I'm not sure if I like this movie or hate it.

I liked "GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra". It's got a lion's share of problems, but... it was just a fun action movie. It's got firefights, crazy ninja stuff, and a badass hovercraft with lasers and some sort of sonic blast cannon... or whatever that thing was. And while it comes across as a campy 90s action flick, it does have a story arc. At the end we discover that Duke has a history with the mad scientist who becomes Cobra Commander. They were friends in the Army four years ago until a mission went awry, and Rex was thought to be dead in a building that blew up. He survived, betrayed his sister, and worked for Destro as "resident mad scientist"; then he takes over the Cobra organization at the end of the movie. Personally, I think he should have escaped like Darth Vader at the end of "Star Wars". "Yay, we won! But the bad guy escaped to fight another day." It works. Instead, Rex is captured and imprisoned in a zany prison facility that would only exist in a comic book.

I was looking forward to a sequel where Zartan, now impersonating the President of the United States, somehow breaks Rex out of the prison, and there's another zany Cobra plot, and the Joes have stop him again. Am I the only one who saw the potential here? Duke vs Cobra Commander. They know each other, there's a history there. It's ripe for further drama as they each try to out-think each other and anticipate what the other's going to do next.

Then I saw the initial trailer for this film. No Duke. An entirely new cast of Joes except for Snake Eyes, who wasn't much of a character to begin with. No Duke. Huh? Then they delayed the film's theatrical release for a year under the guise of adapting it to 3D so that they could insert Duke in there. Disgusted, I gave up on this sequel having a chance of being any good.

Now I've finally seen it.

So with all of the potential I mentioned above, what happens? Duke is killed off during the first 20 minutes of the film, rendering his hasty insertion meaningless. This movie is one of the biggest cluster****s I've ever seen. The Rock takes over as main character. Rex is comically busted out of the zany prison... Speaking of which, Cobra Commander doesn't do anything in the entire film. His story arc is dead. It died with Duke. There's nothing left for him to do but sound menacing and be evil for no reason. But another thing I noticed is, he really doesn't contribute anything to the Cobra plot. These guys have somehow launched a bunch of weaponized satellites into orbit without anyone noticing, wiped out all the Joes (except for our heroes), and they've got a huge criminal organization working on their plan for world domination... all before they break Rex out of prison. Why do they need him? Zartan and Firefly seem to be capable of carrying out the whole plan by themselves. Cobra Commander doesn't do anything that helps the plan. Unless he did something off camera, which wouldn't count anyway. If you can't show him doing something significant, then I'm gonna say he doesn't need to be there.

So much like "Return Of The Jedi", this film has to waste some of our time recovering from the detour the previous film created. Whenever this kind of thing happens to a main character... Han Solo has to be rescued from the carbonite, Megatron has to be brought back to life in "Transformers 2", Cobra Commander has to be rescued in "GI Joe: Retaliation"... It's a waste of screen time. Between reacquainting us with Duke only to kill him off post haste, introducing us to an entirely new and unnecessary cast of Joes, and getting Cobra Commander out of that prison, the movie's first hour of run time is a mostly a big waste.

And Storm Shadow suddenly becomes a good guy when he realizes "Oh, I was tricked into becoming evil." Really? I don't get it. That Zartan fellow must be incredibly old considering he framed Storm Shadow for the death of his master when Storm Shadow was just a kid. How long has he been planning his dastardly deeds? And what did he do, pick a random kid to become his resident ninja accomplice? Regardless, Zartan has been doing the "evil bad guy" thing much longer than Cobra Commander (Rex was a good guy until four years prior to the first film). This schlock reads like it was written by an 8 year old. My sister's Pac-Man stories that she wrote when she was 7 years old were better than this drivel.

With that said, there were two action scenes I liked. The big ninja battle on the mountain was literally breathtaking. First time I saw it, my mouth was agape. Great scene. I guess I wasn't prepared for that level of badassery from a turd like this. At the end The Rock and Firefly engage in a close-quarters gunkata battle that would have been right at home in "Equilibrium". Nice!

But with that said, can two awesome action scenes save an otherwise terrible movie? I'm doubting it. I think I'm getting too old for this kind of crap.

I agree with you pretty much on all of those points. This second movie was kind of fun, but the first one was better by far.

The cast chemistry was better. When they go into a sequel and remove most of the original cast, that's just no good no matter what.

I still kind of enjoyed it as a popcorn movie, but the first one did that, better, too.

I'll have to watch the first one some time and see how it compares (haven't watched it in a while). It does have a lot of origin story flashbacks, but in retrospect that just helps to flesh out the characters and their story arcs. In contrast, Roadblock and Lady Jaye and Flint have no story arc at all. And as mentioned, Cobra Commander has none either. It's a joyless journey into a dark nether realm of absent storytelling with a couple of good action scenes tacked on to keep us interested.