FILE // GIJOE-2013-RETAL CLASSIFICATION: DECLASSIFIED
Cobra has the White House. The Joes are marked for death.
Jon M. Chu’s Retaliation is the commercial high-water mark of the live-action G.I. Joe films: a harder soft reboot that framed the Joes for treason, killed its original star in the first act, survived a nine-month delay and a secret reshoot, and delivered a nine-minute Himalayan cliff duel that critics who hated everything else still call the best action the franchise ever staged. This is the deepest record of it anywhere.
The widest critic-versus-crowd gap of its year: a 29 percent Tomatometer against an A-minus CinemaScore. Nearly all the praise, even from hostile reviewers, points at one nine-minute sequence on the side of a mountain.
A heavy-handed, explosion-riddled, ear-piercing disaster with an insanely stupid plot. Like a Dumpster bin behind Tiffany’s, this contains nothing but well-packaged garbage. Sucks.
Opposing teams of fearsome ninja fighters treat sheer rock mountainsides almost as parkour athletes use walls. It’s like Spider-Man times 10 in a dazzling sequence in which conceptual novelty is strongly served by action choreography well beyond anything else in the film.
A more straight-faced brand of idiocy than its cheerfully dumb 2009 predecessor. The destruction of London is tossed off in quick, almost ho-hum fashion.
Chu’s elegant marshaling of digital effects, particularly in a sequence where the Joes engage in a little kung- and wire-fu around a Himalayan monastery, is the one thing here worth the price of a ticket.
The first film you could at least laugh at. This takes all its silly ingredients and smushes them down flat. Retaliation over-promises and under-delivers.
Though arguably superior to its predecessor, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is overwhelmed by its nonstop action and too nonsensical and vapid to leave a lasting impression.
It wears the lightness of its premise like a lead vest.
For all the vitriol, the film earned an A-minus from opening-night audiences and zero Razzie nominations, one of the widest critic-versus-crowd gaps of the year.
On a budget of roughly 130 to 155 million dollars, Retaliation opened to 40.5 million over its first weekend at number one, finished with about 122.5 million domestically and 253.2 million internationally for 375.7 million worldwide, and stands as the highest-grossing film of the live-action G.I. Joe series, a record it still holds.
With Cobra operative Zartan still impersonating the President of the United States behind a perfect nanomite disguise, Cobra moves to seize the world. In a single night the disguised President orders an airstrike that frames the G.I. Joe team for treason and wipes out almost all of them, killing field leader Duke. Only Roadblock, Flint and Lady Jaye survive.
Convinced the impostor in the Oval Office is the real threat, the survivors go underground and seek out General Joseph Colton, the original G.I. Joe. Half a world away, Storm Shadow breaks Cobra Commander out of prison while Snake Eyes and Jinx are sent to capture him and uncover a long-ago murder. Cobra Commander’s endgame is Project Zeus, orbital weapons that drop tungsten rods from space, and after he levels London as a demonstration, the decimated Joes race to shut it down.
“When I look at the sequence, I just see lamps and chairs and stuff.” Jon M. Chu, director, on blocking the mountain duel with furniture and Hasbro toys
Tap any file card for the actor, the backstory, and our read on how faithful the design and role are to the comics, cartoons and classic Hasbro file cards. Filter by G.I. Joe or Cobra.
The beats the film is built on, walked in order. Click any still to enlarge; slots are built to take scene clips as they clear. Everything past the first act is spoiler-flagged in classified red.
With Cobra operative Zartan impersonating the President behind a perfect nanomite disguise, the Oval Office orders an airstrike that frames the Joes for treason and wipes out almost all of them, killing field leader Duke. Only Roadblock, Flint and Lady Jaye survive, diving into a well as the missiles fall.
One night, and the team is gone.
The first film’s hero, Channing Tatum’s Duke, is killed in the opening ambush, an echo of the franchise’s oldest taboo. Test audiences hated losing him before he and Roadblock could bond, and the fallout would reshape the entire release.
The most shocking cut in the film, and its biggest problem.
Convinced the impostor in the Oval Office is the real threat, the survivors go underground and seek out General Joseph Colton, the original G.I. Joe, living in quiet retirement. Bruce Willis arms them for the counterstrike.
Roadblock finds the man who started it all.
Half a world away, the Arashikage ninja Storm Shadow springs the imprisoned Cobra Commander from an underground German prison, while Snake Eyes and his apprentice Jinx are dispatched by the Blind Master to capture Storm Shadow and uncover a long-ago murder.
Two ninjas, one framed, on a collision course.
The nine-minute, near-dialogue-free ninja battle on the sheer face of a Himalayan mountain. Snake Eyes and Jinx extract a captured Storm Shadow down a vertical cliff while red ninjas swing in on ropes and zip-lines, sword-fighting in mid-air as an avalanche bears down. Critics who savaged the rest of the film called it one of the best action sequences of the year.
The sequence the whole franchise is measured against.
Cobra Commander’s endgame is Project Zeus: orbital kinetic-bombardment weapons that drop tungsten rods from space. He lures the nuclear powers to a summit, tricks them into disarming, and flattens central London as a demonstration, the ground shattering like a pane of glass.
A man-made meteor, and a planet told to kneel.
Revealed to have been framed by Zartan for murdering his own uncle, the Hard Master, Storm Shadow was secretly working to destroy Cobra from within. He defects, kills Zartan, and avenges his master, joining the Joes for the final strike.
The film’s best arc: a villain who was never one.
Armed by Colton and joined by Storm Shadow, the decimated Joes expose the impostor President, rescue the real one, and shut Zeus down. Roadblock fires a single shot from an M1911 said to have belonged to General Patton, in tribute to the fallen. A clean passing of the torch.
The last true G.I. Joe team movie ends on a salute.
Four years from a soft-reboot impulse to release, including a nine-month delay barely five weeks out and a secret reshoot to fix the one thing audiences loved. Scroll the timeline.
The official reason for the delay was a 3D conversion. The real story, broken by Nikki Finke at Deadline, was that test screenings came back mediocre to bad, and audiences were furious that Duke and Roadblock never had time to build a friendship before Duke died. Paramount reshot about a week with Channing Tatum to fix it. Duke still dies early in the released cut.
Chu blocked the entire mountain fight in a room using couches, chairs and lamps as the peaks, with Hasbro ninja figures as the combatants and a real climber advising where rope anchors would need to go. "When I look at the sequence," Chu said, "I just see lamps and chairs and stuff."
Stunt performers were rigged a thousand feet up real mountains near Vancouver, but the bulk was shot against a giant angled green screen inside NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana, the building once used to fabricate Space Shuttle external tanks. ILM replaced everything behind them with a digital mountain.
For Project Zeus, the brief was explicit: no nuclear mushroom cloud. ILM’s Bill George treated the ground as a thick pane cracking in concentric rings, "like when a bullet goes through glass," tilting the plates beneath the Thames so the water sheets off the breaking ground.
Zartan’s reveal, cutting his skin to expose self-repairing nanomites, reused the digital head-replacement technology built for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and TRON: Legacy, morphing Jonathan Pryce into Arnold Vosloo down to the meniscus of the eye.
Overall VFX supervised by James Madigan. ILM handled the cliff duel, London and the White House reveal; Digital Domain took the Zartan face-morph and the billion-voxel ICBM sim; Method Studios staged the opening night ambush. The film was shot in 2D and converted to 3D by Stereo D.
With Stephen Sommers gone, so was composer Alan Silvestri. In came Henry Jackman, a protege of Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control stable, who pushed the franchise’s sound toward a modern hybrid: a roughly 100-piece orchestra layered with heavy synthesis, electric guitar and rock percussion. Jackman quoted none of Silvestri’s first-film themes, building fresh cues for the Joes, the Arashikage and Cobra. The 19-track album arrived on Varese Sarabande in March 2013.
Original score by Henry Jackman, the full album via the official Henry Jackman YouTube topic channel.
Official trailer via Paramount Pictures on YouTube. Embedded with youtube-nocookie for viewer privacy.
Paramount ran a Super Bowl XLVI spot in February 2012, with Johnson, Cobra flags over the White House and a machine-gun-toting Bruce Willis, all selling a June date the studio then abandoned. "They eat all of that money," one producer told The Hollywood Reporter of the sunk campaign.
Hasbro had already sent the tie-in toy line to shelves in May 2012. Figures were pulled where possible, but old stock lingered at Target and Walmart into December, and the line had to be relaunched in February 2013 alongside the new release.
Through every version of the campaign the signature image stayed the same: Cobra’s banners hanging over a captured White House, the Zartan-as-President hook that gave the film its hard, paranoid edge. A four-part IDW prequel comic filled in the gaps.
The nine-month push to March 2013 and the 3D conversion, mocked at the time, were vindicated at the box office: China delivered around 33 million dollars on opening alone, and roughly 45 percent of the worldwide gross came from 3D screens.
Retaliation has no post-credits or mid-credits scene. The film closes on its victory-parade beat and the passing of the torch to Roadblock, then rolls the credits clean.
Any follow-up was left to a third film, developed for years as Ever Vigilant with Roadblock building a new squad against the Cobra twins Tomax and Xamot. It never shot, stalled by Dwayne Johnson’s schedule.
The closest thing to a hidden scene is the Best Buy home-video "Extended Action Cut," which added roughly 12 minutes, including more of the finale and a longer Storm Shadow versus Zartan clash.
Follow the file into the rest of gijoe.army: the toy catalogue, the character encyclopedia, and every G.I. Joe film.
Explore the Movie Toys The Retaliation tie-in line from Hasbro: Roadblock, the ninjas, Firefly’s bike and the Cobra vehicles, catalogued on the site. Open → 
Retaliation Characters Full file cards for Roadblock, Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes, Firefly and the rest of the Retaliation roster. Open → 
The G.I. Joe Films Walk every G.I. Joe movie, from the 1987 animated feature through Snake Eyes, on the movies hub. Open → Official stills grouped by chapter. Open a section, then click any frame to view it full screen.
No. G.I. Joe: Retaliation has no post-credits or mid-credits scene. The film ends on its victory beat and the passing of the torch to Roadblock, then rolls the credits.
About one hour and fifty minutes, rated PG-13. The Best Buy home-video Extended Action Cut runs roughly 12 minutes longer.
Jon M. Chu directed. Dwayne Johnson leads as Roadblock, with Bruce Willis as the original Joe Colton, Adrianne Palicki as Lady Jaye, Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow, Ray Park returning as Snake Eyes, Ray Stevenson as Firefly and D.J. Cotrona as Flint. Channing Tatum returns briefly as Duke.
Officially for a post-production 3D conversion. The real driver, reported by Deadline, was mediocre test screenings; Paramount reshot about a week with Channing Tatum to build the Duke and Roadblock friendship before Duke is killed.
Yes. On a budget of roughly 130 to 155 million dollars it grossed about 375.7 million worldwide, comfortably beating The Rise of Cobra’s 302.5 million and standing as the highest-grossing film of the live-action G.I. Joe series.
Retaliation holds a 29 percent Rotten Tomatoes score against an A-minus CinemaScore from opening-night audiences, one of the widest splits of the year. Most of the praise, even from hostile critics, goes to the nine-minute Himalayan cliff duel.
Henry Jackman, replacing the first film’s Alan Silvestri, with a modern hybrid of a roughly 100-piece orchestra layered with synthesis, electric guitar and rock percussion. The 19-track album was released on Varese Sarabande.
A third film was developed for years as Ever Vigilant, with Roadblock leading a new squad, but it never shot. The 2021 reboot Snake Eyes abandoned the Retaliation continuity entirely and flopped, making Retaliation the last true G.I. Joe team movie.
Streams on Paramount+, or own it on 4K UHD.
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