Still two of my favorite quotes came from this movie. " Be silent or be silenced' and " You are guilty. Guilty of the one unforgivable crime.. FAILURE"
Lets be honest though: If Cobra Commander had actually succeeded in defeating GI Joe and taking over the world, no way on Earth he would have turned the keys of the planet over to Golobulus. First move he'd have done: "Destro, I want to nuke an Ice dome in the Himalayas"
I can just hear Destro's response. (trademark belly laugh)"And Major Blood bet me ten thousand gold serpentines you'd cease your chaotic antics after becoming a responsible world ruler! Ah, for the sake of my ever expanding wallet, Commander, never change!"
I think I once saw that line as flavor text on an orzhov, black, or white removal spell on a magic the gathering trading card. i am almost certain it was text on a card somewhere in one of the current three separate ravnica blocks.
Yeah but the reason Serpentor was created in the first place was because Cobra Commander's time was coming to an end and that's what he didn't realize at first.
I'm a bit surprised DC didn't bring him back to voice the Penguin in the 1990s Batman animated series, as it was prior to his death, though it might have been because DC wanted new voice actors to handle the key roles. That's likely why they didn't bring Adam West back to voice Batman, something he did in the 1977 Filmation series, as well as in the last two seasons of the SuperFriends (1984 and '85). And one thing Sunbow and Marvel did was to bring A-list actors to voice certain characters in the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies. Aside from Burgess Meredith, Don Johnson also had a role in G.I. Joe: The Movie, and of course, legendary actors such as Orson Welles and Leonard Nimoy voiced major characters in the Transformers movie.
I didn't get to see it in the 80s, but caught it on USA cartoon express when they split it into five parts in the 90s when I was around age nine. I'd seen all the episodes leading up to this, and remember hunting everywhere in stores for the VHS after the conclusion because I loved the movie so much. Really felt like a slambang finale until USA started airing reruns of the DIC series. Loved those too.
Fortunately, Cobra Commander was back to near normal in the DIC G.I. Joe cartoons. He was back to being humanoid and walking on two legs again, albeit still looking like he was when the spores hit him. Fortunately, he had an outfit ready for him, handed to him by one of his men. I don't remember which one of his men handed it to him. Could have been Copperhead. Please correct me if I'm wrong about who handed Cobra Commander his clothing. I can stand to learn more from being wrong than being right. Being wrong makes me learn more, learn better, do better research and all that.
@@gamesmaster0459 he has two figures. One from the 80s with Goloblous and a Cobra La solider. He also has a figure for the 25th anniversary run with Lt. Falcon and a comic
Noah whitehouse The Transformers Armada Version of Starscream wanted revenge against Megatron for using him as an expendable distraction in order to claim the Mini-Cons that formed the Weapon of the Requiem Blaster which he overheard. He Attacked Megatron with the Star Saber Sword even if it meant joining the Autobots which he did do. Briefly but then rejoined. Starscream’s Armada Version is the greatest one ever made, in order to save Cybertron from Unicron’s Destruction by making an example out of himself by selflessly sacrificing himself to get Galvatron to side with Optimus Prime.
@@Girard1020 Too bad his voice was complete awful, not suited to the role at all and his defection to the Autobot in the story was a complete joke in the end.
Cartoons were a hell of lot more mature back then. Even the way they talk. “It’s poetic in its simplicity” could you imagination anyone being that intelligent now.
Lol, he should have signed up for medical insurance, then again I doubt Cobra-La has the best health insurance policy seeing how things are run, Globulous probably too racist to get any insurance from the human world anyway.
@@randypeppercorn1865 XD This is damn true, heh though I wonder how they'd handle this pandemic situation, probably better since they are good at Social Distancing from the rest of the world :P
Couple of things: I always marveled that they got Burgess Meredith to do the voice of Golobulus. When I was a kid learning the origin of cobra commander was a massive revelation. Broadcast Energy Transmitter is the most generic name for the most generic device ever.
Funnier still was the "MacGuffin Device" from the episode ONCE UPON A JOE. When I later read about the real-life writing trope of the same name, I realized the joke that the writers played, and laughed out loud ;)
Never imagined that GI Joe would go straight up Lovecraftian/Howard! Cobra-La were basically the serpent people from Robert E Howard Hyborea and Lovecraft's cthulhu mythos.
Don't know why but Golobulus' bored "Eh, trifle melodramatic. But instructive." cracks me up. Like the dude didn't just spend the last five minutes or so hamming it up retelling the history of Cobra-La and Cobra Commander like he was reciting Richard the Third. But that's the point he thinks is over the top. XD
I love how at the end even though he could talk, he instead slithered away from the Joes to enact his own form of revenge, I wonder just exactly he would of accomplished but that is why I love the character, Cobra Commander's ego is on a whole other level. As inconsistent as his behavior was in the cartoon he was a supreme self believer, he was so pissed he planned on doing something to Serpentor and Golobulous and I bet if he had the chance it would of been grand
Serpentor and Golobulous. Oh alot further than that. Destro, Mindbender, the twins, all of them have to pay except Barroness for reviving Cobra Commander. And he did get the chance. In the DIC series he turned Serpentor into an iguana. Rumor has it knogahide had him for lunch. 😂
Lol,😂. Cobra Commander had the last laugh. Majority of Cobra was killed and imprisoned by G.I. Joe. Cobra Commander survived and goes by the street name Old Snake in Transformers season 3.
5:52 Did the king of the lizard people, with plans to turn the entire world into lizard people AND who's voiced by Burgess Meredith, SERIOUSLY just criticize something for being melodramatic? The irony at play here is nothing short of staggering.
What I didn’t like about that? Is Commander was way too forgiving and forgettable? He acted more Christ like than some Joes and acted more Lifeline than a disciplinarian or military leader. Mercy without justice isn’t right.
I am sorry but this trial was BS! Cobra Commander was way more successful than Serpentor. CC literally went out into the world and basically from scratch created a force that could contend with the SUPERPOWER known as the USA. Some Nothing Cobra created a Dynasty! Serpentor LITERALLY had everything handed to him and he failed at every turn. Cobra Commander deserved better than this. He had to be pushed aside by a science experiment and because of it's constant failure he is he the one who has to take the blame. In the very end Cobra Commander EARNED what he acomplished. NEVER FORGET THE TRUE LEADER OF COBRA!!!!
While Cobra Commander had many faults and failures under his belt, he as you said built up a large terrorist organization from scratch that could contend with the U.S and would likely be able to conquer the world if not for GI-Joe and its allies. In contrast, Serpentor was given control of Cobra and like you said, failed at every turn despite having the best traits of numerous famous Human conquerors throughout history.
Not to mention cobra commander did that TWICE. In season 1, Cobra goes bankrupt, and using cold slither, he raises enough funds to start up cobra again.
So, he disses mankind for mastering and using an inorganic technology....plans to destroy them and then needs a piece of said manmade inorganic technology in order for the plan to work #scumbaggolobulus
@@stuartvandermerwe8548 What's even funnier is how complete bullshit it was. They are master's at biotech. They actually created a living thing that can fart things into orbit. Do you realize just how impressive that is? And considering there are things like bombardier beetles that can basically make napalm as a defense, there's no reason they couldn't make a biologic alternative to generate the heat needed to mature the spores in space.
As a kid, I didn’t know this was the most disturbing or sexiest thing I’d ever seen. There was the body horror, but also Cobra Commander was ripping his clothes off. The spores sequence has fired my erotic imagination for decades now.
Serpentor's idea to spare Cobra Commander just to throw him in with the rest of the G.I. Joe prisoners as a show of force would be a costly decision and would come back to haunt him in a big way later on. It resulted in one escaping and revealing their plan to the rest of the G.I. Joe team. And later Cobra Commander would get some serious payback on Serpentor.
Serpentor's ego cost him big time with high ranking Cobra members like Baroness and Gnawgahyde having enough of his BS and restoring Cobra Commander back to his humanoid form in which Cobra Commander took out Serpentor for good with his Python Patrol and turning him into Gnawgahyde's Iguana for Gnawgahyde to barbeque and eat.
I remember the night this movie aired on t.v. and although my dad is no fan of this series he did like this movie once he heard Don Johnson as the voice of Duke's brother
Like a lot of other people who are commenting, that scene where Cobra Commander was exposed to the spores horrified me as a kid. The pain in his screams, and how his skin changed colour like that was so disturbing
Even before the spores hit, that desperation as the pod steadily approached, bond against escape despite his struggling. Just thinking of being in that helpless position is dreadful.
@justiladil1: Cobra Commander did return to the series after the movie dude... He was turned back into humanoid form thanks to Baroness. And when he returned, he overthrew Serpentor, captured him, mutated him into a iguana, and re-took control of Cobra. I hated the character Serpentor...
Least Megatron got upgraded into a new villain, Cobra Commander got pushed to the side while these new villains took central stage for the whole movie.
This was the cartoon event of its time. It was like Avengers :Endgame. Everyone watched it. Duke was supposed to die, but they changed it last minute, and Cobra was not only explained but even justified. Brilliant writing and amazing animation for it's time.
@@sharanquiett9412 No dude I mean like, when the writers were brought together with the bigshots of hasbro or w/e, they threw out this idea as just a placeholder or just a first idea, and the bigshots were like "Yup thats perfect to us! Do it!" and the writers soon realized their massive fucking mistake. Hence why suddenly the commander of a terrorist organization is a mutant coming from a goddamn prehistoric society
Those mutations spores were a creative way to kill without actually killing. That scene where Cobra Commander gave my nightmares nightmares for decades.
Cobra commander and starscream both had tragic ends one turned to a snake and the other crumbled to death after trying to take over as leader for so long
Cobra Commander should've said how they substituted Sun Tzu's DNA in the creation of Serpentor with the Joe Sgt. Slaughter, and how he tried to destroy it. That might have been news to them, trial might've went a bit differently.
This movie made no sense on so many levels. The people of Cobra-La were not driven into exile by mankind. It was the Ice Age that drove them underground. Why they didn't emerge after the Ice Age ended is beyond me. The revelation that Cobra Commander came from Cobra-La was dumb and nearly destroyed the GI Joe mythos. And they sent a scientist to lead an army? Well that explains why Cobra Commander failed so much. Remember Starscream was a scientist too. And even if the spores were released from orbit, they would have burned up on re-entry. So burning them up with BET at the end was redundant.
You all realise that we are only saying these things because are older, smarter and can think critically. Back then we swallowed what they told us hook, line and sinker
The real question is why on Earth did Cobra-La based their entire comeback on a scientist to lead a human army? A human army that uses modern, inorganic technology? If their way of life is superior, they should have given the scientist their own technology. Plus, Cobra Commander made it clear in the previous seasons that the only reason Cobra seeks to rule the world is to put Cobra Commander on top. He wasn't going to share power to begin with. And in the episode where the Joes visited an alternate universe where Cobra won, Cobra-La was nowhere to be seen. All Cobra did as the new world power was make statues of their dear leader, Cobra Commander.
By the time the animated cartoon was created, Destro had somehow become the main villain and Cobra Commander was more of a figurehead. (This was the sort of relationship that Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine seemed to have in the original versions of 1977's "Star Wars" and 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back." Destro seemed to copycat Vader's voice initially.)
Fact: Golobulus was voiced by Burgess Meredith, best known as Mickey from the Rocky films. Nemesis Enforcer was voiced by Peter Cullen, who voiced Airborne, Zandar and Ramar in the cartoon but is best known as the voice of Optimus Prime in the Transformers franchise.
The only thing I hated about the Commander's return is that he didn't torture Serpentor. If I were Commander, I would've hung Serpentor out on a pole in front of Cobra and tortured him for days.
Lovecraft was one of the few things inspired for Cobra-La, kinda surprised no one considered Golobuls as an Eldritch Terror in universe of the G.I Joe 80s movie.
@stainshield It was probably one of Serpentor's greatest strengths. Find someone else to take the blame and in that case, the brief trial and punishment.
I lived in Germany in the 80’s and actually they aired both this movie and Transformers the Movie in the movie theater. Still remember before the movie came on, we would stand for the pledge and then they would play the Star Spangled Banner. Such a better idea than previews!
I can see why this movie was so good as well as all cartoons from the 1980s- JAPAN did the overseas to the cartoons. If only they did the overseas to all cartoons nowadays.
If Golobuls hated humans so much why would he come up with the plan of making a composite clone of mankind's greatest dictators to become the new Cobra emperor and implant that skill into Dr. Mindbender's brain? Then he allied himself with Cobra which was comprised of humans. Last but not least he needed the Beta Energy Transmitter which was built by humans to fulfill his evil schemes.
Yeah and even if his plan to mutate the entire human race with the spores actually succeeded, he and Cobra La would still have to contended with an eternal planet of mutated monsters to take back the world. Who's to say they wouldn't all be torn apart by a bunch of mindless abominations.
I like the movie, but it really went against what was hinted at in the cartoon. It was a really weird direction for Hasbro to take it. Really, I think Cobra Commander suffered the worst character wise. I would have preferred if he was simply the human puppet leader of Cobra rather than some snake person.
I actually named a save file for Legend of Grimrock 2 after 5:15. It was a moment in the game where you have to fight these human-sized sentient mushrooms who spray spores in your party's faces to injure them.
Plus in one episode he mentioned he over thru his military school didn't say if it was college or grade school but I'd like to think it was the Air Force Academy
He was originally intended to be human by the writers, the whole concept of Cobra-La got shoehorned in specifically for the movie, along with his origin. One of the head writers stated in an interview that there was a planned episode of the Sunbow cartoon which would've revealed that Cobra actually came about due to the teachings of an influential Karl Marx-esque figure whose ideology ended up being perverted by Cobra Commander for his own ends, and who was still being held captive by the latter or something like that. However, that episode was never produced for some reason or other and we instead ended up with this. In fact, there was even another episode which showed him finishing up his meal and putting on his signature hood just as Destroy entered his chambers, and it briefly showed him having a very clearly clean-shaven human chin.
@@anubis19801 The writer of the cancelled episode, Buzz Dixon, submitted his script to Hasbro and they really liked it, but told him to make sure he included the Cobra Emperor (later named Serpentor). When Buzz asked who he was, Hasbro told him he was the leader of Cobra, which Buzz pointed out made no sense since the series established Cobra Commander was the leader of Cobra. Hasbro realized he was right, and asked him to come up with some ideas. Buzz had two possible explanations for the Cobra Emperor. The first was that Destro and Dr. Mindbender, thinking Cobra Commander wasn’t capable of leading Cobra, created Serpentor using the DNA from history’s most ruthless military leaders. The other was that Cobra was actually the front for a secret, more powerful organization that even the Cobra higher-ups didn’t know about. They send out Serpentor to take Cobra Commander’s place. Hasbro liked both and asked Buzz to combine the two. And thus Cobra-La was born.
sorrry mike , but you mean the A-TEAM doncha ;) i didnt expect zartan to be a member of SAMcro lol . live action transformers ?? the only thing i remember is BAYformers 1-3 that had FIRST AID, GUNG HO , SHIPWRECK and FLINT in the first movie... there wasnt COBRA COMMANDER in that at all . thats the closest we will ever come to a JOE VS TF movie
Adler voiced Cobra Commander in Renegades and Resolute while he played Starscream in the Bay Transformers. Blum voiced Starscream in Transformers Prime.
Zartan was angry and it wasn't even an employee of Cobra, anyone but him and the dreadnoks should be angry. Funny that in the cartoon Cobra La was completely destroyed and Serpentor done away with........they are the real losers!!!
