GI Joe: Rise Of Cobra Blu-Ray & GI Joe Resolute DVD Reviews

Against my better judgement, I bought this blu-ray (only $19.99 pre-order from Amazon) after thinking it was pretty limp in the theatres. Nursing a horriffic cold, I only managed to stay awake for about painful 20 minutes before dozing off, mercifully regaining conciousness as the credits rolled. Here are the original notes from my first (theatrical) viewing of the film:

Minuses:
* Fake snake
* Holograms have audible footsteps?
* Wayans awful
* Quaid awful
* Dialogue awful
* Acting awful
* Accelerator suit double awful
* Montage training = world police
* Turning invisible allows you to escape?
* How much did double bubble gum pay for product placement?
* Cobra G3 hummer? Weak.
* Cold breath in arctic is the weakest cgi I've seen outside of syfy
channel
* Cobra commanders mask falling off
* Oh wow! Everyone knows each other!
* Oh wow! Another flashback!
* Shock ending telegraphed so bad

Plus:
* Sienna Miller

It's hard to say this without breaking down into a giggle fit, but Stephen Sommers is no Michael Bay.

Prior to going comatose with the live action film, I watched the "adult" Joe cartoon, "Resolute" written by Warren Ellis, who is clearly not only a whore, but is also losing it. Nothing here that we haven't seen a million times before in the Joe comic book, and why is it "for adults"? Because they kill Bazooka and say "Hell"? An episode of Ben Ten has more drama than this.

A self-congratualtory "extra" featuring a bunch of in-house Hasbro hacks yakking about how ground-breaking this mess is only serves to illustrate how arrogant and out of touch the company is when it comes to their properties, a sin of pride that cause both this cartoon and the feature film to fail miserably.

Hasbro's Marvel Puniverse Series 5: Suckage Continues

Hasbro unveiled the lineup for Series 5 of the (rightly) maligned Marvel Puniverse figures as follows:

1) Spiderman: (again!!) two more versions: one where the blue on his costume is, ah, navy blue, and another where the blue area is colored black! Apparently someone thinks these are exciting variants. The Navy one will be upside down in package so that you'll realize it's one you don't have already in case you aren't carrying a PMS color chart around Target with you.

2) Iron Man: (again!!) in Centurian repaint, I mean armor.

3) Iron Fist (again!!) this time with a black dragon tattoo and one hand that is actually in a fist, as opposed to version one, which had two open hands. You'd think the minimal requirement for a character with the word "fist" in his name would be a fist, but no, Hasbro is just getting to that now.

4) Smooth Guy #1: Guardian. This is the second time since Hasbro has had the Marvel license that they've made a Guardian figure, which makes two more times than he has appeared in Marvel Comics during the same time period. Why do they love him so in Pawtucket? Because he's a Smooth Guy, and they can reuse an existing tooling with a new paintjob to make him.

5) Smooth Guy #2: Electro. Okay, it's a new headsculpt and forearm. Congratulations for going all out.

6) Smooth Guy #3: Torch. Seriously, this is the 5th or 6th Torch variant that we know about. Why so hung up on this guy, especially after the first figure was a Series 1 Peg Warmer? This time it's the non-flaming form in the John Byrne era costume. It appears they sculpted a new head with some flames added, going the extra mile to spend as little as possible in order to slightly vary an existing figure just enough to pick the pockets of hardcore completist fanboys.

7) The Thing in the John Byrne era costume.

8) Namor in black costume.

So out of 8 figures, four are new characters, four are repaints of older figures and all of them suck. Sorry there are no pics, but if you really use your imagination with help from our suggestions here, you might be able to visualize what the Hasbro product shots look like:

1) Picture figures that are shot from a weird angle so that their limbs look all distorted and they appear shimmery-shiny.

2) Imagine that all the heads are way too big.

3) Imagine paint jobs at least 50% better than any you've seen on a factory Hasbro piece.

4) Think smooth.