake Eyes and Jinx fight Cobra ninjas whilst abseiling on the side of a mountain and if that doesn't make you want to watch this film, I don't know why you even read this blog, seriously, ninja battle on the side of a cliff! 

The big Cobra plan turns out to be tricking the world into disarming their nuclear arsenal before revealing their orbital tungsten rod deploying doom weapons and only the group of surviving Joes can save freedom and America or whatever. In a weird way, Cobra kind of do more to save the world than the Joes, in that they permanently disarm all of the world's nuclear weapons, even if it is for the wrong reasons; there's probably an interesting comparison to be made between Retaliation and Superman IV, but I'm pretty overworked at the moment and don't have time to get into that. Part of the problem of Retaliation is that no one seems to have bothered to watch it. That does make sense, as Rise of Cobra was pretty terrible, but audiences still watch the Transformers films, so I don't know why GI Joe was an exception. I would have watched more of these, it's a bit of a shame this franchise didn't catch on.