The Greatest Animated Sequence Of All Time

 

Over at the GeekRoundTable, there's been a lot of talk lately about what the greatest animated show of all time is.  This was even discussed at their panel at Wonder Con, with both panel members and the audience chiming in with their opinions of which shows were the best.

 

I don't know about best animated show of all time, there's just too many possible contenders there for me to narrow it down to one.  But when it comes to best animated moments of all time, I definitely have one moment that far surpasses any other moment in animation history as far as I'm concerned.

 

For my money, you will never...ever...find a more awesome animated sequence than the beginning of GI Joe's animated movie back in 1987.  It really had everything you could ever want in a GI Joe cartoon, all packed into three short minutes.  Let's break it down

 

Cobra is out to destroy the Statue of Liberty, a fair target for an evil terrorist organization to be sure.  They show up in a giant hovering aircraft carrier looking thing that reminds me of the SHIELD hellicarriers and suddenly the sky is literally filled with paratrooping Cobra soldiers.  But then, out of nowhere, comes the GI Joe team, and they're all strapped into jet packs.  Yes, you heard me...jetpacks. 

 

Hands down the best way to make anything cooler ever is to have someone flying around on a jetpack, but we don't get just one or two joes flying around on jetpacks here.  All of them have jetpacks.

 

This is when the real action starts.  Paratrooping Cobra soldiers fighting Joe's with jetpacks as they fly around the Statue of Liberty in a crazy gun battle.  Lasers are flying everywhere, B.A.T. troopers are exploding left and right, madness reigns.  Then Cobra Commander himself personally flies through this maze of exploding death to deliver a big bomb to the base of the Statue and sets it to explode. 

 

We also see Snake Eyes jump onto a flying Trouble Bubble, flip it over in mid-air, toss out the pilot and then he hops in and pilots it off on his own.

 

I swear that I am convinced more shit gets blown up in the first three minutes of this movie than gets destroyed for the rest of the film.  GI Joe calls in an airstrike that wipes out Cobra's naval support, Alpine uses a grappling hook to latch onto a Cobra Firejet and literally punches his way through the cockpit windshield, and Roadblock is seen knocking some Viper heads together.  Finally, with only seconds left, Duke grabs Cobra Commander's bomb and flies it up to the giant Hellicarrier where he places it and barely has time to get away before the giant flying ship is blown out of the sky in a massive fireball.

 

There are many great animated sequences to point to out there, but I'm sorry, nothing is ever going to beat the first three minutes of the GI Joe movie.  Not now, not ever.  It is animation perfection.  Flying Joe's on jetpacks blowing up everything in sight, Cobra actually acting like a terrorist organization for once, and absolutely no dialogue whatsoever aside from the standard battlecries of "Cobra!!!" and "Yo Joe!!!".

 

Perfection I tell ya.  I am only saddened by the knowledge that absolutely no scene in the live action GI Joe movie could ever possibly hope to compare to this greatness.