>>10106068The first two animated miniseries are pretty good. The third one is kinda shit. The cartoon is fun but like all 80s cartoons it's best enjoyed in small bursts since there's not a lot of overarching story. The animated movie is basically a bridge between the two Sunbow seasons and the two DiC seasons (the DiC seasons are more cheaply made compared to the Sunbow ones).
There were a few DTV releases in the 90s an 2000s and I'm not very well versed on those. There were three other cartoons as well. Sigma 6 is a more anime-like sci-fi reimagining of GI Joe (animation by Gonzo) with a long format narrative. Overall, it's decent. The GI Joe Resolute movie is an adult reimagining that makes some odd character choices, but at least looks great. GI Joe Renegades was the final cartoon. It borrows heavily from The A-Team and it's really good. The story's self contained but I wish they did Season 2.
I enjoy the movies but YMMV. Rise of Cobra has some very fun action sequences comparable to the Sunbow animations and Snake Eyes kicks ass. They do some annoying shit too though, like trying to downplay the Americana parts of the IP and showing GI Joe as a more international group. The Joe costumes are boring black tacticool shit and Marlon Wayans is really obnoxious. Even so, I think it was overall pretty good.
The sequel is better in some ways and worse in others. It was done on a smaller budget and you can tell, but they wisely made it more like a conventional 80s action movie than the first one. They basically kill off all the main characters from the first movie except Snake Eyes, or at least imply that they had to go into hiding, which is annoying but not unexpected since the movie came out 4 years later (in Hollywood, 2 years is the standard turnaround time for a sequel). It has even more ninja action than the first, and some of the best I've seen in any movie period.
Don't watch GI Joe Origins: Snake Eyes. It's just terrible, hardly even worth mentioning.
