Opening this past weekend, GI Joe: Retaliation failed to impress movie goers with mislead story lines compensated with a plethora of explosions and endless gunfire.
Zartan, master of disguise, poses as the President after the Cobras capture him, and orders the Joes to extract nuclear warhead from a recently terrorized country. Later framed for nuclear warhead theft, the Joes face an uphill battle as the country is posed to believe all the Joes are discontinued from active service while most are killed in an ambush attack.
As the team struggles to find allies, Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) captains his remaining Joes to his roots in the streets and finds refuge in an old run-down recreational center where he was raised. Not much is explained of his past and how he end up there, leaving the viewer to create their own story of the fate that point him in that direction.
Realizing not many people are around to assist, Roadblock decides to visit the originator of the GI Joes, Retired General Joe Colton (Bruce Willis). Seeking advice as how to approach, Colton directs the Joes through the movie on strategies and plans of attack.
Unrealistic in its portrayal of global leader reaction, Zartan, as the president, is ordered by the Cobra commander to deploy all its nuclear war heads against all other countries, forcing all other countries to deploy and detonate mid attack, leaving Cobra with the only war heads to attack as they please.
Several irrelevant tangents lead into different stories, including the unnecessary rivalry and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), leading to a Chinese centralized theme movie that distract the viewers for much longer than needed, adding not merit to the central story.
Unrelated throughout the entire store line, GI Joe: Retaliation lets down the name of the very well known action figure.
Based off the popular Hasbro collection of action figures, GI Joe first appeared as a television show in 1985. Gathering the attention of countless fans, the show propelled the action figures to mass success. Shortly after in 1987, the first GI Joe movie premiered with large success.
Now on its third movie, GI Joe continues its legacy of the American hero story that many children enjoy to play in their youth. Constant updated action figures are added to the line to coincide with the movie, giving viewers the chance to take a bare minimum of a poor story.