What am I watching? GI Joe:Resolute

I’ll put it right out there – I haven’t watched a GI Joe cartoon since, probably, the late 80s. It never quite obtained that position in my heart that robots in disguise appeared to fit perfectly. I did end up renting that live action GI Joe movie and, while it was definitely another product(toy) placement movie, it felt like it captured the flavor of what I remembered.

On the other hand, since I was a child, I’ve definitely read a lot of crap(as a unit of measurement) by Warren Ellis. At this point he’s been a surprisingly prolific writer. True, he’s no Brian M Bendis, but I believe that Bendis may be a hive mind of writers to be able to helm so many titles simultaneously. Ellis is responsible for one of my favorite Iron Man story arcs – Extremis. His Desolation Jones has left me desolate over its unfortunate demise mid-arc at issue #7. I may be one of the only people to have enjoyed Global Frequency. He’s even one of the main writers for the game Dead Space. That’s all not even considering the massive oversights in my reading experience – Planetary and Transmetropolitan. So, yeah, Warren Ellis. He’s a guy that knows how to bring the weird and bring the brutal storylines.

I had heard the title GI Joe: Resolute previously, but it’s just GI Joe, right? It wasn’t until I recently heard it was actually Warren Ellis was responsible for the series and the fact that people die instead of being seemingly invincible and laserproof that really grabbed my attention. (bring up browser.. netflix.. search resolute.. queue..)

Confusingly, Resolute was 11 episodes, but is only an hour long. It kicks off letting you know the animation is solid – more Cowboy Bebop level than 80s toy commercial level. There’s even the anime feel from the whole package in a few recognizable voice actors coupled with that modern animation. I’d be willing to put money on the same studio animating this as The Animatrix – The Second Renaissance.

Having just finished watching it, it was a nice, tight hour of action. It feels like what I remember the gist of the show being and the action was definitely a little more adult – the opening shot is of the body of a major character, dead. Snake Eyes left a trail of bodies and they were not shy about showing the kills. The storyline was appropriately epic and there were definitely a few cities wiped off the map during the course of the story.

I’m not sure that I really detected Warren Ellis’ fingerprints on the writing. The writing was tight, but not really out there aside from a high comfort level with blowing entire cities off the planet.. It did happen to capture the GI Joe theme pretty well for a non-American who wasn’t even familiar with the source material. We’ll call the writer a neutral aspect.

Some of the sequences could have used a little decompression and the short ‘episode format’ made the combined product feel a little disjointed with the cliffhanger type moments coming every five minutes or so. They also seemed to keep the instances to a minimum of the “20 guys firing full auto at one or two Joes standing there and apparently firing blanks”, but I still needed to reach for a beer during those points.

I’d say if you ever bought a GI Joe toy, you’re ripe for spending a good hour with this movie. I wouldn’t have the patience for this if it were a series, but as a nicely portioned chunk of updated nostalgia, you’re not going to go wrong. Considering that most of the fans of the original series are at least in their 30s now, the update is well targeted.

Be careful with the extra on the DVD where they interview three of the creators. Those are some gushing fanboys to the extent that I was kind of uncomfortable on their behalf.

Now, if they could do something like this for Transformers instead of those abominable movies..