If GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra Were a Horse, We’d Have to Put It Out of Its Misery.

Posted by ScuzzBuster

August 9, 2009

joe1sheet I have to put the GI Joe phenomenon firmly in the same category as Transformers. While other kids my age were firmly engrossed in those two animated series in the 80s I was engaged in much more “mature” pursuits such as Star Trek, Doctor Who and mourning the loss of Three’s Company between planning my weekly schedule around Cheers and Night Court. However, the trailer for GI Joe tugged at the coolness factor of my long dead kid as well as the former lead actor from the recently resurrected Doctor Who, so I was hip for this, at least up until the first 45 minutes or so of sitting through it.

joeanimated There’s something inherently cool about semi-superheroes bounding around city streets kicking ass in cyber suits. Somehow, director Stephen Sommers manages to suck pretty much all the fun out of it for me by completely encircling about a half dozen things that should be the pinnacle of coolness with characters that I didn’t give two craps about kicking about in a world that starts out somewhat grounded and becomes more and more weird and sci-fi driven as it goes on.

In fairness, not only did I not watch the animated series, I knew nothing about it and still don’t, so I am not the one to nitpick how faithful this is to the source material. However, I can with absolute authority say that the berets look very similar to the glimpses I remember seeing flipping channels as a kid. I don’t know if a background in the show would have helped me. There was a base thread of plot holding this together that I could follow, but I got the feeling that there might have been some loss of awareness of a reason I should actually care about these people. Probably the only character I latched on to was Dennis Quaid as General Hawk. When the credits rolled, he was the only one I actually that I really liked at all.

joe3 The story revolves around Duke, played by Channing Tatum. Tatum didn’t really do anything wrong in the roll. He played it pretty straight-laced, but the character was written clumsy and made decisions poor enough that he would probably have been kicked out of any reasonably disciplined military unit. Now, I have no idea if this has any basis in the animated series, but there’s this entire subplot with Duke and how his ex-fiance is now the bad-ass female assassin leading the bad guys on their assaults. Good old Duke, apparently still all tired out from rolling that beautiful bean footage, hesitates when he sees her, even though she’s just assassinated other soldiers in his unit in front of him. Now, I’m the biggest wuss on the planet, so no one appreciates the sacrifices and discipline of the people enlisted to protect our country more than I do, but I feel pretty confident that virtually no U.S. Soldier, particularly one that is considered part of an “elite” unite would hesitate to take down anyone that was killing his comrades around him. I would guess that this would probably extend to even his own mother, though at least I could understand the hesitation had that been the case.

joe2 I let that pass early in the flick, but then about 2/3 of the way through he has her right in his sites point blank after again watching her fire upon and kill MORE fellow soldiers and he not only hesitates, but won’t even consider pulling the trigger. And it’s not a point blank assassination of a former girlfriend at this point, she’s still armed, dangerous and fighting back. Sorry, but in my mind this is a disgrace in the face of every soldier in uniform, and he’s supposed to be the top-rated recruit of the elite GI Joe unit. Is there any military person out there that can refute my official assessment of this as complete bullshit?
That’s just one little turd in a film full of them. There’s lots of all out weirdness, some of which I’m sure is based in GI Joe lore and some of which are fresh turds from Mr. Sommer’s film. For instance, I love how in one of the huge action sequences all of the “Joes” are outfitted in multi-million dollars accelerator suits that are so powerful they can be hit dead on by a speeding car and take no damage, yet the female “Joe” is sent out along side them on a motorcycle with nothing but a leather jacket and standard helmet. Talk about gender discrimination in the work place.

destro1 The film just has no heart. Even as well choreographed as some of the action sequences are, it just felt contrived and empty. With no personal basis for comparison or reference for what this whole GI Joe thing is about it was a very strange film to watch. It starts out with the subtitle “In the Near Future” and rolls out of the gate as kind of a standard high-tech military action flick, but just takes multiple leaps away from high-tech into kooky and weird. First, I just don’t understand why an elite high-tech military unit needs a token ninja, but I can forgive that since I’m sure that’s all part of the lore. However, by the time the end of the film rolls around the tech has gotten outrageous and the film has gone from action/military to mustache-twirling baddies who’s true-identities are ridiculous. They literally degrade into cackling cartoon bad guys at the end when you suddenly realize that this was one long masturbatory set up for a cash cow franchise so coldly calculated that they made sure that all the high dollar actors like Chris Eccleston as Destro and Jonathon Pryce as the President are gift-wrapped for the finale in a way they can easily cast other actors in the roles when the sequel starts shooting probably sometime around the opening weekend box office results become official.

snakeeyesyoulose Am I being fair to GI Joe? Maybe a little harsh, but the film is not really very good at any level. In fairness, I rolled with it for the first half hour or so before it started to become overly silly and it became clear that there was absolutely no intention to develop any of the characters in any meaningful way. And…SPOILER…they don’t. The characters are written about as richly as the descriptions will be on the back of the action figure packages complete with the token tag lines that throw back to the animated series.

The early word is that Joe is busting the box office this weekend and it has to be 80% driven by the brand and the pretty cool trailers. However, if this were a vanilla army/action/espionage or spy flick with no brand attached, I think it would be the bomb of the summer. I guess if you have a long term attachment and love of the GI Joe series and lore I can’t in good conscious tell you to stay away from this and there’s no way you will, though I’m guessing that there will have to be some disappointment. However, if you have no background or attachment to the source material then this film is a tremendous waste of time.

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