Director Stephen Sommers might want to discourage the production of animated lead-ups to his feature films. They keep outdoing the movies they're supposed to set up for audiences.

Before his Van Helsing reached theaters in 2004, Universal released Van Helsing: The London Assigment. Written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the animated half-hour was clever and action-packed. Van Helsing? It was not clever and action-packed.

Now, the DVD release of G.i. Joe: Resolute, an 11-episode series of animated shorts that originally aired on Adult Swim before the release of Rise of Cobra, brings a cooler and more visually compelling "Yo, Joe!" to screens.

Now, I didn't hate G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. I know plenty of folks did, but I expected a big budget, live action cartoon and that's what the film delivered.

But, Resolute and its anime style brought a darkly heroic vibe to the G.I. Joe world that Rise of Cobra never captured. The DVD assembles the 11 shorts into a single one-hour film that fans will want to watch repeatedly to unveil the levels of detail in the animation. It's safe to say there aren't a ton of people going through multiple views of Rise of Cobra.

The disc special features include storyboards and interviews with the filmmakers.