YMMV / G.I. Joe: Retaliation

• Character Rerailment: Cobra Commander actually acts and looks like Cobra Commander in this movie (in the previous film he was more like Dr. Mindbender). Despite the fact he sounds like Darth Vader, it's still an improvement over how he previously looked.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Contested Sequel: Better actors, no cheap gimmicks, the costumes of Cobra Commander and Snake Eyes were impressive, the effects were really good, all around it made more of an effort to be a G.I. Joe movie this time around. But while the G.I. Joe fanbase was pleased, critics deemed it as even worse than G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and casual fans are also divided on if Retaliation is an improvement.
• Fridge Horror:
  • The United States is diplomatically screwed. Having such a massive breach of integrity where a shadow organization would be able to destroy London and threaten to do the same to the rest of the world, while being able to hold the leaders of every great power hostage would permanently destroy the reputation of the USA. In addition, this incident would be like candy to various anti-American states, as they now have a solid case for their "American bad!" arguments.
  • In addition, London's destruction. The capital of a major power and economy is destroyed, along with the possible decapitation of its government. What would be the ramifications of this devastating incident?
• Harsher in Hindsight: Zartan, while posing as the US President, threatens to destroy North Korea with nuclear weapons. In real life, the 45th President of the United States issued a similar threat four years after this movie was released.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Any Joe not seen killed on screen during the big massacre who was a character in the original might be presumably still alive, out there somewhere. Candidates include Scarlett, Ripcord, Breaker, and pretty much anyone else still alive at the end of Rise that didn't make it to screen in Retaliation. Even Duke's death on screen doesn't stop this reaction.
  • Hell, any Cobra killed on-screen thanks to their heavy use of nano-machines, which would be able to heal them, and Storm Shadow being alive and well despite his fate in the first movie.
• It Was His Sled: Duke dies.
• Inferred Holocaust: To prove just how evil he truly is, Cobra Commander nukes London, one of the most populated and economically important cities on the planet, possibly killing millions and severely hurting the world economy and foreign relations abound in the process. Other than brief scorn from the foreign leaders at the summit, this event never gets brought up again for the rest of the film, with the US president instead congratulates his Joes for saving the day and returning peace to the earth once again at the end.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cobra Commander. See this page for details.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Zartan murdering Cover Girl from the first film wasn't bad enough, then him destroying London is an even bigger one.
• Narm:
  • RZA as the Blind Master. The awkward expositioning ruins what would have been some otherwise pretty cool scenes.
  • Lady Jaye's speech about not being respected in the military because of her gender and standing up to her sexist father is undercut by the scene she delivers it in where she strips to her underwear. The gratuitous fanservice played against the You Go, Girl! message is hilariously inept.
• Narm Charm: Cobra Commander's extremely deep voice renders lines like "I want it ALL," and "Destro, you're out of the band," hilarious, but it also does bring him a new shade of personality.
• One-Scene Wonder: Walton Goggins as the Warden of Cobra Commander and Destro's prison, who utilizes every second of his screentime.
• Questionable Casting: Some fans felt this about Dwayne Johnson playing Roadblock, mainly due to the fact that in the film, his characterization was wildely different from the source material, and that a wrestler playing as him was just plain weird.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • It is directed by the guy who made Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, and most of the cast has been ditched.
  • Though with the arrival of the trailer (as noted above), most of the negative emotions soon subsided from the fanbase.
  • Then Paramount postpones it by nine months to add 3D...in addition to extending the scenes between Roadblock and Duke, providing character development for both.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The entire city of London being nuked looks nothing short of awesome. While usually cities being destroyed in various movies involve mushroom cloudes or any sort of big cloud, here you can actually see it being leveled with many buildings being destroyed. The rest of the movie also doesn't look too bad either.

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