I guess I'll say this much about the other two. I like Tom Cruise and I'm secure enough in myself to admit that. Is his religion super duper crazy? Sure, but I'm put more religions in the super duper crazy category. The guy is still probably the world's greatest movie star, and he jumps into every role he chooses with unrepentant fervor. That said, Tom Cruise cannot pull off the stoic badass character Jack Reacher wants him to be. The guy has charm coming out of his ears, let him use it. You can't have a grizzled ex-military police how looks and sounds like Tom Cruise. It just doesn't work. However, I really really liked End of Watch. I remember reading/hearing a weird amount of praise about that movie when it first came out in 2012 and it was totally deserved. I kind of wish that they had committed one way or the other to the found footage conceit, but where they use it, they use it very well as a tension builder. Great stuff.
Right, this was supposed to be about GI Joe. I have something of a soft spot for the first GI Joe movie. I know it's kind of terrible, but it also doesn't shy away from it's terribleness. The main villain has a giant underwater base for shit's sake. The movie at points hilarious, and I genuinely don't think it was trying to be anything but.
The second movie took the buzzwords that surround blockbusters these days and went in a more "gritty" and "realistic" direction. This isn't to say that the movie isn't still super dumb, it totally is, but it's way more straight faced about it, which I actually kind of liked. It isn't devoid of a couple of winks and nods to the audience though. My favorite moment in the movie is easily when Bruce Willis, playing the original GI Joe, types in the passcode 1776 to open up a secret cabinet in his house full of rocket and grenade launchers. It seriously had me laughing for like five minutes.
That's ultimately the movie in a nutshell. It's humorous, but nothing it played just for laughs. It knows the ways in which it's dumb, and it isn't afraid to lean into them. Cobra Commander definitely wants to rule the world. But, it plays it all straight. It's never ironic about the way it presents its dumb cliches and characters, and I loved it for it. It's far from a perfect movie, the dialogue is sometimes terrible in a not very funny way and there's a lot of character backstory exposition that is clunky as all hell. But then there's another character backstory flash back involving Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes in which one of them is framed for killing their sensei that would feel right at home in an old kung fu movie and it veers straight back into being bad in an awesome way.
I have fond memories of watching a bunch of old GI Joe cartoons on rented VHS tapes when I was a kid. This movie brought all of those right back up. The GI Joe movies ultimately kind of remind of the Schumacher Batman movies. That isn't the damning it sounds like either. I've come to realize that those movies were straight up 90's continuations of the Adam West TV show and movie from the 60's. In that way, they're kind of great. Similarly, the GI Joe movies are modern extensions of the GI Joe cartoon of old. Thankfully, the Retaliation is a halfway decent movie as well.
