G.I. No

As a kid in the 80s, I was all about GI Joe. Everyone had their toy obsession growing up and that continues to be mine. I have said this on multiple occasions, but if playing with toys were socially acceptable for a man my age I would probably have an entire room in my house still devoted to them. (Somehow things like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars slipped through because while you may get some good-natured ribbing about it, it's common for fans of those franchises to be able to fly their nerd flag high, yet not for fans of the Joes... I assume it is because anyone who has a room dedicated to war toys ends up on some kind of watch list.) Anyway, since it is not I have had to keep my nerdom going in other ways, specifically supporting the live-actions movies which have been put out in the last few years. The first one came out in 2008 and it was, sadly, an underwhelming effort. Something was just off about the entire movie. It wasn't bad, I am just not sure it did justice to the franchise I grew up with and while I bought a copy of the movie, it was done more out of a sense of obligation than enjoyment. I was hoping the latest edition would be a stronger effort. I should have known not to get my hopes up.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead.
**If you want to see the movie for yourself I suggest
skipping the rest of this post and coming back tomorrow.**

This movie was so bad. Not even "so bad it's good" - just plain bad. I want you to know it pains me to write that sentence because I desperately wanted it to be good. I even went in with lower expectations so that I could say the movie was better than expected, but apparently that was asking too much. Do you know how upsetting it is to severely lower your expectations and still have something fall short of them? Halfway through I was fighting the urge to tell them to turn it off like George C Scott in "Hardcore." Look, I wasn't going in planning to see an Oscar contender here. I thought I would get a few action sequences, a flimsy plot and lots of catch phrases thrown back at each other. I would have walked out thrilled if that is what I got, but this movie pretty much has no plot. I've been thinking about it all afternoon (I went to an early-afternoon showing with all my children-of-the-80s brethren who just knew not to drag wives or girlfriends to this because we would be paying for it later) and I still can't tell you what the purpose of this movie was. You expect action-movie bad guys to have a terribly complicated plan for their relatively simply goal, but this one took the cake. I don't want to spoil too much of it for the people who wandered onto this post accidentally, but the last few minutes may have contained some of the stupidest plot holes ever captured on film. I didn't need much of a back story, but I at least need it to be even 1% possible, which this movie was not.

Even worse was the whole movie felt poorly-constructed. I've said it time and time again, but people will upgrade a bad movie if you at least take the time to make sure it is at least well-conceived. In those situations we can at least appreciate the effort. Honestly, bad editing is the thin line between being in the theater and being released straight-to-DVD. This movie had some really clumsy jumps (we'll get to why in a second), and I found them really distracting. Plus, this movie felt trapped between two different ideologies. One of the things people hated in the first movie was that it was too reliant on special effects, like accelerator suits and pulse cannons. So, this movie toned that back a little with regular bullets and the Joes wearing standard-issue uniforms. Still, you can tell someone felt the need to insert a big visual effect, which is why they blew up London (which you see in the commercial) for really no real reason. It does nothing to advance the plot, I'm sure that some producer just thought it would look really cool. And that's the problem really - the whole movie felt like the producers figured out the action sequences they wanted and then tried to construct a movie around them, only they didn't try very hard.

But the main problem with this movie is the fact that they kill Channing Tatum off in the first 20 minutes. (Everything you see in the trailer? That's pretty much every scene he has in the movie.) Look, I can take Tatum or leave him as an actor but you can't kill of the character of Duke in the first 20 minutes of a GI Joe movie - it'd be like trying to make the "Star Trek" reboot with no Captain Kirk. It immediately showed me this movie was being made by people who don't give a crap about the franchise. Even then I was willing to live with it if they had just gone with it. I may not respect a decision, but I'll accept it if you make me. These guys were wishy-washy about it. The movie was famously bumped from a scheduled release date of last June until today. The studio said it was so the movie could be converted for 3-D, but rumblings were that it was done so they could shoot a few additional scenes with Tatum, who had a few hit movies after shooting on this one wrapped up. (They still kill him, but it's 20 minutes into the movie instead of 5.) As such they probably want to have the option to bring him back if there is a third movie and did so without consulting the director. The result is the removal any official acknowledgement that Duke is dead but they achieved that with a few really sloppy edits that wrecked any flow the movie may have had. They really would have been better off just scrapping as much as possible and re-shooting the movie. They could have easily cut out every scene Bruce Willis was in, as he was utterly useless (again, every scene you see in the trailer is every instance of him appearing in the movie). I assume he was on set for all of 30 minutes and did every scene in one take, just as soon as the check cleared.

If you have read this blog before you know that I try to avoid telling people not to see a particular film because I don't feel it is my place to assume my taste in movies is universal. However, in this case I don't feel like I am going out on too big of a limb when I tell you that you should really avoid this movie at all costs. If you are a fan of GI Joe it will just ruin the memories and if you aren't then you wouldn't get why the fact it is so bad is so crushing. There are always a couple mindless action movies in the theaters at any given time you could see instead (I hear "Olympus Has Fallen" is just the kind of campy action fun "GI Joe: Retaliation" should have been) and if you can hold out for a little longer we will be in summer blockbuster mode before you know it. I'm sure "GI Joe: Retaliation" will have pretty good box-office numbers because the end of March is a bit of a dead-zone for movies, which is good because I sincerely do want them to make a third one... primarily so that this horrible movie isn't the last time we see GI Joe on the big screen. I just hope whomever is put in charge of making the next one does a better job. The good news is that they really couldn't do much worse.