G.I. Joe

Celluloid trash of the most expensive kind, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is a would-be franchise drowned in Michael Bay-like ditz and muscle. Even with putting aside my prejudices regarding a high budget cash-grab based on a line of thoroughly uninteresting toys from twenty to thirty years ago, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra is worthless in every sense. Here's five reasons why...

1. Far too many characters... I could barely keep track of who was who, let alone what was going on. I also did not have a chart of G.I. Joe figures to refer to whilst watching the film so maybe that was entirely my own mistake.

2. Christopher Eccleston. He trounces around as a dastardly businessman with a bad scoohtish accent, and that's pretty much the gist of his plans.

3. A lot of the action left me unenthused - it's mostly bloodless CGI-heavy stuff that makes it fairly interchangeable with Transformers.

4. Brendan Fraser. I'm told he was in this film. He could've been, I didn't really notice him.

5. I'm sorry, but the whole concept is a bit silly, isn't it? Basing a big budget live-action film on some toys from the 1980s and insisting on cramming about twenty characters in for maximum merchandising opportunities - the whole thing just felt shallow and about as far as you can get from a good reason to make a movie. See Small Soldiers for something that touches on the same ideas (IE. A toy line based on military idolatry) in an infinitely superior way.

If I was the sort of person who rated movies I'd give this a zero out of ten.

DIRECTOR: Stephen Sommers
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Stuart Beattie, David Elliot and Paul Lovett, with story input from Michael Gordon and Stephen Sommers. Based on the 1982 re-launch of the G.I. Joe toyline by Hasbro.
KEY ACTORS: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sienna Miller, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Park, Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayons, Dennis Quaid, Rachel Nichols

RELATED TEXTS:
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was an animated TV series that ran from 1985 to 1987, based closely on the toyline. It was re-launched again in 1989 and ran for another year or so.
- G.I. Joe: The Movie followed the original TV series, and was intended for theatrical release in 1987. The box office failure of a similar animated-film for Transformers meant that it got released directly to video though.
- There have also been a couple of direct-to-DVD animated G.I. Joe films released in the mid-2000s.
- Director Stephen Sommers has a lot to answer for, he also directed the first two Mummy films with Brendan Fraser and the abominable Van Helsing.