Was Rex's mutiny against McCullen simply the seizing of an opportunity, or had it been part of the plan all along? Rex already had a special nanomite solution prepared for McCullen, as well as his own sub already branded with the Cobra insignia. It's worth noting that, in the sequel, both Zartan and Storm Shadow, who were previously loyal to McCullen, serve Cobra Commander without explanation, and nobody seems to have a problem when Cobra Commander abandons Destro, implying that Rex had quietly secured the allegiance of McCullen's lieutenants, and had been planning to hijack his Take Over the World plan all along.
When Zartan destroys the mind control chip during his surgery, McCullen looks concerned for a moment, while the Doctor doesn't even blink. Was this just Zartan being savvy and the Doctor not caring, or a sign that Zartan is already loyal to the future Cobra Commander? Either way, guess who's Cobra Commander's Dragon in the sequel.
With the Korean Byung-hun Lee playing the normally Japanese Storm Shadow, coupled with him speaking Korean in his youth, leads to the theory that Storm Shadow underwent a Race Lift in this continuity. Interestingly enough it would be another connection to his rival Snake Eyes as both are outsiders to the martial art they practice.
Ass Pull: The Doctor is revealed to be Rex, which wouldn't be a bad twist were it not for the fact that his motivations for turning evil are extremely vague.
Base-Breaking Character: The Baroness is a highly divisive character for her portrayal in this, because she's Promoted to Love Interest for Duke, albeit as an ex, and is revealed to be brainwashed before fighting it off through The Power of Love. To many fans, this was too drastic a departure from the character's origins. She does have her fans however for Sienna Miller's performance, costume and snarky lines.
Best Known for the Fanservice: Sienna Miller's Spy Catsuit, complete with her memorable introduction of the camera tilting up to reveal prominent cleavage as she exits the chopper, is a significantly remembered part of the movie. She actually has several different outfits, and is fairly covered up in the second half of the film, but the first one is most remembered. Stephen Sommers and the actress herself had to fend off persistent rumours that she had to wear rubber breasts for it.
Cliché Storm: The film is chock-full of every action movie cliche most people have ever seen. If you want an explanation, look no further than Christopher Orr's review of the movie, in which he decides to just let it speak for itself by providing 40 of the lines that sum up the plot and all of the typical one-liners and plot points it has. It's really a shame though, considering it had some great actors who did the best they could with the material they were given. Then again, for fans of the movie, this could be exactly what they liked about it.
Critical Backlash: Given how badly received the movie was at the time, especially from fans who assumed there were changes from the source material, when the movie was actually pulling from various comics, toy lines and animated series, there has been a growing subsection of fans who insist the movie isn't as bad as that. Indeed, although Channing Tatum himself supposedly disowned it, he later clarified that he meant the studio politics forcing him into it was his issue, and that it wasn't "that bad of a film".
Draco in Leather Pants: Storm Shadow is very popular. Doesn't hurt that he's hot and can kick your ass from here to next Tuesday.
Storm Shadow, despite being a secondary villain, is easily one of the most popular characters in the movie, for his sense of honour, Byung-hun Lee's attractiveness, and badass fight scenes.
This movie's incarnation of Scarlett is also very well liked, and fans bemoan that she didn't return for the sequel.
Fashion-Victim Villain: Cobra Commander. After switching to the metal full-head helmet, suddenly his skinniness becomes more apparent and he looks like a bobblehead or lollipop. One of the few cases where Shoulders of Doom might help. This could be why he was recasted and given a new suit in the sequel.
Christopher Eccleston as Destro. Although given he said how much he hated working on the film, this may have been accidental on his part.
And Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander. Both of them know exactly what kind of movie they're in, and that makes their scenes together the most interesting.
The attacks and destruction in Paris after the real-life terrorist attacks on Paris in 2015 makes watching the entire movie far less enjoyable.
Channing Tatum plays a character who has to basically force his way to be part of the operation, as he's told "you don't ask, you get asked". It was the opposite in real life, where he was forced to do the film by contract, threatened with a lawsuit if he didn't back out.
Storm Shadow's beef with Snake Eyes is implied to stem from the former's jealousy at him being a better student at the dojo, and killing their master afterwards. Come the sequel, where it's revealed that Storm Shadow didn't kill him, it makes the scene where he silently stares off into space thinking about the event even sadder.
He's Just Hiding: Cover Girl does get stabbed in the back by Zartan but, since General Hawk makes a recovery, there's no reason to believe she couldn't have gotten speedy medical attention as well. Scarlett also only refers to "the men we lost", giving a glimmer of hope that she could have survived.
Heartwarming Moment: Ripcord consoles Scarlett, who's afraid to show her vulnerability due to suffering her first loss, since her father taught her to win fights since she was a kid. Not to mention that the Joes' lost a lot of good men and General Hawk is incapacitated from Cobra's assault.
Christopher Eccleston's character designed the bunker under the White House. Did you know that as The Doctor he operated the bunker-like office in 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister's place)?
Snake Eyes is a ninja trained in martial arts. Young Snake Eyes was played by Leo Howard. Leo Howard and martial arts? That sounds familiar...
Sienna Miller playing the wife of a soldier brings to mind her much more serious role in American Sniper, leading to jokes that this is a prequel to that.
Just Here for Godzilla: There are more than a few viewers who were only interested in the movie because of Snake Eyes, thanks to him being a complete badass who is cooler and is generally considered more interesting than the rest of the cast combined.
Cobra Commander, once known as Rex Lewis, was a soldier in the US military who was left to die, and takes the opportunity to go into hiding and perfect the nanite technology. Going undercover as "the Doctor", the Commander fools James McCullen into being his pawn, using the man's resources to secretly build his own organization called Cobra that the Commander uses to overthrow McCullen. Able to instantly silence any of his captured soldiers and even quickly using his sister Ana as a hostage to enable his escape from the G.I. Joes, the Commander installs Zartan as the President of the United States and uses him to eliminate the G.I. Joes and wipe out every country's nuclear weapons, at which point the Commander unveils his powerful "Project Zeus", with which he hopes to gain ultimate power over the world, and very nearly succeeds. Cobra Commander escapes at the end of the films with many of his resources intact, and showcases a tremendous amount of manipulation and scheming in his quest to bring the entire planet under a Cobra banner.
Storm Shadow is a cold, deadly ninja working for MARS Industries and later Cobra as their most successful agent. Framed for the death of his clan's leader, the Hard Master, Storm Shadow went on the run and became a mercenary in an effort to clear his name, and spends his time under James McCullen and Cobra Commander seeking the true culprit. Respecting enemy and ally alike and having pure vitriol for Zartan due to his sadism and glee in killing women, Storm Shadow leads a successful invasion of the G.I. Joe home base to steal warheads in their possession, quickly coming up with a new escape route even when the Joes destroy his original plan. Allowing himself to be captured in the sequel only to orchestrate a prison break of Cobra Commander, Storm Shadow later allies with the G.I. Joes themselves to stop Cobra's Project Zeus, using their extra forces to assist himself in getting revenge on the Hard Master's murderer—Zartan—before disappearing into obscurity, his quest completed and his brotherhood with his friend-turned-enemy Snake Eyes renewed.
Moral Event Horizon: The Doctor crosses it when it's revealed that he brainwashed his own sister (who, it should be mentioned, is in mourning because he allowed her to think that he was dead), and is ready to kill her to save himself and spite Duke. While he was already a sadistic Mad Scientist helping in a plot for world domination, this revelation puts him over the line from bad to pure evil.
Cobra Commander does a grand entrance... and is caught and put to jail few seconds later. The whole sequence goes so quickly, you can forgiven for thinking a large chunk of movie was just cut out.
Cobra Commander'soutfit is also...not great. The mask looks comical and he even has a doofy voice modulator that makes him sound like Darth Vader.
Most, if not all of the dialogue from the Doctor (no, notthat one) is incredibly hammy, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes every single bit of it work. The crowning moment has to be when he declares himself Cobra Commander. Could have been very ridiculous (especially with that look), but it manages to be a Moment of Awesome.
The Doctor: The time has come for the Cobra to rise up and reveal himself. You will call me... Commander!
The entire movie is blocked with cliché's, and is burdened with a fairly thin plot and an overabundance of special effects, but despite or even because of that, it's extremely entertaining.
The movie pulls ideas from several different toy lines, comic books, and animated series. Many of the details that fans complain about the movie "changing" are taken right from the source material ... just not an iteration of the source material the complainer is familiar with (e.g., you don't have to like the powered suits, but if you know the G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 line, you know the movie didn't make them up).
Likewise, "International Heroes" was part of the Action Force theme, and even briefly adopted in the DiC series. GI Joe also worked for the United Nations in Sigma Six.
Cover Girl actually did have long blonde hair in her initial appearances in Season 1, before switching to her more remembered short red hairstyle.
Romantic Plot Tumor: The Baroness and Duke is pretty central to the storyline, even if it feels unnecessary to the mythos. G.I. Joe, after all, has no small shortage of improbable relationships across every canon. Ripcord and Scarlet, however, seems to have drawn almost universal scorn.
The fight between Scarlett and The Baroness seems to be the most remembered part of the film. Despite what you'd expect, it's not played for Fanservice, beyond the novelty of seeing two of the franchise's iconic Action Girls fighting, and it's actually fairly brutal - The Baroness choking Scarlett with a chain, whacking her in the face with a pan, and punching her in the neck.
Another absurdly well-remembered moment is the brief bit during the Paris sequence where The Baroness orders a woman out of an elevator and gunpoint and then says "nice shoes".
Special Effects Failure: While a majority of the special visual effects were well done, a CGI cobra at the beginning of the film sticks out like a sore thumb:
In the wide shots of the Nanites eating the Eifel Tower, the nanite swarm looks like a toxic gas cloud.
The scene of Cobra's arctic base collapsing into the water is pretty weightless when it comes to physics and its rendering is on par with the tie-in game.
The Paris car chase is loaded with wonky CGI in terms of both physics and execution of the animation and rendering. The kicker? The Slow Motion shot of the suits dodging the missiles took the equivalent of 4 years in computer time to render.
McCullen's horribly burnt head and face that forces him to become Destro? Nightmare Fuel... But the CGI rendering his new metallic head? Abhorrent SFX failure that sucks away the preceding horror, and looks especially laughable whenever his metallic lips move and when he gets up to try attack Rex in rage and the light reflections look completely off. It's mind-boggling why they couldn't rely on some makeup effects for Destro's final look and thought THIS video call filter-looking thing was okay to show in theaters.
Boiling the film down to its basic Cliché Storm plot-beats, and the fact that there's a major action set-piece in Paris that ends with the Eifel Tower being destroyed, this could probably be the closest we'll get to a live-action Team America: World Police, just with everything played straight rather than for laughs.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Cover Girl in this movie is basically just General Hawk's assistant before Zartan kills her. Cover Girl in the source material is a former professional model who took up driving tanks for a living. Not even the G.I. Joe fans realized that the character was supposed to be Cover Girl. You know you've wasted a character when not even the people with knowledge of the source material knew who the character was supposed to be.
Unexpected Character: Ripcord is an unusual choice for The Lancer in the film, since he was mostly a background character in the franchise, and it's even more unusual that they use a character who was white and gave him a Race Lift to accommodate Marlon Wayans - since the franchise had plenty of actual black characters he could play, such as Stalker or Roadblock, who are Adapted Out (Roadblock appears in the sequel, played by Dwayne Johnson).
Vindicated by History: While financially profitable when it came out, it was panned by critics and fans alike, with three of the stars taking the time to slam it once they were no longer committed to the franchise. As the years have gone by, it's seen in a more favourable light for being fun and close to the tone of the animated series, with fans having to acknowledge that many presumed changes to the canon were actually coming from other sources besides the series. The tepid reception to Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins has also had people looking back on Rise of Cobra in a more positive light.
Snake Eyes' mask having embossed lips. The idea of a character who doesn't speak having embossed lips on his mask is just ridiculous. It also proved distracting to the audience.
Rex's "Cobra Commander" helmet. Whoever was in charge of costuming either had no idea what the Commander looked like besides "shiny helmet", or tried to somehow combine Rex's look before he revealed his true colors with the look commonly associated with CC. The result◊ was...interesting.
◊ was...interesting.
