I watched GI Joe Retaliation so that you don't have to.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Tue Apr 02, 2013 5:00 pm

It's not quite dying for your sins, but it felt like it. This post contains spoilers.

Right, basically this:

Dodgy pre-credits sequence where somebody who I think was meant to be Flint disobeys orders to raise a GI Joe flag [? I don't know, the edit's awful so we don't really get time/info, I think it's their flag] above a North Korean military base.

Heavy Duty, Scarlet, Ripcord, Hawk and the Baroness aren't in it. Or mentioned. At all.

Zartan is still The President.
He has the real The President locked up in a basement.
He goes along for chats to get intel. Wants to know where Cobra Commander and Destro are being held.
Whilst there, he drags a knife along his face to show us it's all done with nanites. His face repairs. Real The President reacts to this by telling Zartan he's insane. It doesn't make any sense, but hey it's a cool line for the trailer, right?

Duke is in charge of GI Joe. The Ro[adbl]ock is his bestest friend in the whole wide world. Not the Wayans brother from the previous one, no it's The Rock.

The GI Joes [apparently it's not an acronym in this one] take possession of some nukes, then get blown up by Cobra. Duke dies. Part of why this film got delayed was so they could add more Duke. I have no idea how much he wasn't in it before now, but he must have been in like this one scene or something.

The Rock and two people who are presumably only in it because they were cheaper than Eko, Nichols, Wayans and Quaid survive. One of them is Sam's dead girlfriend from Supernatural, with dark hair. I think she's meant to be Lady Jaye. The other survivor is Flint. I have no idea who the actor is, possibly somebody they just dragged in off the street. He won't really do much, so it doesn't matter. This is The Rock's film.

President Zartan tells the world that GI Joe went rogue and stole the nukes. He had his new security force [Cobra] kill them. He says something about Snake Eyes having assassinated somebody, I can't really remember. It doesn't matter.

Cut to somewhere in Germany, Snake Eyes has been arrested and is being unloaded from a van, shackled. He is still in full costume, complete with empty scabbard on his back. I don't know why.

Shane Vendrell from The Shield comes out and greets him. Says some bollocks about this being an old mine, and how they dug so deep that the underground facility isn't in German jurisdiction anymore. I don't know. Is that a thing?

Shane leads Snake Eyes to a chamber where Cobra Commander and Destro are being held in some form of technobabble-suspended-animation. Oh, I bet it's really Storm Shadow. That's why he had to have the costume and stuff still on.

They take Snake Eyes' helmet off and it's really Storm Shadow. They take his swords away and leave them on the stairs in the room. They take off all the Snake Eyes gear, leaving him in his Storm Shadow trousers that he obviously had on underneath and put him in one of the technobabble cryo-fluid tubes.

Storm Shadow lowers his heart rate to appear dead. They take the top off the tube to get him out, but he pulls one of the scienticians into the tube with him.

Vendrell decides the way to handle this situation is by having people shoot their rifles at the tube, shattering it. Because that's what you'd do in that situation, obviously.

Storm Shadow uses the scientician as a human shield, the tube smashes, water goes everywhere. Storm Shadow throws ninja stars at everybody. He must have had them on him or something, the security here is dreadful and I'm seriously giving up at this point. He grabs his swords that were conveniently left nearby.

Firefly attacks the facility from above whilst all this is going on. Firefly is being played by the funny gladiator from BBC/HBO's Rome. I have no idea what accent he's meant to be doing. They break Cobra Commander out, but leave Destro because they couldn't afford Chris Ecclestone, but given they've recast Cobra Commander I doubt anybody would have cared.

Shane tries to save the day by causing an explosion as they get into the elevator. Storm Shadow's back gets burned.

They all get to the surface and Cobra Commander says "take him to the mountains to recover!" He doesn't say which mountains, or give any indication that he even knows where he's been held. Apparently there are only one set of The Mountains in Cobra-speak.

Snake Eyes has watched this from the trees.

MORE STUFF.

Ah, the mountains are somewhere in Japan. Obviously.

Storm Shadow has magic backrub put on him by some mystical people. RZA gives a godawful voiceover (seriously, it's dreadful) whilst Snake Eyes spars with "Jinx, cousin of Storm Shadow", explaining about honour and other vague ****. Basically they have to capture Storm Shadow because that's what the plot says. Sorry, to hold him accountable for the murder of The Hard Master. Yes, that's it. Sorry.

BIG MOUNTAIN NINJA ARMY ZIPLINE FIGHT. Complete with people firing ziplines into mid-air, then sliding down them. Seriously, it's like it was choreographed by an eight year old after a 60s Spider-Man marathon. It looks spectacular but don't try to make any sense of what's actually going on here.

MORE STUFF.

The Rock works out that the President ordered the strike that killed Channing Tatum (and some other GI Joe people).

Sam's Dead Girlfriend from Supernatural does some Google Fu and realises the President is an imposter, based on a slight vocabulary change and the fact he holds his hands differently. Seriously, wasn't there a whole bit in the first one about how Zartan learned the President's mannerisms so he could do this job? And yet Lady Jaye works it all out in seven minutes on a laptop? For [composite word including 'f*ck']'s actual sake here.

RZA demands justice (or something) from the captured Storm Shadow. But Storm Shadow didn't kill the Hard Master - he was framed. Anyway, long story short, they figure out it was Zartan that did it. Apparently that twist is ludicrous and contrived no matter what medium it's told in. They all decide to be friends now.

Some other stuff where The Rock gets Bruce Willis to help out.

FILLER.

Zartan masquerades as The President at a big UN nuclear disarmament summit. Demands everybody turn in their nukes. The world refuses, so he forces their hand by launching all of America's nukes. Everybody else retaliates. Zartan hits the abort on his nukes, everybody else follows suit. Hey presto, world peace. Nobody has the nuke. Every world leader now thinks The President is a massive douchebag.

BUT WAIT WHAT'S THIS IT'S COBRA COMMANDER. I don't know how he got in. Security must be lax everywhere.

Cue lots of Cobra flags being unfurled on the White House like in the trailer. The United States of Cobrmerica have a new weapon - it's not a nuke; it's satellites dotted in orbit around the planet, holding on to massive metal rods. They're not launched or propelled, they're dropped from space and gravity does the rest. Explosive.

OKAY QUICK PHYSICS QUESTION: What happens if you let go of something in space? Yeah. Think I've spotted a flaw here...

Anyway, laws of gravity be damned, Cobra Commander then demonstrates by dropping one on London. You've seen that in the trailer, too. We're all dead.

Then Storm Shadow (yeah, sorry, he was in the meeting too) turns on Cobra and GI Joe turn up.

Cue big fight sequences. Storm Shadow kills Zartan. The Rock beats up Firefly and hits the big "self destruct" button on the satellite remote control just before the timer hits zero.

Aand The President is back in control. Huzzah. Apparently everybody believed his story despite there not really being any evidence that it wasn't him, what with Cobra Commander having disappeared and Zartan being dead and de-nannited. But hey, if The Rock says it's true who are we to argue?

Bruce Willis gives everybody medals.

Full Force.

It's basically a bigger, dumber, more ******* annoying version of Rise of Cobra without any of the redeeming features.

Hound · Post by **Hound** » Tue Apr 02, 2013 5:24 pm

It was appalling

Also: I cannot get over how they 'blacked up' The Rock rather than giving the role to a black actor.

Professor Smooth · Post by **Professor Smooth** » Tue Apr 02, 2013 11:30 pm

Hound wrote:It was appalling

Also: I cannot get over how they 'blacked up' The Rock rather than giving the role to a black actor.

The Rock is black. Well, half black, half Samoan.

That thing with the missiles is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. But it sounds hilariously awesome!

Hound · Post by **Hound** » Wed Apr 03, 2013 7:42 am

Professor Smooth wrote:
Hound wrote:It was appalling

Also: I cannot get over how they 'blacked up' The Rock rather than giving the role to a black actor.
The Rock is black. Well, half black, half Samoan.

That thing with the missiles is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. But it sounds hilariously awesome!

I know this, but they certainly added more colour to him!

Obfleur · Post by **Obfleur** » Sun Apr 07, 2013 7:56 am

I thought this film would be decent

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Sun Apr 07, 2013 12:22 pm

So, basically Zartan is the ultimate CND hero?

Always struck me as a bit of a hippy.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Wed Apr 10, 2013 9:33 pm

OH I FORGOT.

The opening shots involve panning across a river, The Rock coming up out of it and then using some melty gloves to cut a hole in a fence. Almost exactly like Pythona at the beginning of the animated film.

IT'S ALMOST LIKE IT WAS A DELIBERATE REFERENCE.

So it has fanboy cred or something.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:42 am

The first one was soooo bad it made Bayformers look like A Space Odyssey.

Is it true they killed everyone off for this sequel? Pretty desperate. Fans must be pissed.

I love how Eccleston is far too much of a SERIOUS ACTOR to stay in Doctor Who for more than a year or return for the anniversary, but he has plently of time to star in modern classics like G.I.Joe and The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:09 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:Is it true they killed everyone off for this sequel?

IT'S LIKE YOU DIDN'T BOTHER READING MY POST.

They killed off Duke and a load of nameless generics. Pretty much everybody else from the first one (barring Zartan/President Pryce, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow) just aren't in it. Cobra Commander's been recast.

The rest just aren't back.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 12:40 am

Brendocon wrote:
spiderfrommars wrote:Is it true they killed everyone off for this sequel?
IT'S LIKE YOU DIDN'T BOTHER READING MY POST.

I sort of avoided your post for spoilers because even though you watched it so I don't have to, I am going to watch it. Then I can say it was **** too!