The genre of toy film adaptations has reached its peak this year with ‘Barbie’, as director Greta Gerwig’s satire is not damn entertaining, but also incredibly successful. But Barbie is far from the first toy to hit theaters. After the great success of ‘Transformers’, the GI Joes were also supposed to conquer the big screen in 2009, but they did not do so well in ‘GI Joe – Secret Mission Cobra’.
The sequel “GI Joe 2: The Reckoning” four years later would do a lot of things differently and do everything better – with unfortunately also manageable results. You can now get an idea of this on the streaming service Paramount+, where ‘GI Joe – Secret Mission Cobra’ has been available for a long time and ‘GI Joe 2: The Reckoning’ can now also be streamed.
“Director Jon M. Chu relies considerably less on futuristic gadgets and prefers dark action,” writes editor-in-chief Christoph Petersen in the FILMSTARTS review of “GI Joe 2,” but: “The path taken is the right one, but some of the measures still have an adverse effect.” This also includes, for example that protagonist of “GI Joe”. Channing Tatum died at the beginning of part 2, despite his chemistry with the new addition Dwayne Johnson is the climax of the film.
That’s because Tatum wasn’t particularly interested in the first film and therefore asked for his character to be killed off early in the second part. Those responsible expanded Tatum’s role in “The Reckoning” a bit with reshoots, but this also makes his character’s death seem all the stranger in retrospect. You can read the whole bizarre story here:
“GI Joe 2: The Reckoning” only receives an average of 2.5 out of 5 stars in the FILMSTARTS review, the same note as the somewhat trashy first part.
Anyone who has a soft spot for (science fiction) action films with big stars and great acting values can still take a look – especially because action icon Bruce Willis also makes an appearance here as the rough ex-leader of the Joe’s.
In “GI Joe 2,” the elite force is nearly wiped out by their opponents from the secret organization Cobra after it takes control of the White House. Only three of the Joes survive: Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Flint (DJ Cotrona), and sniper Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki) return to the US to fight Cobra, while Ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park) searches for clues in Japan with his partner Jinx (Elodie Yung)…
By the way, another appearance by the GI Joes was recently announced in “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” as a crossover with the Transformers. You can read more about this in this article: