GI Joe: Resolute & The Rise of Cobra
Nov 6th, 2009 | By Jason Kerouac | Category: DVD, Reviews
Rise of Cobra - n. French for silly
Resolute - n. French for knee pads
I’m not even going to pretend to have purchased RoC, but you better believe I bought Resolute the second it hit shelves. I know I’ve talked about how much I enjoyed this animated masterpiece before, but that was before I had its big screen sibling as a reference point. Now, I’m going to do a little comparing and contrasting for you fine folks at home.
First up, let’s talk cast. Resolute features venerated voice actors Steve Blum and Charles Adler in the lead roles of Duke and Cobra Commander, respectively. This is a Duke who balances the ass-kickery of the comics version with the strong leadership of the cartoon version, sans the hokey boy scout routine. This is a Cobra Commander who is as ruthless as his comic version, but who acknowledges the cartoon version’s simplering slithering past. As our principals, they are fantastic. RoC instead gives us the wooden Channing Tatum as Duke, who here is little more than a placeholder in the role of field commander. Quaid’s Hawk leads the team, and the rest of the group carry the brunt of the action, drama, and plot. Tatum is simply there to be Duke so that the other characters can interact with him. This may in part be the fault of the writing, but Tatum does nothing to bring anything special or new to the role of “soldier.” Playing opposite Tatum is Joseph Gordon Levitt who does a perfectly passable job as Rex Lewis and the Doctor, but who lost me when he became Darth Vader.
Point to Resolute.
Ummm... here's a couple of bonus points for ROC...
Above and beyond the two leads, each film of course has an expansive supporting cast with some overlap between the two. Ripcord, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Baroness, Storm Shadow, Zartan, and Destro appear in both versions. Resolute’s Scarlett isn’t played by Rachel Nichols, so that’s a strike against it, immediately. The animated Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, however, are both far more emotive and entertaining than their live actions couterparts. Baroness and Destro both kind of get shafted in both iterations of the Joe-iverse, with RoC trying a new spin on the former’s backstory and the latter’s mask, while Resolute simply reduces the characters to little more than ineffectual guns for hire. Ripcord and Zartan both play larger roles in RoC, and Marlon Wayans and Arnold Vosloo are both surprisingly good in these roles.
Point to RoC.
Then there’s things like the plot. Both are fairly similar in scale - Resolute sees Cobra vaporizing cities with a particle beam cannon while RoC has them turning cities to dust with nannites. Resolute does, however, send small squads of Joes on separate but interlocking missions giving the various characters their own time to shine. Oh, and Resolute didn’t have any Delta 6 Accelerator Suits. There’s things like the visuals. Resolute features a heavily-inspired-by-Anime stylized sort of animation where blood and death abound. RoC features Photoshopped effects that don’t gel with the rest of the scene because their entire budget was blown on scenes with the aforementioned accelerator suits. There’s things like romantic sublplots. In Resolute, again tying together the comics with the old school cartoon, there’s tension between Snake Eyes and Duke over the affections of Scarlett. In RoC, Scarlett’s inexplicably drawn to Ripcord while Duke battles Destro for the heart and hand of his former fiancée… the Baroness?!
Point to Resolute, point to Resolute, point to Resolute.
The long and the short of it is that Resolute is quite simply the better movie. Its DVD features the original animated trailer for Resolute entitled “Now You Know” which I had not yet seen. Its fantastic. RoC includes a making of featurette and some other junk, but alas, no alternate ending.
4 out of 5 dead Majors for Resolute
1 out of 5 unexplained tremors we probably don’t need to worry about for RoC
I’m still wondering if RoC is even worth Netflixing, but yeah, Resolute was badass.
It costs you nothing per movie, correct? Then it’s worth your time to see some of the silliness, like Scarlett’s homing-bow.
i thought it was good for an action flick that doesn’t require too much focus, but yeah it failed alot of things since they hyped up Excelorator suits that was only a one scene lifespan. And THe Baroness i thought was screwed up by making her a sympathy villain that just gets off easy cuz Duke loves her. Double standard much? I did really enjoy Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow and the Doctor but hated the darth vader tone of his third guise and added to the star wars feel the makers of the movie was doing instead of a band of brothers meets supervillain terrorists feel i think would’ve been good enough. Also, did anyone think the SE/SS flashback was knida pllaced wrong, cause i think maybe they should’ve out it at a deleted scene on the DVD or something imho.
Yes, the number - and placement - of the flashbacks was terrible.
Rodriguez referred to Rise of Cobra as having more flashbacks than Memento, and he MAY be right.
The Memento line is Lee’s.
Fix’d
Umm people complain about the changes RoC did. But Resolute did just as many changes. Why don’t people complain about that. I mean one of the biggest changes they made in both was making Scarlett not having a relationship with Snake Eyes. But no one whines about Resolute. I think people complain about because of Scarlett and Ripcord when even the movie just slightly hinted at that while Resolute did a full out love story.
This is coming from a guy who’s never seen a full episode of GI Joe and yet saw both RoC and Resolute. I know nothing really of what changes were made, but there’s no denying in my book that Resolute was better in nearly every way.
@ Rob - I don’t care that changes were made in RoC, what I don’t like is which changes were made. Snake Eyes taking a vow of silence bothered me greatly. The switch to the rivalry bothered me greatly. The love story with Ripcord was out of left field; at least the romance with Duke was based on them having a pseudo-romance in the cartoon.
Bottom line, RoC set up a new continuity, whereas Resolute seemed to blend the continuities of the cartoon and the comic into one cohesive universe. I appreciated that.
In RoC they do kinda hint at Scarlett liking Snake Eyes when Ripcord gets on the treadmill next to her. But other than that I didn’t much care for RoC. I haven’t seen Resolute yet but, to me it can’t be any worse.
Finally saw RoC and wound up liking it in spite of itself. It’s deeply flawed and quite stupid in parts, but as an action movie, it entertained me.