G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra – Teaser Trailer

The new G.I. Joe movie is a lot like the Transformers movie: a highly anticipated big-budget summer blockbuster based on an 80s cartoon series that was originally made for the sole purpose of selling toys. Scratch that, they’re “action figures.” There was a lot of buzz surrounding the fact that the first real G.I. Joe trailer would air during the Super Bowl, and so I waited in anticipation.

Seconds into the trailer, audiences are hit with the action preview trifecta: hot cars and skinny women wearing tight black leather clothing and lightning fast scene cuts. Oh, right, I had heard that there was going to be another The Fast and The Furious movie.

Then we see the Eiffel Tower eaten away by a green cloud (okay, maybe this isn’t The Fast And The Furious), all of which is brought to us “from The Director of The Mummy.” The Mummy, really? These are the movies the creators wanted to invoke during promotion? If this isn’t The Fast and The Furious, then it’s just another B-movie hiding behind an A-list special effects budget.

It wasn’t until 15 seconds into the trailer when a CG super soldier with a strangely familiar mask leapt out of a plane while others dove through buses that I realized they had just buried their lead! They should have led with the recognizable G.I. Joes because that’s all people were really looking for!

The typical mash up of exploding vehicles, slow-mo shrapnel, bullet fire, gravity-defying leaps, black body suits that overtly accentuate every curve, and really great flowing hair form the rest of the trailer. The one truly shining moment in the trailer comes at 24 seconds with the epic one-second clash of Snake Eyes vs. Storm Shadow. If that hadn’t finally clued you in on what movie it is, in the last few seconds they tell you the movie is in fact, G.I. Joe.

From an entertainment standpoint, the trailer kept your eyes glued to the screen, but really, you weren’t being entertained; the scene cuts happened so fast your brain just literally couldn’t keep up. Also, notice they didn’t string together more than two seconds of actual actors acting and the longest moments were completely CG. Granted, not only is this the first trailer but it’s also a Super Bowl trailer, which has a specific audience and you shouldn’t expect anything more than hype. Even then, they didn’t manage to make this one look like a winner. If they had just started with the Joes and not gone with the generic beginning, maybe I would have given this trailer more of a chance, but too many points were lost in the first five seconds.

As for the movie itself, the jury’s still out until we get a better look at the movie and not just the effects. Here’s to hoping G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra can do what Transformers did so well in 2007, or if it’s just another The Mummy, but with better merchandising.

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra opens August 7th, 2009.
Visit Apple’s G.I. Joe Trailer Page for high resolution trailers.
Visit the Official Website.

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