...aaaand I'm glad I went to the $8 matinee.
While this one looked more of the part of GI Joe, it was just stillborn, if you ask me. It at least felt more military, but the things wrong with it weren't all carry-overs from ROC. And the 9 month delay was sure as shit not worth the way (specifically because I saw it in 2D, and NEVER intended to see it in 3D regardless).
SPOILERS BELOW!
I actually liked the Cobra plot again (that was the main thing I liked in ROC, was the "sleight of hand" President-swapping plot, plus Zartan's update), with the whole "tricking the world's leaders into disarming their nukes" plot, and Zartan was still the shining character, even if Voosloo has like 35 seconds of actual screentime. When he "dies" (I still think he's not dead... He was injected with magic-healing nanomites after all) his face sort of leaves black/blue scarring around his eyes that resemble his markings from the ARAH run. A nice nod. I liked Firefly, since he was the only character that had much development on Cobra's side, and he felt like a cool update. Rock was decent, but he was just The Rock, and not Roadblock. Same with Bruce Willis, except he phoned it in, even with his few "John McClane" smarmy smirks and whatnot that saved him from being a total waste.
What were some of the things that were carry-overs from ROC that Chu was stuck with? Well, for starters CC's shitty origin and design, which got brushed over so quickly. So it was at least replaced, but what little you see of it still reminds you of that steaming turd design from ROC. Destro is a throwaway, but at least mentioned. I couldn't tell if he died, or not. And the fact that nobody wanted to return from the first film except for 5 people, so we were stuck with a Duke that gets killed off immediately, and an almost all-new team with zero mention of what the fuck happened with the rest of the team from the first film. Not even a mention? Come on, that was lazy, and the film was short, so it's not like it would've killed them to add in a few more minutes of dialogue to help the segue from ROC a little more. They could've explained it away, yet we were left with zero attention to it, yet it's still clearly ROC because of the other half-assed tie-ins. Storm Shadow was cardboard as fuck, and we wasted a good portion of the film explaining away the Hard Master's death shit AGAIN, and then the resolution and tie-in with Zartan made ZERO sense in regards to the film's timeline.
What were things that Chu contributed that didn't really work? Dear God, the Blind Master was distracting as fuck. RZA was awful! And he made ZERO sense in the context of the film. To fuck with them giving us "fanboys" a comic book nod. The character was lame in the comics, and we get The Blind Master of all characters? The ninja mountain fight was cool, but it was bookended by RZA's wacky inclusion, so that sort of killed any cool factor. Plus, they showed all that already a thousand times, so the actual mountain fight wasn't much new as far as cool new content. The team of essentially 4 "survivor" Joes, plus "honorary"/backup members like Jinx and Storm Shadow and retired Joe Colton was just waaaay underscale for something with a roster the size of GI Joe. They killed ALL THE FUCKING JOES? So you mean of all the characters, we're left with Roadblock, Lady Jaye, Flint, and Snake Eyes?
Look, I'm not saying throw in named characters just to throw them away, but we get comic-obscure Blind Master and even-more-obscure Mouse? Fuck me, throw in Cross Country, or Steeler, or Clutch, or even shittier ARAH guys and pop bullets in their heads if you need some casualties. But kill off everyone? ROC didn't include a big enough team of decent Joes, and this one delivered even less. What the fuck happened to Hawk? The team's leader isn't even mentioned, yet somehow Duke's now in charge of it all till he gets blown up?
The scale of it all bugged me to death. A handful of Joes, and a handful of Cobras? Doesn't seem like the right scale to me. Even with his Cobra forces, CC (who was stagnant as hell and even though he looked like CC, it seemed like Zartan was the one in charge, not him) had such a small Cobra force that it felt like not that big of a threat, if you ask me.
I dunno, it looked more like Joe than in ROC, just not enough of it, and lacking much spirit. I'm not saying toss in 300 Joes just to have them in the film, but more than 5 or 6. At best, the desert force we saw was only 80-100 members, tops, and there's the Pit still, I'd assume? Who knows. I felt ROC was actually more fun, and this was more serious, but neither was the right mix and with the roster used, just felt mediocre at best. None of the characters had any personality besides maybe Roadblock, Zartan and Firefly, and there wasn't that much even from those guys.
And while I've heard other people say that Colton's kitchen was awesome, I just rolled my eyes at how stupid it was.
5.5 out of 10. It's visually better than ROC, and had this either been the first entry or a total reboot, then it would've probably been a 7.5 but I still don't think Chu was the best director to bring us a good Joe flick. Better than Stephen Sommers, but not by much. At least you can tell Chu cared about the material, I just think he used the wrong "nods" to the source material and gave us another mediocre bundle of blah.
