10: Moscow?  What Moscow?

No, not because it was the capital of communism back in the 80′s…no, not because I harbor some ill will or bitter resentment over the former Soviet Union.  It was just almost stunning to see an entire city of ten million people essentially wiped off the face of the Earth, especially in a Joe cartoon.  It firmly established COBRA and COBRA Commander as the nasty sociopaths that they are, and gave him a vibe that we certainly haven’t seen before.  The fact that it happened in the first 10 minutes only went to set the tone of the entire series.

9: The Duke/Scarlett/Snake Eyes triangle

Yeah, I’m a comic fan, and I wasn’t into the whole Scarlett choosing Duke over Snake Eyes thing, but I love the idea that they at least tackled the issue and worked it into the story.  Sure, the moment was cheesy, and as a comic fan, I would have rather she give Snake Eyes some humanity, but if nothing else, totally detaching the Joe Commando from an emotional bond almost makes him more scary and more intense.  He’s essentially a black-clad killing machine, and not much more.  That shines him in a negative light from a character depth perspective, but probably makes him “cooler” to the uninitiated, and to the mass public at large, Snake Eyes has always been the “coolest” Joe, so this makes sense.

8: The first ten minutes

While I do enjoy the full run of the series as a whole, the first ten minutes absolutely pulled me in.  From the dramatic opening of a dead Major Bludd on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the USS Flagg erupting in flames, and ending with Snake Eyes brutally removing four COBRA Troopers from this plane of existence, Resolute set a tone early.  The Duke, Scarlett, and Snake Eyes conflict showed up, Snake Eyes showed his bad ass ninja side, and poor Bazooka turned up dead.  A roller coaster for the first ten minutes, and from that moment on, I knew this was going to be a great ride.

7: For the first time in twenty-five years, Duke is cool

Yeah, I never thought I’d say it either.  For sixty minutes, at least, Duke was a bad ass.  Actually, I’m one of the few comic fans I know that has never had any deep-rooted grudge for the G.I. Joe “pretty boy”, but I’d never had any particular love for him either.  He was just kind of there.  In Resolute, he’s consistently there, getting his mits in pretty much every angle of the story, and I found myself not even being the least bit bothered by it.  He looks cool, he had a great attitude, a terrific voice actor, and for once, really captured the true trademark “action hero” in a way that I’m not even sure the film will be able to match.  Not sure how Warren Ellis did it, but he did it.

6: Bad guys are BAD GUYS.

Hey, I’m as big a fan of Larry Hama as anyone, but you can’t argue that throughout the years, the bad guys have been somewhat watered down.  Characters like Destro, the Baroness, Storm Shadow, and Zartan were developed so deeply that the reader ended up empathizing with them and they slowly became good guys to the point where COBRA Commander has to resort to brainwashing to restock his command structure because all of the most important and all of the coolest “evil” villains became good and honorable.  We don’t have to worry about that with G.I. Joe: Resolute as all of the COBRA bad guys are definitely “bad guys”.  Destro and the Baroness are intent on killing hostages, Zartan is a self-described masochist, and Storm Shadow has absolutely no “honorable” side to him in this installment.  They’re big, they’re dark, they’re mean, and  there’s nothing else to it.  In a way that’s refreshing, even if it means they don’t get explored nearly as deeply in a character aspect.

5: Resolving the Storm Shadow vs. Snake Eyes conflict

Back in the Marvel Comics days, the Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow saga ran for a long time, but it was a well-written tale that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, and was one of the best story arcs I’ve read in comics.  Since then, though, the essence of the Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes conflict has been lost completely.  The two have clashed throughout recent iterations of G.I. Joe, with no real motivation or mission, just some ambigious battle for the “honor” of the Arashikage Clan.  This was never worse than it was during Sigma 6, where the two met probably a dozen times over two seasons, yet never resolved anything.  Well, nothing to worry about with that here.  While Warren Ellis obviously took liberties with the story, he tied Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow together as the sword brothers they’ve been, injected Zartan into the mix, and brought their conflict up a big notch, culminating in Snake Eyes using a mythical Arashikage technique and literally blowing Storm Shadow’s brains out.  Graphic yes.  Straight outta “Kill Bill”, for sure.  But hey, at least it tied up all loose ends, and that last fight between the two ninjas was pretty awesome.

4: The cast of characters

It’s obvious just from the cast of characters that this was a feature made for the fans.  We get Roadblock instead of Heavy Duty, Beachhead and Stalker team up for a little Ranger-infiltration, and the fan favorite Joe characters are all in full form.  Flint, Gung Ho, Spirit and Airborne all make appearances (though some are just barely there).  Sure, Ripcord has had a race change, and Dial Tone shaved his…er…  her moustache, but all in all, this is a cast the fans can love.  Even though he bares little resemblance to “our” Ripcord, the character of Ripcord is well-used and well written in this series and even though Flint doesn’t get in the middle of the action, he’s a focal character.  Seeing Roadblock and Gung Ho team up while Stalker and Beachhead are infiltrating the HAARP installation was a highlight especially.

COBRA has it’s own share of vile villainy, managing to find places for Firefly, Major Bludd, Storm Shadow, Zartan, the Baroness, and Destro, even though some of these villains barely get any worthwhile screen time.  All around, there were a lot of familiar faces shoe-horned into a 60 minute production, and even if they didn’t all get their due, it was nice to see them in there in the first place.

3: COBRA Commander

Not only did COBRA Commander not utter his infamous “COBRA RETREEAAAAT!!” phrase, but he was a veritable psychopath and brutal leader of the terrorist organization.  I never really understood why it was so difficult to capture COBRA Commander’s character…simply make him a nasty, violent, but brilliant dictator type, and go from there.  I’m not necessarily sold on his final goal, which appeared to simply be to make a bunch of money, but at least he had a concrete goal above and beyond simply conquering the world.  The voice actor did a fantastic job and the overall design scheme was pretty much flawless.  A great  version of COBRA Commander, certainly one of the best animated renditions of the infamous character that we’ve seen yet.

2: The overall look of the characters

Without a doubt the biggest complaint I’ve heard from Joe fans about the upcoming movie is the “look” of the characters.  Without much resemblance, there is a feeling that this isn’t really a “G.I. Joe” property, it’s just a facade.  I don’t necessarily follow that mantra, but when it comes to Resolute it doesn’t matter, because Hasbro and Titmouse hit everything pretty much perfectly.  The characters are all very familiar to long time Joe fans and mainstream folks are aren’t intimately involved in the brand as a whole.  Yet they also manage to make all of the designs more modern and make everything their own, yet they retain all of the critical components of each character.  Duke manages to wear his tan and green without looking rediculous…  Snake Eyes had enough nice updates to his uniform to really make him stand out and look cool, but takes absolutely nothing away from the design itself.  COBRA Commander has perfect updates…and Destro?  Please.  This look for Destro was pretty much the definitive version of Destro in my own little personal universe.

I’m a huge Sigma 6 fan, and while folks may debate this, I think there are some really obvious Sigma 6 style trademarks in this series, and I endorse that totally.  This was the perfect blend of Sigma’s animated style, the Real American Hero mythos, and a more mature story.  The way the characters look had a huge thing to do with this.  Even those characters that were essentially toss-ins had a great look.  Zartan and Firefly were both awesome, even in their small roles.  Hell, Bludd was dead before the series started, and a quick glimpse at him on Scarlett’s PDA looked pretty damn cool itself.

1: They made it cool to love Snake Eyes again

Well many mainstream fans really identify Snake Eyes as the core character within G.I. Joe (alongside Duke) I would say that the majority of fans had gotten pretty tired of him.  From the overblown ninja antics, to his ties to pretty much every member of the COBRA hierarchy, many would say Snake Eyes had become way too much a part of the property.  Well, the animation, the character design, and the way he was written has pretty much redefined Snake Eyes in my mind, and once again made him cool.  We have countless versions of this one character, yet most fans are clamoring for his Resolute version, and even with Snake Eyes over-exposure, his scenes were some of the coolest ones in the entire series.  Seamlessly hacking COBRA agents with his katana as he glides between the shadows, Snake Eyes has regained the throne as the bad ass of the G.I. Joe universe.  In Resolute, he ROCKED.

You know, of course nothing is going to be perfect, and like anything else, Resolute has it’s faults.  But above and beyond all that, it was an amazingly entertaining 60 minutes of animated adventure that happened to feature characters from my favorite toyline.  A great combination.  They got a brilliant writer, a fantastic director, animation studio, some amazing artists, and a wealth of quality voice talent, and managed to bring it all together into a really fun feature.  Great job on this one, Hasbro.

Now give us our toys, damn it.

• Joaquim Dos Santos (2-cents)

He didn’t post much art, just a couple of things (one of which we’ve seen before):

[View with PicLens]

• Dan Norton (dingo107)

Some amazing artwork for the kick ass weaponry of the Resolute universe as well as some striking backdrops which should look intimately familiar to everyone:

[View with PicLens]

• dusty-abell

Two of the coolest looking vehicles I have EVER seen.  Concept art for the new HISS which we saw (way too briefly) in the Resolute cartoon.  By the looks of screenshots, we’ll be seeing much more of it in the upcoming video game.  There’s also an absolutely mind blowing piece for a new concept Tomahawk (which unfortunately never got used):

[View with PicLens]

• Brandon McKinney (b-mckinney)

Now THIS is what I’m talking about!  :)  Storyboards direct from the feature…I just love looking “behind the glass”.  Awesome, awesome, AWESOME.  I’m so glad these guys are sharing this with the public!  So cool to see:

[View with PicLens]

• Dave Johnson (Devilpig)

I showed his awesome stuff yesterday, but figured I’d tack it on along all of these as well, just to have it all in one spot:

[View with PicLens]

Once again, a huge thanks to Jeff Bohn for leading me down this path.  I love this stuff.

For people who want to watch the full run, too, click on the first installment and hit that little button below the video that says “Continuous Play” and each episode will play one right after the other.  Check out the video here.

Let’s keep that number jumping!  I know we’ve all seen it by now, but it’s a great feature.  I’m going to keep viewing on a daily basis to drive those numbers up…I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hasbro and Adult Swim are watching those numbers closely to get a guage of how popular this thing is.  Let’s drive it through the roof.

Click and watch!

10:  Snake Eyes’ Revamped Origin

Yeah, this was probably a dictation from Paramount/Hasbro, but I’ve always been a bigger fan of the war vet, helicopter crash, etc.. origin rather than the Sigma 6-like childhood friends, orphan, etc.  I can see some reasons why they went this way, because honestly, how could Snake Eyes be as accomplished a martial artist as Storm Shadow when he had only trained a fraction of the time?  Still, though, I prefer the tried and true Hama-vision on this one.

9: Not enough time for the story they wanted to tell

To Warren Ellis’ credit he tried to tell a hell of a lot of story in only 60 minutes, but unfortunately that left some stuff in the dust.  Trying to tie in the Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow story as well as the main COBRA plot, getting Bludd, Firefly, Destro & the Baroness, and everything else all in one 60 minute “punch” was a tough task.  Ellis did a pretty good job, but we ended up getting glimpses of some very cool characters, but no depth to any of them.  The fact that they touched on so many aspects of the universe’s mythos does make me think this is definitely a one-shot deal.

8: The G.I. Joe “support team”

In my world, the Joes have always been a very small, tight knit, covert team, so seeing them staffed by thousands of operators seems pretty counter-intuitive.  I never liked the “Green Shirts” back in the Sunbow days, I’m not wild about the scores of soldiers in the IDW book (or in the Devils’ Due books way back when).  In Resolute, they didn’t really seem to serve a purpose either.  Sure, the Dial Tone character had some dialogue, but that could have easily just been a Joe “Dial Tone”.  What about Mainframe?  Breaker?  Even Sgt. Hacker or Firewall?  Why not just have a small R & D team that could provide intel about COBRA’s latest weapon?  I mean, sure, it makes sense for the Flagg to be fully staffed, but I would have much rather seen a smaller, more well established team of Joes help the main characters rather than just dozens of the nameless and faceless, who did little besides sit at consoles and fall off satellites.

7: Storm Shadow

Another sacrifice of what I mentioned above with “too much story to tell” and not enough time.  Rather than make the COBRA ninja the honorable, layered, conflicting character that he’s always been, Ellis went with straight-up evil, having him hire a COBRA sniper to kill his uncle simply because he thought he liked Snake Eyes more.  I don’t mind Storm Shadow having a nasty side, but this certainly seems like a dramatic departure from what we’ve had in the past, and you have to wonder if Ellis made it that way for the sake of time.  The story needed a clean-cut ending, so rather than have an emotionally conflicted bad guy, they just made him nasty and had Snake Eyes dispatch him in equally nasty fashion.  I don’t mind a Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow fight to the death, I think it just would have meant more had Storm Shadow been more like the character we remember.

6: Zartan

Throughout the history of G.I. Joe, one of my all time favorite characters has been Zartan.  I’m not sure why, whether it was his almost supernatural abilities (in a comic that tended towards the more realistic side) or his master of disguise specialty.  Unfortunately I think a lot of Zartan’s mystique and coolness was negatively impacted by his switch to the “good side” throughout the later run of the Joe comics.  I always preferred him as that heartless assassin with the powerful bow and arrow.  Well, I will say that Warren Ellis captured a component of Zartan that I loved, and made him a merciless killer with no remorse, and who is more than a bit disturbed.  I actually like that.  I like it a LOT.  This is a guy who doesn’t stay the same person for more than a few days at a time.  Always changing, always morphing, he’s never really his own person, and that’s gotta affect him mentally.  The issue I have is that his master-of-disguise personality never showed through, and he comes across as merely a deranged super-villain, and not as the sinister, clever, and malicious mimic that he could have been.  Part of me was hoping he was actually hiding on the Flagg somewhere as part of a neat twist to the story, but instead he was merely a hired gun who existed to shoot a few rockets, then get capped in the back by Duke…while he was prancing along in an ill-advised “serial villain of the week” monologue with Scarlett, lying helpless on the ground.  If there is any chance that Resolute extends beyond this one adventure, I’d love to see Ellis really take some time exploring the Zartan character, I just don’t think he had the time to do it in this particular case.

5: Destro’s awesome cyborg arm…  wait –

When we first saw concept art from the Resolute characters, Destro is the one guy who really stuck in my head.  With his large stature, his broad black trenchcoat…and that crazy awesome cyborg missile-arm!  Coolness personified.  Then he appeared in the cartoon as a mostly emotionless cronie of COBRA Commander, who existed only to flirt with the Baroness, threaten some hostages, fire a machine gun, then get captured.  His cool-ass robotic arm never made an appearence, and the character of Destro, one of the most central figures in the entire G.I. Joe mythos, never went beyond kissing up to his girlfriend and taking a missile to his metallic forehead.  Another opportunity somewhat lost, mostly due to the compressed timeframe.

4: After twenty years COBRA troops still can’t hit the broad side of a barn

You may think I hated this series, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Resolute was captivating and exciting, and I was on the edge of my seat…all the way until Duke and Scarlett infiltrated the Siberian headquarters.  Just the two of them against an entire COBRA batallion.  The infiltration was awesome with each of them taking out COBRA troopers quick and silent.  I didn’t even mind them tossing aside the first squad of Alley-Vipers with one grenade.  But then they ended up in the middle of a large empty room with zero places for cover, surrounded by over a dozen COBRA troopers, all firing fully automatic weapons.  And they all somehow missed.  This “new age” G.I. Joe cartoon, which promised to bring things back to the fans with more qualified COBRA agents, death, destruction, and no more lasers or parachutes…and two uncovered G.I. Joe agents somehow avoid getting shot (well, Duke took one bullet to the ribs) while dispatching a whole platoon of COBRA troopers with handguns.  Aye.  A  big “jump the shark” moment, which was kind of a bummer, considering how much ruthless ass had been kicked in the episodes prior.

3: The “Flow” of the series

This could easily shift into some of the other complaints I had, and honestly it wasn’t as evident watching it as one cohesive event, but breaking everything up into five-minute chunks did have an impact on the flow of the feature.  Various camera pans of the Flagg in flames got somewhat repetitive early on, and the jump from scene to scene was fairly obvious.  Still, I did like the anticipation of the daily updates, and I said, watching it in one sitting as I did today helps with those issues, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t effect the feature, at least somewhat.

2: Somewhat anti-climactic ending

Because of  the flow of the series and the cramped time frame I think we got an ending that felt a bit rushed and “slapped on”.  As the series progressed I kept on wondering just how the heck all of these loose ends were going to be tied up and how everything could clean up to the grand finale without feeling rushed.  Well, Mr. Ellis managed to wrap up the loose ends and end the series with a bang, but the ending did feel a bit pressured and did not have the impact I would have wanted.  The only real named Joes of any consequence were Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, and Flint, with everyone else MIA in other areas.  We got a lot of shots of planes, updated Trubble Bubbles, and some cool new HISS Tanks, but Snake Eyes once again wrecked an entire platoon of COBRA Troopers (and a HISS Tank!) using only his katana and bad attitude.  I loved the scenes of Duke and Snake Eyes fighting alongside each other in the COBRA compound, but again, no bullets ever even came close to threatening them, and all it took was Duke spending about two minutes at a keyboard to totally undo all of COBRA’s evil plans.  Not to mention the fact that practically nuking a United States city (whether or not it was a COBRA front) is now apparently an acceptible solution, just as long as the big bad guy gets nailed in the process.  There was some great lead up, some awesome battles, and terrific impact, but the ending left me somewhat “meh” (as much as I hate to use that terminology).

1: It’s Over.  :(

Yeah, this is the worst part.  I know…I did nothing but bitch about it for this entire post, but believe it or not, I LOVED this ride.  Lots of great action, lots of very cool new looks for characters, and a very fun format.  The daily anticipation of each new pair of episodes really made the community a fun place to hang out for this week, and gave Joe fans a ton of great things to talk about.  The toys look awesome (heres hoping they actually get released amongst all of the movie items), the story was brainless fun, and the fact is, we’ve all been looking forward to this for 6 months…and now it’s done.  That is a bummer.  I would bet my bottom dollar this is mostly all we’ll see of the great Resolute universe, which is a damn shame.  I will try and remain hopeful, and at least pray that the existing figures make it to retail in one way or another, but no matter what, I don’t think we’ll ever see the Resolute universe get explored the way it really deserved to be.

The foundation here was fantastic.  Sure, there were faults, but I think if the writers have been given some more time and more resources, it could have been an incredible production…I can only imagine a full 13-episode season of this.  Still, I will take what I can get, and let any future Resolute stories be told in my head.

Stay tuned, soon enough, the Top Ten list of things I LOVED about Resolute will be hitting, so I can end this ride on a positive note. 

I’m curious to hear what other folks thought as well!