G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – Review
Saturday, November 28th, 2009I should have known. I made the mistake, and I paid for it (literally). I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the theater. One of the biggest wastes of my time I’ve ever spent money on. It taught me a valuable lesson, though: I learned that it actually is possible to be bored stiff during long, high-technical-quality, eye-candy filled action sequences. Never before had I watched so much stuff blow up and thought “when will it end?!”
Transformers was just one of the two movies this summer that tried to bring back a cartoon from my youth in live-action form. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was the other. From the trailers, it was clear that they were attempting a similar feat: eye-candy trumps plot. Having been burned once, I skipped seeing G.I. Joe in the theater, and only got around to watching it tonight on DVD.
I learned something from G.I. Joe tonight. I learned that it is possible to bring these cartoons back in a satisfying live-action film. Lots of people may disagree with me (and from the reviews, I’d say they do), but I had a good time watching this movie. I think they struck a great balance. They weren’t trying to go all important and get “Dark Knight” moody with the plot. I’m sure that option was open to them… after all, you’re talking about terrorism, war, and fanaticism – perfect topics for important messages. But then again, they didn’t go completely cartoony either. In contrast to the actual cartoon, for example, people did die in this film, and you saw it happen.
They also kept an important aspect of the show: teamwork. Every time the Joe team set out, they worked together. Everyone had a job, and everyone did their job. A lot of “team” movies drop that aspect, and the movies are noticeably worse for it, by focusing too intently on a single character or treating all characters as generic (Fantastic Four, Transformers, and Mission: Impossible to name three).
They realized what they were: a simple, black-and-white, good guys/bad guys, team based, super-hero movie. I don’t think I ever thought of them as super-heroes before, but that’s really what they are. The Joe team are each unbelievably skilled at some armed forces related task and have pure, unadulterated, good motives: they just want to do their part to save the world. The bad guys, on the other hand, just want to control and destroy, because that’s who they are. Their motives aren’t really that fleshed out. They don’t need to be. They were just born that way (or forced into it by nano-bots). There’s no sub-text here. There’s not meant to be. It’s just a fun thrill ride and the guys with the white hats win.
That’s really what Transformers is, too, but for some reason those movies tried to get all deep and dark, and died in the attempt.
Joe kept it light and fun. And they allowed you to actually follow what was happening in the action sequences. It really didn’t matter that what they were doing in the action sequences was completely impossible; it looked nice, and you could tell who was doing what to whom, and it worked within the context of the film. All the Joe and Cobra gear and vehicles were in pristine, just-off-the-assembly-line condition – not a speck of dust to be found. There was very little realism about this film. Just fun escapism.
Works for me. I’ll go see a sequel.
Go, Joe!
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