Come hell or high water, Paramount seems determined to turn G.I. Joe into a marketable and popular franchise, even if the studio is now zero-for-three in its attempts to build another Hasbro property into something can even come close to entering the same stratosphere as Transformers.
Then again, maybe the boardroom will finally get the memo after Snake Eyes went down as the biggest box office bomb of last year to give the Joes their third flop in 12 years, after barely cracking $40 million globally. And to think, people lambasted Stephen Sommers’ The Rise of Cobra and Jon M. Chu’s Retaliation for underperforming when they hauled in $302 million and $375 million respectively.
While the brand has been unremarkable in virtually every aspect, there’s a lot of people who enjoy Sommers’ opening salvo for completely ironic reasons, which is fair enough when The Rise of Cobra is effectively the live-action version of Team America. As a result, it’s become a regular favorite on streaming, something that rings true yet again this week.
Per FlixPatrol, the endearingly cheesy globetrotting escapade has scored a handful of Top 10 finishes around the world, which has seen it return to the Netflix global ranks. It’s not a great piece of cinema by any stretch, but it does offer a reasonably diverting and fitfully entertaining way to waste a couple of hours.
Plus, if you want to see a grieving action hero unironically ride a motorcycle through a graveyard in the rain while wearing sunglasses, then you’re in luck.