What Is G.I. Joe’s Problem at the Movies?

In the final moments of 2023’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Anthony Ramos’ Noah Diaz is interviewing for a job that clearly feels like it’s building to something. As the scene continues and Michael Kelly’s Burke begins asking Noah questions about his time hanging with the Autobots, the film reveals its big twist for the newly rebooted Transformers universe: it’s bringing G.I. Joe along for the ride.

Created by Stanley Weston and Donald Levine in 1964, G.I. Joe has been around for decades as a toy line that later expanded into comics, TV shows, and crossovers with Street Fighter. Despite its persistence, one area where it hasn’t had much luck is in the movies. After four animated films that ran from the late ’80s to the early 2000s, Hasbro pivoted to live-action. The resulting three films are a mixed bag, but really highlight how hard it apparently is for Hasbro and Paramount to make this series into a big cinematic franchise. Why is that?

The first live-action flick was G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which released August 7, 2009. It is… kind of a lot. From the very first frame, there’s so much going on, and it was clearly made in the shadow of the live-action Transformers films. (Thankfully, it lacks any similarly weird digressions that linger in your mind years later.) As directed by Stephen Sommers of The Mummy fame, Cobra is genuinely unashamed of itself in a way that makes it stand out from other modern reboots in the same timeframe, further helped by how relentlessly goofy it is. Whether it’s stopping a fight scene to have a flashback that’s got its own fight scene or an extended chase through Paris, the movie perfectly recreates the feeling of playing with toys and making up stories on the fly.

Rise was such a monument to childlike excess that it did its job a little too well, and put the next two films in a weird spot. Released in 2013, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is both a sequel and soft reboot that gets rid of everyone from the first movie that’s not Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, or Cobra Commander to focus on new characters like Dwayne Johnson’s Roadblock. Meanwhile, 2021’s Snake Eyes set up its own continuity to show how the titular ninja (played here by Henry Golding, and Ray Park in the earlier movies) met and befriended eventual rival Storm Shadow and later fell in with G.I. Joe. Compared to Rise, the two films are significantly dialed back on the ridiculousness, but have it in spots. Snake Eyes features a magical rock that can light people on fire and giant anacondas, while Retaliation has orbital death satellites that destroy London.

I rewatched the three G.I. Joe movies over the weekend, and they remain solid entertainment that gets by on good action and chemistry, like every other action movie in the last decade. (Lee Byung-hun was a great Storm Shadow, and remains the best casting choice across all three films.) In going through them again, I tried to figure out why Paramount hasn’t been able to make the franchise a consistent blockbuster source the way it has with Transformers and Ninja Turtles. Some of it may just have to do with timing: Larry Hama’s A Real American Hero comics relaunch is the definitive version of the franchise, but it hit in 1982, two years before its fellow ’80s babies. It may have simply been too early to the party, and it doesn’t help that it doesn’t have a consistent TV and movie presence of its own.

But if Transformers and the Turtles stole its thunder, the MCU practically robbed G.I. Joe’s entire house. Since the movies drew a lot of inspiration from the original Ultimate universe, Marvel cornered a market on paramilitary organizations fighting terrorists with superheroes and soldiers with gimmicks. SHIELD’s presence faded in the films, but ABC kept it going with Agents of SHIELD, which grew into its own distinct thing that fans still have affection for to this day. With Agents staking a claim on the “weird” end of G.I. Joe’s spectrum, and the Transformers movies taking the “grounded” side with its military presence, the Real American Heroes didn’t really have anywhere to go or a reason to exist.

Snake Eyes was a box office bomb in 2021, and that Paramount is going full steam ahead on this Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover says it knows the Joes just don’t have it as a film franchise. Perhaps they never truly did, since not everything has the chops to be a franchise. Or maybe the upcoming film will reignite both franchises, and in the Joes’ case, garner enough interest to show what these characters do when they’re not fighting alien robots. If that doesn’t work, and all else fails… well, there’s always animation.

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