I dunno if I liked it. I appreciated the intent, but if you're going to bloody up G.I. JOE and make it more "adult," it gets harder to treat it as kid's entertainment and judge it by that far less strict standard.
I mean, what did the Joes do to deal with the Omsk site? They nuked it from within. An ICBM couldn't have accomplished that? Quicker, easier, and with more certainty. How did they deal with Springfield? Again, they effectively nuked it. Again, this is less a job for G.I. JOE than it is for STRATCOM.
An airstrike against the HAARP site seemed more appropriate than trying to deal with it conventionally, as well. Even though it worked out well, given the limited information they had, the logical course of action would have been to destroy the site utterly regardless of hostages.
Of course, I can pretty easily suspend disbelief for that. It's pretty common in action stories, and there could be plausible reasons for not using nukes on Omsk and Springfield... not very good ones, though, and given the results they might as well have used them.
I'm a little disappointed in Cobra Commander. For all that it appeared that for about the first time ever, he was going to be competent, he wound up reverting to type utterly, and that was sad. Instead of destroying the Flagg with his particle-beamy device, he snuck bombs aboard it--putatively so the Joes could "watch him win." Sigh. I was even more disappointed when a subordinate, presumably a specialist in his field--and how many qualified evil particle-beam operators can there be in this world?--brought him valid concerns about his instructions, and instead of just being yelled at, got his head sliced open. Double sigh. And, c'mon, he has enough experience to know that locking himself in a room and cackling maniacally is going to end bad.
The backstory between Storm Shadow and Snakeyes was about the most cliched thing I'd ever borne witness to. I half expected Ellis to subvert it by having Snakeyes be the one who left the school on account of his arrogance... but I was surprised that he turned Storm Shadow into such a murderous little thug. Maybe this is continuity from the comics and show--I don't recall it. (Okay, the bullet through the mouth part was neat. I admit it.)
And WTF is it with Ellis and Moscow? Does he just hate the place? This is at least twice he's killed the entire metropolis. The Gamorran superhumans did the same thing in The Authority. Heh, whatever happened to the Oktyabr Guard?
Also, and related, it's CASUALTY, not CAUSALITY. I think whoever did the text FX needs to read the script. I'm pretty sure the closing crawl was supposed to read ON OUR RETURN not HONOR RETURNED.
Overall, a 6 out of 10. Ellis has done far better stuff, but sometimes I fear his best years are behind him. That would be okay--it might even be inevitable--Transmet was a masterpiece. Planetary as well, despite a bit of a weak ending. The Authority transformed the whole superhero scenes. I just wasn't feeling this outing.
It'll still probably be better than the movie.
Also, quick question to anyone who knows: does Snakeyes know ASL?