GI JOE - The Rise of Cobra

I'd been looking foward to this with a mixture of excitement and trepidation (after Transformers), so wasn't expecting much, but hoped to enjoy it. We went on preview day (6 August) and whilst it probably wasn't great for anyone not into GI JOE as a kid, I thought it was actually a pretty decent movie. It had a plot (better than Transformers already) and really was a set-up film for the franchise. The reveal (towards the end of the film) of who Cobra Commander is was fairly suspenseful and an interesting twist, which threw the admittedly currently rather 1 dimensional characters into some new positisions. Despite deviating from the standard background and storylines for the characters somewhat, I didn't really mind and found it added to the story of the film. Some good in jokes (kung Fu grip and realistic hair!) and Star Wars references (particularly from Ray Park as Snake Eyes) stood out for me. I think my favourite, and perhaps most true-to-cartoon character was Joseph-Gorden Levitt as Cobra Commander, although with some interesting twists. The major downsides for me were that the character set was limited (although in retrospect this is probably good) and that at the end it really did feel like a 90 odd minute set up for the franchise, despite being a reasonable film in its own right. Nothing particularly wrong here, just want to see the next one! Oh, and the annying shakey cinematography on everything did give me a bit of a headache.

Plus points - Night Raven, nod to Dr Mindbended, genesis of Cobra Commander, Destro, Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow, links into the (admittedly terrible) prequel book.

Negatives - intra-relationships between main characters may have been overdone somewhat, constant flashbacks to Storm Shadown and Snake Eyes' youth got a bit tiresome and seemes shoehorned in somewhat.

Continuity error spotting - Heavy Duty's earring changes side in one shot of him piloting a Shark on the assault on the polar base.

Overall - given that is was called "The Rise of Cobra" it did what it said on the tin, and for a movie based on action figures was actually really entertaining and not annoying! I would have happily watched another 2 hours of it to see what happened next. PLEASE don't let Brett Ratner anywhere near it.