Joey Armao, Im 47 and I still watch it every now and again. I STILL feel the chills same way I did then. YO JOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I'll rewatch that intro a few times a year on youtube ... which often triggers an hour or two of watching all of the 80s / 90s cartoon intros. There's so many good ones, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers, Denver The Last Dinosaur, Dinosaucers, Wildcats, etc..

Same here.

It's why I have it on my iPod.

Cobra!!!

Death? He doesn't die in the movie.

“I was once a man!”

"I was once a man! Yessssss, oh yesss. I wasss... once a man."

@@Aikurisu TO THIS DAY me and my friends say this randomly haha!

It traumatised me as a kid and kept me away from the franchise for so long. Even going back to watch the movie now, I still feel so disturbed by it.

"I see this as an absolute win!"

Yo Joe!!!

Knowing is half the battle

This story rules.

Which is what you want to do in the first place. That was the day you learned how to get people to do what you wanted and make them think it was their idea the whole time. Thus a super villain was born.

True.

CRASHING THROUGH THE SKY COMES A FEARFUL CRY!

🎯

I enjoyed the whole movie! The only thing I didn't like is that they barely used the older Joe's and older cobra members like storm shadow

I agree!

It's true! I'm under their Health Care package! Its too good to pass up!

Go Cobra !

True. Their premiums are both extortion _and_ economic terrorism.

Cobra!!

"It ssseemsss we'll have to do sssssomething about your cholesssssterol levelssss! Muwahahaha!"

45 here. Loved GI Joe.

Same

`78, baby!

Here I was thinking his name was Sir Pentor, with serpent being a hidden-ish pun.

42 and yes!

Glad I've seen both in theaters.

Sweet!

It would be great to watch these two films with a crowd in the way Rocky Horror Picture Show hollar, scream, shout and what have you. Duke takes a servant spear to the chest, all the guys in the audience crying out "DUUUUUUUUKE!!" Or Cobra Commander's body horror scene and the audience flips out with cries of "AAAAAAAH! MOTHER!! OH MY GOD!!" Scenes where the Joes' are victorious, people go nuts, throw popcorn, "GO JOE! TAKE THAT COBRA, YOU'LL NEVER BEAT GI JOE!!" Dukes in a coma scene, people murmur not to subtle "That's lame..."

It always resorted to fist fights. All the pilots bailed out to safety. Explosions never contained shrapnel. Cobra and the Joe's never lost a man only the machines. Somehow as a kid I didn't notice.

@Wiseguy 36 They used red and blue pew pews because bullets were expensive... (Yeah, they did an episode with Pentagon budget cutbacks to cripple the Joes.)

Actually the Stormtroopers were quite deadly. Just watch the 1st scene of a new hope were they massacre the rebel forces. The only ones they always miss are the main characters due to plot armor.

That's why the BATS were created. It allowed the Joes to actually shoot the enemies.

@@Ranecroft On the medical ship I think the stormtroopers we're good only because the hallways of the ship were narrow, and everyone was bunched up. Lol

They had to do thecoma thing with Duke because of the parental backlash after killing Optimus Prime. The animation for the entro is great but the change to the song...less so.

Finest piece of animation of the era.

Agree that that intro was the most amazing thing I saw at the time!

Absolutely. Amazing introduction sequence

That opening sequence and that song are LEGENDARY!!!

I’m pretty sure the Statue of Liberty sequence is by far the best part of that entire movie hands down.

Holy shit. You stole this comment from by brain.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Agreed, but it should be stressed that best doesn't imply only - the movie is solid all around. The thing that really gets it is the reworking of the theme song, as was the case in Transformers. Let's be perfectly honest here... the original openings for both were pretty weak. Especially when compared to Thundercats, MASK, and TMNT, which all had epic TV intros. I believe Hasbro realized this. However, with the Transformers movie, the song was over the opening credits - following the conventional motion picture format. GI JOE really pulls ahead by staying true to the formula of the series and including an opening scene. Which is how we end up with the masterpiece of an animated sequence that we have.

You accidentally added an "almost" to your description.

And of course, the original “My Little Pony: The Movie” was an absolute trainwreck. The two films were made in 1986, and “GI Joe: The Movie” was also a direct-to-video release, but it was originally planned as a theatrical release, but it went into direct-to-video territory.

Cobraaa !!!! Retreat !!!! Retreat !!!!!

"There's No Place Like Springfield". The last two episodes of Season 1. Still pretty crazy when you consider its 1985 contemporaries and what was allowed back then.

@@sprngfldpop1 classic two-parter, definitely nightmare-fuel

That episode blew my young mind.

That episode was wild! Especially for the 80s!

That was the episode of the Synthoids.

Are you saying you believe in that Annunaki B.S.?

@@not_brundle1742 I'm saying I believe in Serpentor

@@not_brundle1742 Nothing like sci-fi and fantasy writers from the 20's and 30's influencing modern politics.

Underrated comment

@@InventiveHarvest and he believes in you

Operation Dragonfire.

What?! I need to see this!

It's the beginning of the DIC series.

@@AWW8472 the only good part of DIC. All that follows is cornball stories with CHEAP animation and horrible bgm. But Dragon Fire was pretty good. The Scoop story was great!

Yeah, the DIC series was just not really good, premise was OK, art average but execution pretty weak.

I would play with both together, especially since they were mostly the same size. Same with Visionaries. Also, I'd always wondered if the Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars novels were inspired by Cobra-La.

I read that's who the prime target audience was for GI JOE toys, boys with maturing tastes. Now that market doesn't exist! Boys would rather play video games and such.

Same here. Once I received my first Joe figure, I forget if it was Grunt or Rock N’ Roll, I was all in. I completely forgot about Star Wars after Return of the Jedi came and went.

You didn't...throw them out, did you?

So very, very well said.

Michael Bay had nothing to do with those movies

@@johncaulfield8935 You'd think the guy who would constantly shove random military garbage into Transformers and TMNT would have loved working on a movie series that actually HAS the military in it, but oddly no.

Michael Bay never worked on the two live action Joe films from the 2000's, nor did he work on Snake Eyes, as well.

@@mightyfilm You have a point. He would've added more explodie, to the films instead of relying on "story" and "jumpy fighting"

@@deadpilled2942 Hos insane need to turn everything into a military fetishist fan-fic probably would have worked here better than TMNT. I don't want to unpack everything wrong with that movie, we'll be here forever. And he just produced that one. Of course, the only live action Joe movie I saw was Snake Eyes, so I wouldn't be able to judge the other two.

Also "Thisss I command!"

Had a supervisor in the Air Force that used the OJT line quite often. He bought me a beer because I was the first to know where it came from.

I completely forgot “The last thing you’ll hear, is the cracking of your own vertebrae”

Don't forget the "COBRA LALALALALAAA!!!"

Me and a friend often try to do Roadblock's "Lifeline? Ahhh Lifvvvliiiiaaoorrrlifeline"

He sure did. He has the coldest line ever and he delivered it with such malice you could feel it! "Be silent or be silenced"

Evil Burgess Meredith is truly horrifying.

And the spliced in line from Grumpy Old Men is just perfection...

The irony was Meredith starred in a 1940's movie called "The Story of G.I. JOE".

"You have lost GI JOE! Lost!"

Uk here, we got it on video with every reference to GI Joe changed to Action Force. Had no other references apart from the odd UK marvel comic but I absolutely loved it.

@@stewartglencrose9023 Yeah I have to admit as much as the whole teenage mutant hero turtles thing is the most well-known of the changes to US shows for the UK action force really blew my mind. It’s a tiny change really but so significant considering that particular rally cry is like probably the most well-known part of the series. I mean Yo joe, is as iconic if not more so than the thundercats hooooooooooooooooo battle cry.

🇬🇧 What's even stranger is that Action Force began life as a completely separate toyline, made by Palitoy and nothing to do with GI Joe. Then Hasbro, Joe's originator, bought Palitoy and simply started selling GI Joe toys in Action Force packets. We weren't told about the Joe connection until years later!

Same!!!!

What are the other movies/ minis were there? M.A.S.S. Device, Pyramid of Darkness, Arise, Serpentor Arise, Operation Dragonfire, The Weather Dominator (?) . . . Valor vs. Vernon (?), G.I. Joe: Resolute

That was an awesome mini-series, Falcon was dating the sister of one of the Crimson Guard Immortal, and she was in the hospital from an overdose of the “dust”. That was how the team up happened, Cobra can’t rule the world if everyone dies from drugs.

I see what you did there. Yoooo Joe!

Thanks Shipwreck!

GI Joeeee

The other half is violence.

In an ironic twist of fate, he was stabbed by a Cobra, and Duke had Cobra health insurance (as mentioned at the top of this thread), so they kind of canceled each other out.

Why I love the autograph he did for my copy of the movie.

Ironhide being shot in the face was WAY more traumatic to witness than Optimus Prime dying with dignity surrounded by loved ones.

@@MykeLewisMusic Yeah, that always disturbed me as a kid. "Such heroic nonsense"... Then blasts Ironhide point blank in the face. Brutal stuff for a 4 year old lol.

@@MykeLewisMusic, Prowl dying as smoke poured from his mouth and his eyes dimmed was...excessive.

@@MichaelMartin-qe5ye yeah, that and the pool of acid near the end. I loved it, but it definitely freaked me out as a kid!

@@Jay-bf8yp super brutal. Looking at it now, surprisingly sophisticated for a kids’ movie. Also, kind of a kickass way for a guy like Ironhide to die. By the time OP died, I was pretty much numb 🤣

Synthoid Conspiracy Lights, Cameras, Cobra! Hearts and Cannons Twenty Questions

I always liked the episode where Cobra recruited Ghosts to fight the Joes for some reason, And the Ghosts turned out to be Tragic, Sympathetic Characters.

After the opening scene I want to drape myself in the American flag and make out with a bald eagle.

I can't lie, decades later, it still chokes me up!

@@exoarchyanubis9528 😄😄😄

@@officialonyxobsidian yeah that intro is so badass.

Grew a full beard and 'stache after watching it back in the day.

Crashing through the sky Comes a fearful cry Co...bruhhh... Co...BRAAAH!!! Co...bruhhh... Co...BRAAAH!!!

Fuck Beachead?! I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.

@@wolfprime something about Beach Head just bothered me.

@@AntoineJenkins80sChild I was the exact opposite. Beachead was on my go to strike team with Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, and Firefly. All of the fully masked, lone wolf, bad asses on one team. Besides fitting on that team he was also a Ranger like my all-time favorite, Stalker.

Hell, that movie literally starts off on my birthday.

Yeah I lived around there around the same time and I think I saw this but I honestly can’t remember. Then again I would’ve only been about seven years old at the time so even if I did see it it’s hard to remember at this point.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Yeah I was 10 when Transformers the movie came out. I remember my mom taking myself and 3 Friends to a theater in Hayward. Then a year later, catching that last part of GIJoe on channel 2 it was a Friday or Saturday night. They played all sorts of cool stuff though. I even saw the Thundercats movie uncut, but that was during a Saturday afternoon I'm pretty sure.

The viper!!!!

They had silly episodes. And then they had episodes so traumatic that if you saw them as a kid they're burned into your subconscious, namely "There's no place like Springfield" and "Worlds without End"

Serpentor was needed to keep things interesting for both Cobra and the animated show itself. His personality was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Think of how difficult it would be to fight against someone so driven and motivated to beat you.

You were correct. It felt phoned in because it was.

Duke and Flint both shared the role of being the leader on missions, while Optimus was present the majority of the time. I think that might be why some people didn't connect with Duke as much as Prime. That said, I think killing characters was a bad idea for kids films...especially to the body count Transformers the movie did. Death just for shock value is cheap and in fiction it typically gets undone anyways. (as what happened to Prime multiple times now.) Death should be done sparingly, so when it happens it has actual weight. There's plenty of ways to write a character out of a story besides giving them a dirt nap.

@@Lastjustice I think it has more to do with Duke just not being that interesting! Flint was far moreso, both in appearance and personality, it's no wonder he and Lady Jaye took over the show...As for killing Prime off, it's fair to say they genuinely DID intend that to be permanent, and only reveresed it when a massive backlash set in...I agree it shouldn't be done willy nilly, but even for kid's films, it should never be entirely off the table! Otherwise, we'd never have gotten Bambi...

@@HandofOmega I agree that Flint and Lady Jaye had far more going on under the hood. Duke was cut from the same stotic personality you'd see in most DC super heroes at the time. The typical good for the sake of good character who's right the majority of the time and not much else. Your father figure insert types. Prior to the transformers movie, Alpha Trion was the only named character(He sacrificed himself to merge with vector sigma to create the Aerial bots) I can think of that died on screen. (3 unnamed Seekers were blown up in the pilot run.) It wasn't that we never saw death, it just wasn't at the crazy level they did at the begining of the 86 film. The shuttle being overtaken kills more autobots alone than the entire first 2 seasons. The movie was to blantantly in the opposite direction of the show with how ruthlessly they killed off existing characters in the beginning. Then we see the plot armor turn back on for all the new cast in the second half. Ultra Magnus gets torn to pieces and put back together, and Kup gets his limps put back on. We saw autobots die to far less than that in the beginning half, so this was extra jarring. Like why could they just brought Prime to Junkion if it was that easy to put a guy back together? It undermines the concept they can be killed and stay dead when we've seen them put back together from far worse. In city of Steel, prime was a reduced to a head, and the rest of his body was used by the constructicons for parts.(They built a robot alligator out of most of it) He was put back together in the end just fine. In Triple takeover Blitzwing literally smashes autobots flat as a tank, and uses their bodies to make a throne for himself....yet they all survive somehow?! Then we see them die to single laser blasts to center mass. Like how did these guys survive this long if that's all it took? The following shows generally have body counts happen, but it's planned out and done sparingly. I feel like they maintain the right level of balance of the most of the time.

@@Lastjustice Flint and Lady Jaye were canonised as a couple in Transformers. Marissa Fairborn from Season 3 is their daughter.

It had its moments afterward, but I agree you picked the absolute perfect moment to tune out!

U missed out!

I understand your reaction.

"To this DAY! To THiS DAY!"

Detention? For that?! Maybe the administration was saying, "You will comply. THIS I COMMAND!"

Yeah I remember the first time I saw anime and my head freaking exploded. I mean I think most kids from the 80s or even early 90s can tell you exactly the first time they ever saw ghost in the shell or Akira for the first time. Nudity and violence/blood in animated form that was crazy. You’re never quite the same after your experience anime for the first time especially uncut. The 90s were the most amazing period of my entire life because that was the decade that America finally got anime and it got it big time.

Not sure where you lived but Robotech was a stark contrast to Joe

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu You're right. In retrospect, we now know that Voltron and others were technically anime. But as kids I didnt know. Plus it was censored and rebranded for american youth. My first experience with real uncut "japanime" and/or "Japanese animation" as we called it then, was "Fist Of The North Star". It blew me away, since I loved martial arts. Me and friend use to always quote, "You're Already Dead" like Ken said in the movie, lol. Then of course "Akira" visually changed the game. Although I must admit, I didn't understand the story back then, lol. And I also liked "Vampire Hunter D". In the 90s, the secret was out, and Americans were getting a ton of anime. My favorite to this day, is "Ninja Scroll"

@@Wis_Dom I mean that's the thing we all have that moment where everything just clicks into place and you suddenly understand stuff for the first time. I mean I spent more time watching cartoons during the '90s where it was much more obvious what was being added or removed. But that first time you watched some uncut japanimation it was like an awakening. Which seems like a ridiculous statement at first but it really is/was. I was lucky enough to have a local PBS channel that picked up various anime and would show it uncut late on Sunday nights. It's where I had probably the deepest experience of my young life where I saw evangelion, bubblegum crisis and dirty pair flash subbed. That has stayed with me my entire life to this point. It really did change my perception of everything I had known up to that point and it really is like walking away from your young childhood days into being a young adult. I really truly feel it was that significant. It wouldn't be a significant if it happened today because it's so prevalent but back in the 90s and late 80s when it was still kind of an underground thing it was truly eye-opening.

In the Japanese version of the movie Duke actually dies and Falcon takes over the Joe's. The sequel was pretty good as well.

That is a dramatic-comedic winner when you are saying wishy-washy and making those hand movements. Keep on the lookout for imitators!

That's how I watched it for the first time in it's entirety. As a kid I never caught all 5 parts. I typically saw first 2 episodes and missed the rest.

The comics had a much better storyline: Cobra was financed as a multi-level marketing scheme/scam that was the brainchild of a rebellious get-rich-quick Cobra Commander. As a villain he was such a magnificent bastard.

Michael Bell, Francois Chou, and Sgt Slaughter have all signed my copy!

I’m computer, stop all the downloading’.

These people go to sleep thinking everything’s fine, everything’s good…then they wake up and they’re on fire

Mmme mmme mmme hey who's the weird guy mmme mmme mmme mmme mmme.

You saw the original cut? I could never find this. Point me in the right direction please. This I Command!

@@bryansillman3240 No clue. This was about thirty years ago when they had it on TV. Not sure if they showed the wrong one or what. Several friends at school saw it too, which caused a big argument with the kids who had it on VHS. I legit thought I just misremembered it until my grandmother told me she remembered it as well.

@@Plaprad Yeah that is crazy but honestly totally possible I guess. It’s hard to believe there would be one variation that somehow got out into the wild though as I thought they made the decision not to kill Duke before it ever made it to air so I don’t know how some thing like that could even be possible. That said I have experienced things like this myself with other things from my childhood that I still can’t really explain. Parts for movies or lines or just various things that I was certain happened that I’ve gone back and found apparently weren’t said or shown. But then you realize they do stuff like adding scenes for when a movie is shown on TV Like the famous octopus scene in the goonies. So it’s very possible that it’s not so much a Mandela effect as much as it is something more like a regional difference or something very strange like that.

That is likely an example of the Mandela Effect, where you remember something from a film that didn’t actually happen. Such as no one ever actually said the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty” in Star Trek, but everyone “quotes” it. There was never an official release of the dead Duke version.

@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Yeah. My only thought is somehow one of the original versions got sent out to a TV station and was quietly discarded after. I can't even remember what channel it was on. Though, I do remember telling one of my friends who never believed me. About a decade ago, he read that Duke was killed in the original cut. I got a message about it where he asked if I could imagine that happening. I just said "Yes, I can". His response a few minutes later was something like "Wait, you were serious about that?"

Glad I wasn't the only one who remember that.

We all love Duke. Yo Joe!!!