If you haven’t stopped reading yet, I suspect it’s for the curiosity of discovering what folly will come from this reviewer’s mind next. If so, never fear, for you’re in good company! After all, how better to start formally reviewing films than with one that splits its audience straight through the Prime Meridian? One that’s not so horribly bad to be drooling with deliciously dreadful things to say about it, but neither affording the opportunity for tremendous and emotional gushing.
I first saw G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra during the opening weekend of its theatrical run with seven other guys, all of whom had fairly similar movie tastes. Our reactions upon exiting the theater could not have been more Jekyll & Hyde-like. Exactly half of us raved about how much we enjoyed the journey, while the other half bemoaned wasted and unrecoverable time and six dollars (yes, that’s how much movies cost in 2009). Movie-review wisdom often instructs the reviewer to hold off from revealing final opinions until the last paragraph in order to encourage the reader to continue, well, reading. But as G.I. Joe does, I’m going to forego traditional wisdom and convention and give my sentiment straight-up from the beginning: I love this film. And it is terrible. But oh how I love it.
From someone who has spent two-thirds of his life studying stories and crafting stories, every part of me knows that G.I. Joe is a poorly made film. But why do I enjoy this crazy picture so much? My film-and-story-seared brain tells me there are precious few well-crafted elements this film, but I feel something living beneath the flashy fights and simple story.
This film is devoid of almost all creative excellence…except, except, except (and this is the key) except that I want to believe that was exactly what the filmmakers were shooting for. The lines are delivered with such honest and enduring cheeze (much like smoked gouda), and the plot even more so, that I can’t help but conjure up memories of acting out similarly ridiculous dialogue and plot lines as an 8-year-old playing with the toys this film is based on.
Throughout the film:
- One of the Joes hacks into a foe’s brain to steal his final memories.
- The heroes detonate an ice pack to sink the villain’s hidden base.
- The villain attempts mind-control via microscopic robots AND attempts mass destruction by weaponizing the same microscopic critters.
It’s too perfectly child-like to be anything but carefully planned and plotted with the purpose of evoking—or at least replicating—the nostalgia of many of our childhoods. Remove the absurdity, and the film becomes absurd. But carefully mix in calculated spoonfuls (or cupfuls) of granulated nonsense, and it becomes endearing and enjoyable.
Granted, this plays to a niche audience at the risk of confusing the remainder of potential viewers, but seriously….G.I. Joe is a movie based on action figures. In lesser hands, the film could have transformed into everyone’s favorite hated robots. Instead, it’s carefully constructed to the level of a 10-year-old’s imagination. A risky move for sure, but one that pays off in front of the right crowd.
And that’s not to say there aren’t major flaws spread throughout the film. Outside of Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes’ fantastic martial arts fight, the actions scenes aren’t innovative, nor is the camerawork which captures it. Neither do the visual effects match the standard of other effects-heavy films that 2009 offered us, such as Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but their budgets were significantly higher than G.I. Joe’s ($237, $250, $200 Million respectively, compared to $175 Million according to boxofficemojo.com). Perhaps the studio rightly guessed that there would be no middle ground between loving and hating the film, and therefore decided that investing additional dollars in top-notch VFX wouldn’t sway audience’s opinions.
The Story Structure & Characters
G.I. Joe illustrates that no matter how sub-par the elements of the film are, checking off the major boxes of storytelling should (certainly not always, but in this case successfully) translate into at least a mildly engaging story. Here, we have an established world (the world of the Joes), a major incident which kicks off our adventure (the attempted theft of nano-mite warheads—come on, it’s so ridiculous that it has to be fun), a constant stream of emerging secrets central to the characters’ journeys which keep us interested in the story (for the sake of spoilers, I’ll let you discover those for yourself), and a central goal that heroes and villains alike attempt to accomplish.
Most importantly, these characters have desires, however underdeveloped and at times one-dimensional. The major players largely know what they want and spend their screen time attempting to attain it. If they didn’t, no amount of cheeze could have made this thing work; we just wouldn’t have cared enough. But we do care. We care that our hero, Duke, has somehow lost the woman he loves, and we’re both frustrated and curious as to why she’s trying to hurt him. We care that Snake Eyes chooses to speak only through his actions, and we eagerly wait to discover why. And while Ripcord’s pilot aspirations may be underdeveloped, we’re endeared by his innocent, albeit flirtatious, pursuit of Scarlett and the way his focus turns away from himself to her well-being during her lowest moments.
Looking at our villains, while McCullen’s desire for power can certainly be viewed as too simple to match the expected complexity of a 21st century villain, behind his mask stems an equally powerful desire to fulfill the legacy of his ancestors. Finally, we have the Doctor. Of all the character’s desires, the Doctor’s is the one that appears constructed around the needs of the plot rather than the truth of the character. One could certainly argue that the horrors he experienced shaped the villainous being we’re presented with, but—without giving away too many plot points—the scientific rationale for his evil actions are grounded in nothing more than a few throwaway lines. Even when his secrets are revealed, we are not given sufficient reason to care about him, which in turn re-directs our empathy towards those pursuing good.
Ultimately, our players rarely deviate from the stereotypes of heroes and villains that they are, and because of that, we know who we’re getting with these characters. For most films, this would be its downfall, but in G.I. Joe, the simplicity helps us enjoy the ride simply for what it is. Too often stories get mired by vigorous and earnest, but conclusively ineffective attempts to examine every angle of character and plot, and while this can be splendidly accomplished with the right touch, sadly we are often left with the wreckage of bloated ambition and complication for its own sake. But in every aspect, G.I. Joe spares us from the danger of trying to be something that it’s not, and while some may accuse the simplistic characters as falling somewhere in the spectrum between childish and naive, perhaps that’s exactly what we need.
Here you won’t find the cynicism or vigilantes that have invaded our story-scapes, but rather characters who can love, forgive, and own up to their mistakes without justifying the past. Whether knowingly or not, these filmmakers have stumbled upon a truth which we’d all be wise to remember and act upon: despite the confusion in the world, it all comes down to the battle of good vs evil, and more specifically, Jesus Christ vs. Satan and how that’s exhibited in our own lives. While G.I. Joe is not a “Christian” film by any means, beneath all the silliness we find the oft-forgotten principle that the mind of a child can sometimes comprehend truth more fully than those older and seemingly wiser, and that this truth can be illustrated in an enjoyable and creative way.
I can’t promise you’ll enjoy G.I. Joe, but if you allow yourself, I have a feeling you’ll be more than a tad amused. If you’re like me, you’ll probably have no idea how it got you there, but isn’t that really the mark of what movies are meant to do?
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