Silent Interlude

Toy Review: G.I. Joe Retaliation Wave 3

However troubled the release of G.I. Joe Retaliation was, it's fair to say that Hasbro have had it even worse trying to make the accompanying toy line work out how they wanted it to.  First, the movie's rapid pre-production cycle left the figure designers with no time to make true movie-accurate figures for the initial wave, instead being forced to settle for a mix of unused concept art looks and some of their own ideas that had been festering for a while.  Then word got around about the reduced articulation among those first figures - a necessity to keep costs down, but realities like that rarely mean anything to a fanbase united by the internet.  (IMHO, when I finally picked up those first figs, I found more to my liking than most did...but I do wish a few could be remade somehow with better joints, Zartan especially)

And then, of course, the movie got delayed almost a full year, despite Hasbro having got their act together and prepared a sensible release pattern for the latter, more appealing figures.  Those figures were promptly recalled and forced to sit in warehouses for long, long months, until finally the movie's promo train got back on the go.  As a result, the old scheduling went out the window, and with Wave 3 Hasbro have just said 'screw it' and combined two waves of releases into one, hence a full 12 new figures all arriving at once.  Me being a completionist dork, I had to buy them all on principle - but honestly, with a few pet peeves here and there notwithstanding, this was absolutely worth it.

G.I. JOE 3: Fantasy Casting

With the summer movie season having shot most of its load already, my attention is now heading onwards to the future, and the perilous promises of sequels.  While there's a lot to say about how 'sequel culture' has had a negative effect on blockbusters over the last decade-plus, and I happen to agree with a few of those issues in principle, I'm also the first person to start theorizing about where the characters of any given film will go next, often before I've even left the theater.  (maybe in a future post I'll try to explain my logic for having Matt Smith turn up as the Doctor in the next Fast & Furious movie to take Vin Gasoline and his mates down after one too many violations of the laws of space and time)  And G.I. Joe Retaliation was no exception.

That said, the amount of deck-clearing action going on in Retaliation (both from the much-publicized extermination of 90% of the Joe roster, give or take, plus the revenge-deaths taking their toll on Cobra command) has made me a lot more curious about the players for the next film rather than the actual plot.  Not that I don't think the story will matter - the joint realities of Cobra as a known evil entity in the public mind and the world's nations having been tricked into depleting their nuclear weapon stockpiles can and should open up lots of new and intriguing places for the series to go - but I often find that a Joe story (be it movie, comic or cartoon) is determined by the characters involved.  They're like Lego bricks: interchangable and capable of being constructed into any shape...but, if you wanna make a car, you still need 4 Lego wheels.  Wanna make a house?  Gonna need a door-brick.  Ditto, if your G.I. Joe story has Shipwreck and Cutter in it, there'd better be some sort of naval battle at some point, preferably involving the old W.H.A.L.E. hovercraft, because otherwise you're asking 2 sailors to be land-lubbers for the duration and...why?

That was a load of waffling, yes.  Click through for my dream casting session pick things.  THIS I COMMAND~!

Film Reaction: G.I. JOE RETALIATION

And what sort of time do you call this...?

Anyone who has been reading this blog since the early days (so, none of you) don't need reminding of this, but I'm one of those weird people that really, genuinely loved 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra', and I give that movie all the credit for kickstarting my enthusiasm for all things Joe, which four years and over a hundred 4-inch plastic men later, shows no sign of halting.  Of course, us weird people are in the minority, which explains why it's taken so long to bolt together a sequel (it's still kinda disturbing that a movie can make a $300million+ profit and be considered a commercial dud...) and why, when it was all good and ready to debut, Paramount chickened out and delayed it by nearly a whole year so they could make it 3D.  Part of me - a very vocal part of me - considers it a knock on the Joes' honour that some douchey film execs didn't think they could hold their own against hands-down the worst interpretation of Spider-Man witnessed by a paying audience in history, but then I guess they were right, since that bloody awful reboot killed at the box office and gave me another few thousand reasons to doubt the existence of a benevolent god.

Still, it's here now, at last, and having caught a late afternoon showing on the 28th March with my folks as a belated birthday thing - and let the memories slosh around in my head for a while - I think I'm ready to put some concrete opinions down.  Good ones, thankfully.  (WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW)

(And seriously, f*** everything about Amazing Spider-Man)

Pursuit of Cobra Wave 3 - 'Desert Battle' Snake Eyes

There are no words...

 

Overall Score for 'Desert Battle' Snake Eyes:  10/10.  An absolutely essential purchase.  Even if you don't like the character, even if you've bought 30 versions of Snake Eyes already - hell, even if you don't like G.I. Joe, get this guy.  If you have any appreciation for the craftsmanship behind toy creation, you need this figure on your shelf.