GI Joe: The Movie (part 1 of 3) review

GI Joe: The Movie

Like the 80s Transformers movie, the producers created this movie during the run of the weekly cartoon show of the same name. Both this and the Transformers movie were developed around the same time by the same creative teams. Due to major production problems, the GI Joe movie was pushed back and Transformers was released into the theaters first.

Because the theatrical run of Transformers: The Movie bombed, this movie was doomed to the Direct-to-Video hell. I also felt this movie’s production values were harmed when that happened. With little or no promotion, it was released to video stores and often ignored. After this movie, sadly, Sunbow would lose the rights to GI Joe and the cheaper animation studio DiC would take over.

With this movie, you could tell the show under Sunbow would have completely taken the main storyline in another direction. Like the Transformers third season, they were cleaning out their old characters and themes, and they were going to start fresh. (Duke was supposed to die in this movie.) That wasn’t the case with the newer DiC series.

The Animation and Design

With the opening scene of the attack on the Statue of Liberty, you can fully tell that there was a deal more money put into the animation. The characters seemed more fluid, while not on the same level as the Transformers movie. There are hints of a more realistic approach to certain scenes. For the most part, the quality was consistent.

Pretty much all the older characters maintained their TV designs. The newer Cobra-La characters were a complete departure. They felt alien and were a total departure from the appearance of the GI Joe characters.

I had no problem with the changes. There was certainly an Asian feel to Pythona’s design. I thought of them as a way to shake up the way we viewed the GI Joe universe, to gives a new look.

On the other hand, the backgrounds in this movie are fairly dull when compared to the Transformers movie. There wasn’t much thought or care given to these new areas, with the exception being the swamp.

End of part 1

Here’s the new poster for Cobra recruitment: Join Cobra, and destroy the world.

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Text-messaging from the 80s.

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I was once a man, once a man