I saw G.I. Joe and can’t clean my eyes . . .
Gina and I went to see the G.I. Joe movie yesterday and it was actually worse than I expected. That will teach me to think that a summer blockbuster will at least have cool battle scenes. From battle one to battle . . . hell, I don’t know . . . the movie thoroughly sucked. It wasn’t G.I. Joe in more than name, with a few character and vehicle names sprinkled throughout the story and a few backstories picked up and kinda added here and there.
Some of my biggest complaints? Don’t continue if you don’t want spoilers.
- Baronness – They turned her into a mind-controlled villain who only acted evil because Cobra Commander (her brother) made her evil.
- Duke – Gone is the confident leader. Instead we get the cocky, too cool, wow, look at him he can hit Snake Eyes jerk that I wish could have been killed in the first fight scene.
- Destro – I’m sorry, but was Destro in this movie? All I saw was an idiot in a suit who later got his face fried and then rebuild with nanites by Cobra Commander (I’m getting to him).
- Snake Eyes – I guess there’s no difference between a ninja, a superhero, and Neo in the Matrix. In their attempt to make Snake Eyes cool they went too far. And the lips destroy the costume. And the “vow of silence” crap destroys the character. What was a tragic character is now just a street kid who grows up and decides that he won’t talk because his master was killed.
- Zartan – I won’t even get into this guy’s problems. I thought Zartan was gonna be in this movie but I never saw him.
- Brendan Fraiser – He’s usually enjoyable but he doesn’t work here. Why spend money and energy to have him in the film for three minutes? And a stupid and unnecessary three minutes at that.
- Cobra Commander – Who isn’t even “Commander” until the very end of the movie but is a scientist/soldier who worked with Dr. Mindbender to make some nanite stuff more powerful than it was. And was gonna be Duke’s brother-in-law because the Baronness is the Commander’s sister. And let’s not forget that he became evil four years ago and is the genius responsible for Destro’s plan that Destro spent 10 years working on. Huh? I think I missed some key time travel sequence in the film. Either that, or it was so bad at that time that my mental blows to my brain were numbing me so much that I shut down there for a little while.
Actually, that’s enough thinking about this film. It’s terrible, it’s not G.I. Joe, and even if it dumped some of the worst changes to the characters/background the movie would still suck. Many of the digital effects were awful (the polar bear is the worst), they forgot to find a script doctor to burn the script and start over, and someone decided to create this after spending 30 seconds reading the old Order of Battle comic mini-series.
For a more positive look at the movie see this review at Dork Dimension.
Thanks for the review. I was wondering if
it was not going to be as good as it needed
to be when critics weren’t allowed to see
the film before the public release.
Your review confirms what I was afraid of.
G.I. Joe the movie didn’t improve the
franchise and maybe it hurt it some.
@krakit – To be fair, I’m betting this movie will make tons of money and make lots of kids very happy. I just wish that it had been treated seriously and not treated like someone made a movie “inspired by” a bunch of toys. Hell, the toys look better than some of the effects in the film and the old comic (sometimes) had more serious — and better written — storylines.
Yeah, I’m just going to say… I’m fine with the movie and I kinda… well, love it. Hehehe. Sorry Phil, gotta agree to disagree here. Just bear in mind that as a TF fan, my childhood’s been raped since the 90s, so it’s easier for me to accept both minor as well as dramatic changes to a beloved franchise.
@updatedude – I won’t deny that I’m old and set in my ways, but some of the changes they made just didn’t make any sense to me. And the end, with Destro and Cobra Commander locked in a cell and Zartan in “disguise,” felt . . . well, dumb. And the cells Destro and Cobra Commander were locked in made me think Magneto must be somewhere nearby.
And since when does ice sink?
They lost me when they proved they were too wimpy to make the team a US team as opposed to a UN team. Meh. I figured this was gonna be a poopfest when I saw Stephen “Sexy Werewolf” Sommers was directing.
Well this confirms to me that I will wait for the dollar dvd redbox rental of it. Before the shittious reviews it lost me when I saw one of the Wayans brothers were it in
Goddamn, this movie was the best hour downloading I ever spent to see one of the most gorgeous Redheads in the world. I may have to bust a Borat-wedding on Ms Nichols…
Yeah I gotta totally disagree with you. This movie felt VERY GI Joe to me. Sure they changed around a lot of stuff, some pointless, but it felt almost exactly like watching one of the old cartoons. Tons of large scale battles. No one was really too far off the mark. I really loved Destro.
I think my only major issues would be the Baroness subplot, the fact that CC is basically Darth Vader and well, that’s about it. I was pleasently surprised.
Of course, plenty of things were “Wrong” but I never went in expecting them to be right in the first place. Contrary to popular belief it’s not like there is one definative Joe story. While this one was a bit off from where I’d liked it it was still good.
And I loved the fact that were pretty much a US team. All the hoopla over them being an “international” force was so downplayed it’s not funny. They take their orders from the President for crying out loud.
I actually kind of liked it! Granted, I never got into G.I. Joe as a kid (the soldier stuff just never appealed to me, and the toys were kinda dinky compared to the awesomeness of TMNT and other toylines) and have only seen Resolute, so the obvious changes didn’t make me feel like anything I love was being raped. I think that was probably the best buy-my-toy movie I’ve seen in years (cartoons notwithstanding).
Also, there *is* no difference between a ninja, a superhero (or supervillain), and Neo in the Matrix. There hasn’t been for a very long time. 😉
And holy crap Scarlett was hot. The woman hasn’t done much for me in still photos, but in the onscreen flesh? Love.
While I can agree there are some silly, even stupid bits to the movie, and that it got overly cheesy toward the end, overall, I still loved it. Not that you shouldn’t hate it, if a movie doesn’t do it for you, then it doesn’t, to each his own.
However, I don’t have a problem with most of the characters and how they were tweaked. Snake Eyes for instance, is acceptable to me. His backstory might not be overly involved, but then, it gets the job done, and this isn’t a Snake Eyes movie. Fraser’s just an easter egg really, I have no problem with Fraser being obviously Fraser. And I actually thought that Zartan’s pretty cool, since his primary purpose is to function as a sequel hook.
And as a non-American, I have no problems with the Joes not being solely American (yet, in the way of movies, they obviously “belong” to America).
Now as for the MAJOR changes, such as the Baroness and Duke or the behavior of Destro or even the backstory of Cobra Commander, I can accept those as being reasons for long time fans to hate the flick. Those ARE radical departures that I can see as childhood raping. I personally think they were done well, but I can see where they would bug a lot of fans to the point they can’t accept the rest of the film.
Heck, I can even see where the super sci-fi weapons of MARS or the corny dialogue or even the bad CGI here and there might be deal breakers, but…
I think my beef with most fan reviewers, not you per se, just ranting here, is the focus over relatively minor details as being the deal breakers. Up to a point, it’s just “silly”.
That said, if you didn’t enjoy the film, then you don’t enjoy the film. I’ve no prob with that. I really liked it myself though. It had its share of imperfections, and I felt like it ran a little long. I think there was a couple sequences which could have been cut short. But overall, I liked it. It was a fun summer movie and like I said, I’m used to my childhood being raped. Between Beastwars, Black Kingpin, Bayformers, Return of Superman, X-Men (all of ’em), etc, I’m kinda used to childhood rapes. RoC might be a rapist, but it’s not as bad as some of the above.
I wonder how many hits this post’ll get from people googling for “rape porn”? Heeheehee.
My favorite Joe story was when Cobra stole a super-secret laser cannon to etch Cobra Commander’s face on the Moon.
😉
Let’s never forget that the old cartoon was terrible. I would have rather seen the writers spend more time studying the comic and character backgrounds than watching old episodes of the cartoon.
I agree with you, Phil.. the comic book has always been my canon of choice. Larry Hama MADE GI JOE for me… I mean he wrote the dossiers that shaped the toy line, the comics, and the cartoon to a degree.
But Hama said he liked the movie.
Hama likes money as much as I do.