G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra & Retaliation is the 408th episode of the Screen Junkies comedy series Honest Trailers. It was written by Logan Rees, Spencer Gilbert, Danielle Radford and Lon Harris. It was narrated by Jon Bailey as Epic Voice Guy. It parodies the 2009 military science fiction action film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and its 2013 sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation. It was published on August 3, 2021, to coincide with the release of Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. It is 6 minutes and 22 seconds long. It has been viewed over 200,000 times.
Script[]
From the company behind all the worst toy stories (Hasbro), comes the exciting prologue to the G.I. Joe franchise, and also... the other exciting prologue to the G.I. Joe franchise after that first one didn't hit, because after two films showing us how it all began, it's time for the Joe-verse to... get another exciting prologue (shows the logo for Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins), again. Knowing is half the battle; the other half is knowing when the f*cking battle's supposed to start.
G.I. Joes 1 & 2
Remember the classic G.I. Joe cartoon and action figures? Kind of before your time? Okay, well, they made two movies about the guys from the "Pork Chop Sandwiches" video.
"Blowtorch": Pork chop sandwiches! Oh, sh*t!
And they're like Team America, but without the jokes. (shows shots comparing the destruction of the Eiffel Tower in Rise of Cobra and Team America: World Police)
Joe: Damn, I missed him!
Also before your time? Well, I don't know what to tell you, then; is Serpentor in Fortnite? But with the same company as the Transformers toys behind the project, they're going to follow that same old formula, mixing generic military dudes and hot military babes with a bunch of CGI nonsense, yet it never really comes together. See, Michael Bay knew that the secret sauce was racist robots.
Skids: What're we gonna do with this shrimp taco?
Mudflap: Let's pop a cap in his ass, throw him in the trunk, and then nobody gonna know nothing, naw mean?
I do "naw mean", Mudflap; I do.
Waste two hours meeting Channing Tatum as Duke, a performance with all the easygoing charm of a man who's there against his will...
Duke: Detail, atten-tion!
...because he was.
Channing Tatum: (on The Howard Stern Show) I hate that movie. I-- So, I was pushed into doing that movie.
He's playing a sad potato who ghosted his fiancée after getting her little brother killed, yet we're still supposed to like him. (Duke drives away during Rex's funeral) But not for too long, 'cause he's only in the sequel for ten minutes before he hands it off to his oldest pal, the Rock?
Roadblock's Daughter: (roughhousing with Duke) Uncle Duke, you have big ears.
"Uncle Duke"? Wait, wasn't his lifelong best friend Marlon Wayans? What happened to Ripcord? Did all the workplace sexual harassment finally catch up with him, hmm?
Ripcord: (to Scarlett) I'm attracted to you. / When I get a target in my sights... <pew> I take it down. / We are tough. But I'm also sensitive.
Watch the Rock's reputation as franchise Viagra go down like a flaccid windsock, and he's getting zero help from Ray Park in yet another voiceless role (shows shots of Ray Park as Darth Maul and Snake Eyes), Bruce Willis doing the least to collect his check as is tradition, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt -- for the first movie, at least -- as My Chemical Cobra Commander, the inspiration for Deadpool... 's makeup design.
Wade Wilson: Like a testicle with teeth.
Ride along with two stories that feel like they were stolen from a little boy's notebook margins, featuring twists like... "bad lady good now", "good guy bad now", and "Uh-oh! Bad guy good guy!", in scripts that fail all the way down to the sentence structure.
Zartan: (as the President, to the actual President) The G.I. Joes are about to be out of the picture. And by "out of the picture," I mean... "alive on Earth".
That's not what "out of the picture" means!
Think war toys are just for the boys? So does Hasbro. But dang it, they're going to do their best to sneak in some ladies where they can...
Jaye: Girl Scout to secretary. Amazing.
...awkwardly...
Heavy Duty: Don't make me shoot a woman.
Baroness: (to a woman) Get! Out! (as the woman runs away) Nice shoes.
...very awkwardly...
Storm Shadow: Goodbye, sweetheart.
Zartan: That's right. You don't kill women.
Scarlett: He didn't want to put his life in the hands of a woman.
...really very awkwardly....
Jaye: Amy Vandervoort, Fox News.
Zartan: (as the President) Oh, Fox. Of course. That's why you look so fair and balanced.
Jaye: (chuckles) Very cute.
Heavy Duty: You think it, it does it. (pictures of Scarlett flash up on Ripcord's HUD)
...so long as they still promise to dress all sexy (shows the Baroness wearing a low-cut dress in the Arctic), and when a fight breaks out, only square off against the other woman, even if that means fighting an old lady. (shows Jinx fighting and knocking out an elderly lady monk)
Experience two films that can't even do American propaganda right, where the Army keeps getting its ass handed to them, bombs their own troops, and doesn't notice when their own president gets swapped with a shapeshifter for months. Meanwhile, the Joes do nothing but get beat up, have their sh*t stolen, get arrested, and let everyone in London die. Like, 9 million people, dead. Sorry, Big Ben!
So before you see Snake Eyes in the-- (a Forbes article with the title "No, Joe!: 'Snake Eyes' Bombs At Box Office With $13M Debut" pops up) So before you scroll past Snake Eyes on some streaming service, revisit the films that already gave you a perfectly reasonable Snake Eyes origin story: he's a lost member of the Wu-Tang Clan...
Blind Master: (to Snake Eyes) But in order for me to bring him to justice, you must deliver him to me, alive.
...who spent his entire childhood beating the crap out of another kid. (shows Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fighting as children while Epic Voice Guy chants "Kid fight!" 27 times) Sadly, this is the best part of the whole franchise. Kid fight! Kid fight! Kid fight!
Starring: G.I. Chode (Channing Tatum as Conrad Hauser/Duke); Shhhh, I'm Hunting Cobwas, Hahahahahaha! (Ray Park as Snake Eyes); Inventor of the Fidget Spinner (Byung-hun Lee as Thomas Arashikage/Storm Shadow); The Pryce is Wrong, B**** (Jonathan Pryce as The President of the United States); Dwayne "The Walk Away From Explosions" Johnson (Dwayne Johnson as Marvin F. Hinton/Roadblock); Fight Chicks (Marlon Wayans as Wallace Weems/Ripcord); ScarJoe (Rachel Nichols as Shana M. O'Hara/Scarlett); My Trooper Ex-Girlfriend (Sienna Miller as Ana Lewis/Anastascia DeCobray/The Baroness); The Quaid: Redemption (Dennis Quaid as Gen. Clayton Abernathy/Hawk); We All Live in a High-Tech Submarine, High-Tech Submarine, High-Tech Submarine (Christopher Eccleston as James McCullen/Destro); I'm Gonna Sew Storm Shadow's A****** Shut, and Just Keep Feeding Him, and Feeding Him (Robert "RZA" Fitzgerald as Blind Master); Cobra Lalalalalalalalala Laaaaame (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Luke Bracey as Rexford G. "Rex" Lewis/The Doctor/Cobra Commander); Brendan Frasier (sic) for One Scene? Why? (Brendan Fraser as Geoffrey Stone IV/Sergeant Stone); and More Cisco Than the Thong Song (montage of the Cisco logo appearing throughout the films).
Body Massage: Origins
The honest title for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra & Retaliation was ‘Body Massage: Origins’. Titles designed by Robert Holtby.
Wow, an exploding motorcycle you have to jump off of to use?! That's... probably the worst weapon in history.
Viewer's Comments[]
Epic Voice Guy, please say: "There's only one thing I hate more than lying: skim milk. Which is water that's lying about being milk." 🥛 - BuffyGranger
Please say in your rich, buttery voice "You're a bread compartment!" - Reynard City Update Channel
Please say, "country home take me road to a belong where I am place" - Brittany Madelianne
Please say "hellooo nuuurse" - Omar Rubio
Trivia[]
Reception[]
Production Credits[]
Voice Narration: Jon Bailey aka Epic Voice Guy
Title Design: Robert Holtby
Written by: Logan Rees, Spencer Gilbert, Danielle Radford, & Lon Harris
Produced by: Spencer Gilbert
Associate Producer: Ryan O'Toole
Edited by: Kevin Williamsen & Randy Whitlock
Post-Production Supervisor: Emin Bassavand
Post-Production Coordinator: Mikołaj Kossakowski
Assistant Editor: Rebecca Castaneda
Director of Video Production: Max Dionne
Executive Producer: Roth Cornet