By Who thought this was a good idea?
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the pitch meeting. The person who pitched this movie is some sort of con man. For this person to have been able to sell this movie to a studio is nothing short of impressive.
It’s been an ongoing trend and something that infuriates me to no end. It seems as though good ideas are in short supply, so Hollywood has decided to resurrect long dead franchises, whether it be comic books, cartoons, or what not.Â
/End of rant
Alas, onward to the
G.I. Joe is set in the not too distant future. I’m wondering if that disclaimer at the beginning of the movie makes it okay to take your normal suspension of disbelief and multiply it to the power of ten. Nothing in this movie is even slightly plausible and perhaps it would have been okay if they rooted something, anything, in reality, but they decided against that.
Our movie starts off explaining the technology of nanobites, something oft dreamed up in movies such as these. It’s explained as a
Who thought this was a good idea?
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the pitch meeting. The person who pitched this movie is some sort of con man. For this person to have been able to sell this movie to a studio is nothing short of impressive.
It's been an ongoing trend and something that infuriates me to no end. It seems as though good ideas are in short supply, so Hollywood has decided to resurrect long dead franchises, whether it be comic books, cartoons, or what not.
/End of rant
Alas, onward to the review:
G.I. Joe is set in the not too distant future. I'm wondering if that disclaimer at the beginning of the movie makes it okay to take your normal suspension of disbelief and multiply it to the power of ten. Nothing in this movie is even slightly plausible and perhaps it would have been okay if they rooted something, anything, in reality, but they decided against that.
Our movie starts off explaining the technology of nanobites, something oft dreamed up in movies such as these. It's explained as an all powerful technology, that is of course multifaceted, and can do anything from create soldiers that feel no pain and obey every command to destroy anything it sets its sights upon.
James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) is the pitch man for this new technology and has made 4 prototype warheads for use by the military. These warheads are to be transported somewhere for some purpose (I'll get to the plot momentarily) and the men chosen for this task are our heroes, Captain Duke Hauser (Channing Tatum) and Wallace Weems aka Ripcord (Marlon Wayans).
As they begin their transport operation under heavy guard, they are beset by an unknown entity with unknown, yet powerful technology. In the following skirmish, Duke is confronted by a ghost from his past whom he recognizes as his ex-fiancee Anna (Sienna Miller). The fight ends abruptly with the arrival of the good guys, the Joes. Anna scurries off quickly sans the warheads. Her and Duke seem incapable of hurting one another due to their past history.
Duke and Ripcord are reluctant to give the warheads to the Joes as it is their mission and obligation to protect the warheads. General Abernathy aka Hawk (Dennis Quaid) appears through hologram and invites the two soldiers to bring the warheads to the Joes secret base somewhere in the Sahara.
Upon arrival, Duke and Ripcord are relieved of their duties as guardians of the warheads and relinquish their duty to the Joes. However, Duke cannot shake the thought of Anna as a bad guy and pleads his case to Hawk to let Duke and Ripcord become Joes. He blackmails them by saying he knows Anna and will give them everything they want to know if they train him to be part of their elite super secret club.
Ok, that's it, I'm done with trying to explain the plot. This was obviously built as a popcorn movie. Every 5 minutes or so, something goes boom, the plot is unspeakably bad, and I haven't seen a movie so CG reliant in a long while. Nothing in this movie is rooted in reality, which of course makes sense, given it being based on a cartoon, but still why even try to make a pretense of it being based on reality?
We'll start with the problems I had with this movie, the list is long so bear with me.
-This "film" is enamored with technology, it loves the things it can do with special effects, everything seemed blue screened.
-The maker of this movie saw the Matrix a few times….over and over again we see the slow motion effect made popular by the Matrix used as a weapon against viewers trying to watch a movie.
-Two quotes that made me groan, "When all else fails, we don't" "Knowing is half the battle" Thanks Dennis Quaid, your delivery of the second line ruined my childhood
-The female Joes wore low cut BDUs around the base, helping to highlight their ample cleavage. Do those sort of BDUs even exist?
-"Real American Hero" was uttered, again my childhood died some more
-Anna and Duke's falling out was due to the loss of her little brother, Rex (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)…when he was introduced in the movie I scribbled down, "I bet he dies."
-I was humming We're Gonna Need a Montage as Duke and Ripcord took on the Joe training
-Brendan Fraser was in this movie, just thought I'd throw that out there
-Snakeeyes and Stormshadow, the movie made every effort to show how cool ninjas are, they even had their own backstory! Fantastic…..
-Hello obvious product placement? How are you? I'd like to thank Cisco and Double Bubble for helping to make this movie possible
-"Everything about this movie is over the top and ridiculous." ~ me
-Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) serves as a romantic plot device for Ripcord, that's nice. She has some sort of device that makes her completely invisible, but when the bad guys attack the Joes secret base, she doesn't decide to use it until she's in an actual fight. This seems counter intuitive, but most of the movie was counter intuitive, so there is that.
-The flashbacks were silly and unnecessary. There was one sequence where the two ninjas met that was especially silly. They meet and immediately begin fighting, the boys being of about age 10 or so. The seemingly untrained ninja is able to fight well against the trained ninja. How? I have no idea.
-This was offered up by roommate Jon who sat down for about 5 minutes before running away in terror, "Most ridiculous scene I have ever seen." I think this had something to do with the fight in Paris over the weaponizing and launch of the warhead.
-Maybe it was explained at some point, I couldn't really tell, but the warheads containing the nanobites, how were they not weaponized in the first place? They are contained in a warhead, how is that not weaponized? I suppose we needed a plot device to kill Anna's husband.
-There was one particular scene in a flashback when Duke, Ripcord, and Anna's brother Rex are in a fire fight in some unknown place. Two soldiers open a door to a building and immediately start shooting in. I'm fairly certain that's not how they do it in the military.
-In this same scene, they called in an air strike that of course arrives early, and it only strikes one building and nothing else….really helps my suspension of disbelief.
-Our fearless hero Duke should have died in the resulting blast as he ran to save Rex. He didn't though, he is our hero afterall.
-The movie's run time was 2 hours…..why?
-At Rex's funeral, Duke arrives on a motorcycle wearing sunglasses in the pouring rain, I immediately started humming I Wear My Sunglasses at Night
-In the Paris chase sequence, the bad guys are driving around in a hummer, they saw fit to CG a wedge that can be activated to the vehicle, seeing the wedge activated through CG against an actual vehicle hurt to watch.
-As our heroes ran around Paris causing umpteen millions of dollars in damage, they had the good sense to have many chuckles about it
-Why must Anna always have her sunglasses? At one point, she makes a special effort to rescue her sunglasses before leaving a burning vehicle. I didn't really see anything important about them.
-As Duke runs off after our bad guys, he ditches the helmet to his very expensive suit. Said helmet has his targeting system and other important things, but really who needs that?
-Our hero Duke disarms the nanomites after they descend upon Paris by pressing a button on Anna's belt. Why couldn't she rearm them by pressing the same button?
-The police! They arrive just in time after a 20 minute fighting sequence between the Joes and the bad guys to arrest the Joes, how convenient.
-When the bad guys arrive at their secret lair on the polar ice cap, they aren't wearing coats or anything special…..isn't it bitterly cold there?
-More plot holes! McCullen is adamant about getting these particular 4 warheads back into his evil clutches, why couldn't he just have Rex make more for him?
-Despite their amazing technology, the bad guys couldn't detect the Joes' sub?
-The ninjas have their penultimate fight sequence in a generator room of some consequence. There is electricity visible throughout the room, yet the ninjas don't get electrocuted. Wow, ninjas really are cool!
-Further evidence against my suspension of disbelief: In all these fights, no one bleeds. Hurray PG-13!
-I find it fascinating how the bad guys can use the good guys technology and vice versa with no training whatsoever for each other's toys.
-This movie set itself up for a sequel, save me.
My apologies for the list of problems I had with this movie. I know I wasn't the target audience for this movie, but I should have been! I grew up watching G.I. Joe, playing with the action figures, I love G.I. Joe!
I did not love this, though.
Thanks to a suggestion, I'm changing my ratings slightly. I had settled on sticks of butter as I didn't have a better idea, now I do thanks to Natalie Wilson!
I give this movie 2 Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites out of 5. I gave it two because I know I'm not the target audience and I suppose it could be entertaining if you shut your brain off.