G.I. Joe: The Movie

The plot, in one paragraph

While Cobra Commander and Serpentor blame each other's stewardship of Cobra as the root cause of the organization's failures, Pythona, a woman from the secret civilization Cobra-La, infiltrates the Terror Drome. She reveals to Serpentor that Cobra-La was responsible for inspiring Doctor Mindbender to create him through dream manipulation. At her urging, Serpentor plans to capture G.I. Joe's latest weapon, the Broadcast Energy Transmitter.

Cobra assaults the Joes as they test the BET in the Himalayas. The Joes use the BET to activate their automated weapons systems. Serpentor is captured and Cobra Commander orders a retreat into Cobra-La, the hidden underground city. The Joes celebrate, with a new group of rookie Joes brought onto the team: Lt. Falcon, Tunnel Rat, Law, Big Lob, Chuckles, and Jinx among them. The Cobra-La queen Pythona, working from Cobra Commander's exile, deploys spore weapons against the surface world. The film ends with the Joes invading Cobra-La, defeating Golobulus, and the Cobra-La civilization collapsing in on itself.

Voice cast

• Don Johnson as Lt. Falcon
• Burgess Meredith as Golobulus
• Sgt. Slaughter as himself
• Kene Holliday as Roadblock
• Chris Latta as Cobra Commander
• Michael Bell as Duke, Lifeline, Xamot, Blowtorch
• Arthur Burghardt as Destro
• Morgan Lofting as Baroness
• Mary McDonald-Lewis as Lady Jaye, Cover Girl
• Dick Gautier as Serpentor
• Bill Ratner as Flint
• Neil Ross as Shipwreck, Tomax
• B.J. Ward as Scarlett
• Zack Hoffman as Zartan
• Charlie Adler as Low-Light

Production

The writers did not originally intend for Cobra-La to be the name of the rival civilization. Cobra-La was a placeholder name in the script's drafts, borrowed from the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton (which featured the fabled city Shangri-La). The writers intended to change it, but Hasbro executives liked the Cobra-La name and forced the writers to keep it.

In the film's original script, Duke dies in battle after receiving a wound from a snake spear hurled by Serpentor. After this event was written into the script, it inspired the death of the Autobot leader Optimus Prime in The Transformers: The Movie (also in production at the time). However, Optimus Prime's death sparked a severe backlash from younger fans, and Hasbro had Duke's death edited into a coma. The dialogue was redubbed so the doctor announces Duke is in a coma, not dead, and the Joe character does not appear in the closing scenes.

Release

Created at the height of the G.I. Joe craze in the 1980s, G.I. Joe: The Movie was intended as the third theatrical release of a Hasbro-produced film after My Little Pony: The Movie and The Transformers: The Movie. Following unexpected production delays and the poor box office performances of its predecessors, it premiered direct-to-video instead on August 25, 1987. It premiered on television in syndication as early as September 4, 1987, first in feature-length format and later split into a five-part miniseries format as part of the series' syndication package.

The film was followed by the 1989 animated series G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, produced by DiC Animation City and considered a separate animated continuity from the 1983 Sunbow incarnation.

Quick facts

Director

Don Jurwich

Writers

Buzz Dixon (uncredited), Ron Friedman

Producers

Joe Bacal, Tom Griffin

Studios

Hasbro, Sunbow Productions, Marvel Productions, Toei Animation

Distributor

Celebrity Home Entertainment

Music

Robert J. Walsh, Johnny Douglas

Release date

August 25, 1987 (direct-to-video)

Syndication premiere

September 4, 1987

Country

United States

Language

English

Runtime

93 minutes

Sourcing

Production credits, plot summary, and release timeline drawn from the G.I. Joe: The Movie Wikipedia entry (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cross-referenced against Joepedia at gijoe.fandom.com. The Cobra-La placeholder-name origin and the Duke coma-vs-death story are cited in those entries to a Buzz Dixon interview.