Our review of the 1987 straight-to-video G.I. Joe animated feature film, based-on, and continuing from, the 95 episode cartoon series of the same name. Starring every famious mid-80s voice actor you’ve ever heard of…and Don Johnson. And Burgess Meredith.
G.I. Joe was “my” series in the “power block” of GI Joe, Transformers, and He-man. Only in retrospect do I really see how much propaganda was shoved down my little Reaganite-baby brain. I mean, for Chrissakes, the lasers are red and blue with one of the major scenes being set during a snowstorm. The Baroness and Destro are “foreign” as are the Dreadnoks (AUSTRALIAN! Ooooo!).
As you’ve mentioned; Flint, General Hawk, and Duke are basically interchangable manly men who do manly things. I do believe Flint was slightly more dashing but not so much that wee little tykes noticed. Of the main characters, I think I recall Shipwreck best because the writers were allowed to give him a personality–and his personality was Popeye if Popeye was an a******.
It’s one of the chief problems with transferring it to the silver screen. In order to diversify it you have to give Roadblock a major role (and remove the fact he rapped every line before rapping was cool), highlight the fact there’s only three girls on the entire team, and figure some way around that it is an American-centered team devoted to operations abroad in countries that have their own militaries. No wonder the first (and probably second) live action Joe movies were cluster****s.
Still, I have a fond place in my heart for the GI Joe movie. It’s basically five episodes grafted together with Conan the Barbarian’s Serpent Men (or Kull, if you want to be specific), a Coming of Age story (done poorly like in Battleship), and Cobra’s soldiers not realizing they’re going to be scrubbing the toilets in the New Serpentman World. Even as a child, I wondered like you why Golobulous (sp?) was so Pro-Serpentor when he didn’t do any better than Cobra Commander. Heck, at least CC was a Serpent Man while Serpentor was 100% human, just a clone.
But why did I like it? I’ll tell you why! The first 5 minutes, Sergeant Slaughter, and the fact Falcon actually does blow the crap out of the evil Serpent Men empire. As a child, I also would have been traumatized by Duke’s death. He was blond and I’m a blond. It’d be like Serpentor killing me.