G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra
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The Story
James McCullen/Destro (Christopher Eccleston) is a powerful arms dealer who has created a microscopic biological weapon that can literally eat away any substance in seconds. NATO soldiers Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) have been assigned to guard the suitcase holding the “nanomites” but are ambushed by COBRA, a team of mercenaries intent on world domination.
The two soldiers are rescued and later recruited by a secret military unit known as “G.I. Joe.” The team, led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), includes the beautiful Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) and the silent and lethal Snake Eyes (Ray Park), among others. Together they pursue COBRA operatives Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), the Baroness (Sienna Miller), and COBRA Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in a global chase to retrieve the weapons before the world is destroyed.
Content Issues
“Joe” could easily have been an entertaining film with a PG rating, but the filmmakers saw fit to add enough harsh language (including a surprising number of uses of God’s name in vain), gore, and sexual overtones to warrant a PG-13. These elements are completely unnecessary to the flow of the action—and unfortunate given the number of children who will see this film.
Worldview Talking Points
“G.I. Joe” is another summer blockbuster where parents (okay, dads) are as likely to have grown up playing with the toys and watching the cartoons as their kids. Director Stephen Sommers (“The Mummy,” “The Mummy Returns,” “Van Helsing”) seems to have worked hard to keep the film apace with the source material, while notching up the violence and body count considerably. It’s definitely a spectacle built for the little boy in all of us.
The film isn’t thick with major worldview ideas beyond that of good versus evil, but it does slow the mind-numbing pace just long enough to clue us in occasionally on what drove these colorful heroes and villains to choose their sides in the global conflict between Joe and COBRA.
We hope a few of the following questions will help generate a little productive conversation with your son or daughter about “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra.”
- Did the movie live up to your expectations? Why or why not?
- If you were already a fan of “G.I. Joe,” which character is your favorite that did not make it into the movie? Which was your favorite character in the film?
- If you were a “Joe,” what kind of skills would you like to have?
- What was your favorite action sequence?
- Did it bother you how many innocent people probably died in the fighting between COBRA and the G.I. Joe forces? Could the good guys have done anything more to protect people from getting hurt or killed? If so, what? Should they have just let the bad guys go if chasing them meant more people would die?
- Which of the flashback origin stories did you find most interesting? Did you notice anything in common between what happened to the Joes and the COBRA agents in their pasts? [Parent: Almost every character is defined by something bad that happened to them.]
- Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes had similar experiences of rejection in their pasts. Why do you think one became a hero and the other a villain?
- How do our responses to hard times help to define who we will become?
- How does God want us to respond to hard times? [Parent: See James 1:2-5. Trials are meant to provoke us to trust God more and, thus, make us stronger in our relationship with Him and our ability to follow Jesus.]
- How would you define a hero? What qualities should a hero have? [Parent: One quality to emphasize is a willingness to sacrifice yourself to save others.]
- Would Jesus fit your definition of a hero? Why or why not?
- If we grow to become more and more like Jesus, in what ways will we become more heroic?
