Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, Christopher Eccleston
Have I Seen it Before: No. Why would I have? I’m of that particular point in the greyscale of generations that I have next to no awareness of the G.I. Joe as anything to care about. I was a kid in the market for action figures long after the older barbie-sized toys, and I am just a hair too young to have had any kind of ambition for the USS Flagg aircraft carrier toy that apparently took up an entire room.
Better question: Why did I do so now? I really need to stop letting myself get talked into getting a movie on Apple TV, simply because they’re only charging 5 bucks for it. Now I’m enough on the hook that I’m going to feel compelled to watch Retalliation (2013) or Snake Eyes (2021).
Maybe I’ll work on that later.
Did I Like It: I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the film, but I would say I am glad that I did. It’s an interesting experiment at play here. There is nothing here—in the writing, performances, or even the editing—that is particularly different from any of the baseline Marvel movies. Why can I occasionally be duped into caring about those movies—maybe moreso in the past than lately, but still—but all of this descends into so much white noise? Is it just that I have some affinity for the source material in the other scenario, and absolutely none here? Probably.
I clearly didn’t care for the movie, but I didn’t hate it so much that I want to bring down the entire house around it. There’s always a little bit of a warm feeling when a filmmaker has a retinue of actors who jump at the chance to work with him again. Sommers’ quality might vary wildly, but Vosloo is here—essentially playing the same role he plays in every other film in which he appears. But Kevin J. O’Connor, and even Brendan Fraser show up for a days work. It’s nice that Sommers isn’t an asshole.