Noooo, Joe!!! (spoiler and sailor language warning)

Remember that South Park episode that featured Lucas and Spielberg sodomizing Indiana Jones? Now replace Lucas / Spielberg with Sommers and Indiana Jones with Duke, and you get the idea about what I think happened to G.I. Joe.

Now, my attachment to G.I. Joe is about as strong as my attachment to Transformers. Maybe even stronger, as I had more G.I. Joe toys than I had Transformers. In short, G.I. Joe is a piece of my childhood. Seeing the movie was like watching some auteur take that childhood and piss on it.

I wasn't expecting much. I was expecting no more than the Transformers treatment: a movie dumber than a bag of hammers, but as fun as wielding a chainsaw in a parking lot. I wanted just a little popcorn fun. I don't even mind annoying new characters, because they're at least fun to root against. (Die, Sam Witwicky! Die already, for fuck's sake! Transformers 3, Megan Fox and Robots!)

I could forgive the evisceration of G.I. Joe from awesome Team America (fuck yeah!) to wussy NATO errand boys. What in the world is a "Globally Integrated Joint Operating Entity" anyway? A UN wet dream? Nothing takes the shine out of a cool concept quite like a bureaucratic renaming. Might as well call them Team Synergy.

I can look past the pencil-neck Destro (or, is it Destreaux?) and the Psycho Mantis Cobra Commander. I can look past the revival of stupid Joes (Janes?) like "Cover Girl" (now reincarnated from American super model to East European porn star). I can look past Snake Eyes without his dog. I can even look past a Baroness without the sexy German accent. (Wait a second. No, I can't.)

Prior to watching the movie, I was in Foundations of Humanities class, and one of the examples used to illustrate the  transient nature of earthly beauty is music. Music requires all notes to be in harmony to be considered beautiful. G. I. Joe was not going to be Citizen Kane by any stretch of the imagination. All it had to do was hit a few low notes to create a sort of harmony to please a fanbase with low expectations to begin with. But, like a huge, hairy mole on an otherwise pretty face, all it takes is for one bad note to bring the whole thing crashing down.

G.I. Joe's huge, hairy moles were Baroness and Duke.

Believe it or not, Baroness sucking like a two dollar whore when the sailors come home is not Sienna Miller's fault. It is the fault of whoever dipshit writer thought that Pearl Harbor was a good movie and that implementing Pearl Harbor in G.I. Joe would be a good idea. Not only did the "love" story strike false note after false note, one can see the character being crushed and twisted into unrecognizable mush. Now, Baroness is integral to Cobra's being an effective evil organization, because she's pretty badass herself. And, she's evil. And, she dates a guy with a metal head. Plus, she's integral to practically every goofy Saturday morning Cobra plan that could have succeeded. :D Look at this poster:

Baroness, making Evil and Ugly Dudes look good for over 20 years!

The only reason for saying "evil never looked so good" in the poster is because Baroness is in it. No way Emo Shadow and Psycho Mantis Commander make anything look good. For the "evil" and "look good" to work, Baroness must be both.

So, what happened? Oh, yeah. Fucking mind control. The reason Baroness is evil is that she's got fucking nano machines in her brain! Otherwise, she's the cute little DC housewife who was destined to be neglected. Not only is that NOT evil or bad ass, she doesn't even look good anymore. Just pathetic.

Now, I understand the impulse to "humanize" a character. I even understand the need for "redemption" angles. But, redemption angles are for serious movies, and for serious characters. Plus, just because a motivation is evil does not make it not human. Destro / Destreaux seemed human, and his motivations are as fucking evil as any James Bond villain. By turning Baroness into a mind-controlled sex slave who really wants to sleep with the good guys, they've just taken a huge bite out of the evil badass quotient of Cobra. And, a protagonist is only as good as the antagonist he has to overcome. Without Baroness, G.I. Joe might as well be fighting an ugly one-armed retard. So much for evil never looking this good. Plus, they've turned the ultra-cool (in a goofy Saturday morning way) Baroness into one of the dumbest characters ever concieved for a cartoon to movie adaptation. And that's saying something. Way to ruin a perfectly easy cash cow, Sommers and dumbass writer.

Then, there's Duke. Duke was the heart and soul of G.I. Joe. He was the most bad ass of the Joes. He may have been Duke Nukem's daddy. His blond Viking-in-a-crewcut visage was enough to make Cobra soldiers miss with perfectly calibrated laser weapons.

The movie just had to turn Duke into a podunk doofus hillbilly from Nowhere, USA. Sure, he drives a Harley, and beats Snake Eyes in hand-to-hand sparring (by cheating! shame!), but the way he is carried by the actor makes it seem like all those accolades he's getting from his commanders and teammates really come from a filmmaker insecure about how bad ass he managed to make Duke look like. Channing Tatum, who is best known for dancing like a pussy, carries Duke about as well as how Barishnikov would have carried Rambo. It's a match made in casting hell. Gone is iconic blond Duke, replaced by non-blond Ben Affleck Duke who just wants to bang non-Baroness again.

Fuck you, Sommers! And your writing team too!



Final Notes:

Rachel Nichols is smoking hot. So what do they do? Pair her up with the dumbest Wayans brother.

AAAAAAAAAGHHH!!!!!

Have they learned nothing from the mistake of Transformers? Now, I want Ripchord dead.

The only saving grace was Snake Eyes. They should have him replace Duke as lead bad ass. Hell, they should just rename the movie to Snake Eyes 1: The Rise of Snake Eyes. 

I kept waiting for General Hawk's heartwarming story of playing pro baseball at the age of 40. I also want him to get back with his ex-wife for the sake of his adorable twin girls, who will grow up to date androgynous DJ's.

Without Baroness, how can you reasonably say that Cobra rose? In a movie called "The Rise of Cobra", Cobra already lost half the battle. (hah!) It's like saying the Empire struck back by killing Darth Vader.

Throwaway references to G.I. Joe quotes (Real American Hero, Knowing is half the battle, etc.) does not make it G.I. Joe.

What happened to Dr. Mindbender? And why does Zartan look like Im Hotep?

One last time. Fuck you, Sommers and writer/s.

Fan boy rage rant over. :D