G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

The summer of 2009 ought to go down in history for featuring two of the worst blockbusters in recent memory. While 2008 gave us fun superhero flicks like Iron Man and The Dark Knight, 2009’s offerings include a terrible Transformers sequel and this particular clunker, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Yes, it’s based on the toy and yes, it’s as awful as you’d expect.

Directed by Stephen Sommers, G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra seems to want the honour of taking down Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen in terms of obnoxiousness and explosions. Unfortunately for Sommers, it’s really difficult to top Bay at anything stupid and he comes up short here. This movie is slightly better than the Transformers sequel, but it doesn’t miss the mark by much.

The movie is produced by Hasbro and is essentially a live-action toy commercial set to a whole lot of weird rap-metal music that shirtless wrestling fans will love. Talking about the plot is almost pointless, but the basic gist of the thing is that some weapons expert (Christopher Eccleston) has created technology that works a little like advanced termites. Called nanotechnology-based weaponry, the idea is to unleash all of these little bug type creatures on structure and have them eat away at it.

Of course, the technology falls into the “wrong hands” after the Baroness (Sienna Miller) and a bunch of other bad guys hijack a transport shipment. This leads two army guys, played by Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans, to want to find out why. It also leads them into the clutches of a group that has been tracking the bad guys for a while. The group is, of course, the G.I. Joe team and they’re led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid).

One thing leads to another and, over the course of about two hours and a pile of chases and explosions that mean virtually nothing, the Joe team takes on the bad guys and tries to stop their evil plot to…do…something. Loads of the toy characters (?) are present, including Snake Eyes (Ray Park), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), and of course the Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) himself.

Expectations for a movie like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ought to be firmly fixed on the ground. This is about blowing stuff up and doing it for various swooping and slowing camera angles. There’s really nothing else to this project of CGI porn than that and, if you’re unfortunate enough to expect some sort of additional entertainment value, you’re out of luck with this one. Sommers has his target audience in mind and delivers the goods.

The problem is that it’s just all so darn lame and, frankly, oddly disturbing. This is a movie that requires something to blow up about every thirty seconds or so. There are fights galore, none of which are very good, and a lot of chasing around through cities and landmark areas. The thing about all of this racket is that Sommers doesn’t have a bloody clue how to direct these sequences and effectively neuters them from providing any sense of danger or suspense.

A key example of this is one of the film’s key chase sequences through Paris. Cars flip and explode left, right and centre, with their innocent and uninvolved occupants presumably chuckling about it (seriously, what’s the innocent person body count estimate on this beast of a movie? 3000 or so?) after the fact. The Joes race through in ridiculous suits that make them almost impervious to, well, anything, and there’s just no risk to it at all. There’s no reason to care, save for just looking at the explosions and the CGI things flying around, and there’s no real reason to get excited unless G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is, in fact, your first time at the movies.

I’m not going to get into the performances because, quite simply, I don’t care. Sienna Miller is an able replacement for the Megan Fox-ish part, of course, and her appearance in a number of dominatrix-style getups isn’t all that bad. As for the rest of it, you don’t need me to tell you what G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is designed for: yeah, there’s a sequel or two coming and, yeah, there will be toys.

Trailer: