angry-bad ranjeet on 10 Apr 2010 11:30 am
G.I. Joe — An Angry Bad Rant
As I’m writing this, it’s November 6th and I’m on a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. I’m flying ANA, and overall, I would have to say the movie selection is pretty impressive. The last time I flew to Japan, I was stuck with Jaws (the original movie), two different movies about North Pole explorers separated from their dog teams (focusing on the dog teams, of course), Big Momma’s House 2, The New World, Match Point, and When a Stranger Comes Calling. Not the finest selection.
But this time, I have a number of interesting choices, both old and new. The Hangover, about 4 Harry Potter Movies, The Taking of Pelham whatever, Training Day, a couple of James Bond movies, Transporter 3, Heat, Shawshank, The Da Vinci Code, Night at the Museum, Little Miss Sunshine, Babylon A.D., and some others. A number of these movies fall in that nether region of “I would never pay to watch that, but if you strapped me into a seat for 11 hours, I might consider them.” One movie in that category especially caught my eye : G.I. Joe.
From all that I’ve read, G.I. Joe is a horrible movie. I didn’t think that it would exceed my expectations. However, I did feel that it might be angry bad fodder. And boy, is it ever! It is so bad, that I find myself reaching for my laptop while the movie is still running so I can record the ridiculous before I forget about it.
G.I. Joe is just the latest entry in the obsession with taking my childhood toys, applying CG, and pumping out crappy movies. It should come as no surprise that movies such as Monopoly and Bazooka Joe (seriously) are in the works. As this movie was coming out, all the signs pointed to a disappointment. All the trailers were very careful never to show more than 0.5 seconds of any scene, with absolutely no dialog. No screening events. A Wayans Brother. Etc. But enough build-up, on to the suck. And naturally, there will be a lot of spoilers as I discuss the plot.
Much of the premise of G.I. Joe is that there are two secret, opposing forces that have technological capabilities far superior to that known by common armies. One of these is an international collaboration between various military groups, while the other is a mysterious, privately backed special ops force.
The formidable weapons used in this movie are “nano-mites”, nano-sized machines that will consume metal relentlessly until a kill signal is sent to them. I really wish these script writers had never picked an issue of Popular Mechanics or Scientific American or a Neal Stephenson book or whatever the hell they picked up that gave them the idea for nanoweapons. It’s turned into such a trite, malleable plot device. Basically, it’s the modern equivalent of magic. Need a process by which you can control people remotely, and a weapon that will disintegrate metal? Nano-machines. That’s the ticket. Anyways, one of the villains in this movie is a defense contractor, who has used billions in NATO funds to build these nano-mites, which he can put into a warhead. When fired at, say, a tank, the warhead impacts the tank, the nano-mites are released, and metal is devoured. They will keep going until a remote kill switch is activated.
Practically speaking, this is a strange concept. I’m willing to give in to the idea that you could create such a tiny, autonomous device that contains both motors and circuitry, as well as a receiver that could detect the kill signal and stop going. But I’m having trouble figuring out exactly how it works. Since these nanobots can’t have too much of a power source, it can’t be that they are literally ripping apart the metal at the molecular level; that would require the mites to be supplying the energy to rip atoms apart from one another. And it would be hard to make that specific to metal. The nearest concept I can figure is that they consume metal, and possess some sort of catalyst that lowers the activation energy required to rip up metal. This is an interesting device because it seems like it should be fairly non-lethal; you debilitate and consume the car that a person is driving, but not the person. But I don’t get why NATO would want it, because it’s such an asymmetrical piece of weaponry. Yeah, it’s great against tanks, but NATO isn’t fighting Russian aggression anymore; they’re fighting terrorists and doing other peace-keeping missions where they will have the overwhelming advantage in technology, but can’t apply it as needed to get the job done.
All this is just philosophizing, though. The evil villain produces these weapons, sells them to NATO, and then sets things up so that his super soldiers (i.e. Cobra) attack the military convoy and takes the weapons back. This plan is foiled by the arrival of G.I. Joe, who stops Cobra from getting the warheads. Only two (Army? NATO?) soldiers survive the attack, mostly because of luck, but possibly because they’re bad ass, and they are taken to the G.I. Joe base (hidden underground in the Sahara) to meet up with the leader of G.I. Joe, played by Dennis Quaid. These two soldiers are Duke Hauser and Ripcord (played by Marlon Wayans), and eventually they become permanent G.I. Joe members. In order to build up a little tension, we also find out that the crazy woman leading the charge for Cobra (the Baroness) happens to be Duke’s ex-fiance, estranged since her brother died while under Duke’s squad’s protection in a previous conflict.
Cobra wants those warheads, and attacks the base using machines that drill under the earth, and busting through the facility’s back door, so to speak. Three Cobra troops walk through the base, killing everyone in their path to get those warheads back. Lots of explosions. The crack troops of G.I. Joe, taken from the best of the best around the world, who have trained for years, are no match. The two new soldiers, who have been in the group for maybe a week, and done a small amount of training, do make it through, although they aren’t able to stop Cobra.
The attackers, while severely outnumbered, are helped by the fact that they have been enhanced by nano-mites (unaffected by fear or pain) and the fact that the Joes defending the base have a poor concept of military tactics. They like to stand out in the open, in a line, and shoot at people, for instance, instead of going for cover.
This movie also features a pair of ninjas. This in itself is a great idea, because ninjas are awesome. However, they are quite limited in the modern era. In movies, you tend to have to resort to outlandish scenarios to make it all work. In G.I. Joe, the Joes have Snake Eyes, perhaps the most popular character in the series, and Cobra has Storm Shadow. Ninjas are hard to kill, but I think the main secret to defeating them is to be far away from them, and then shoot them. With bullets. If they start running at you, start moving backwards while shooting. In this movie, people are constantly using blades when they should be shooting, and shooting when they should be using blades. This isn’t to say that Storm Shadow does not have projectile weapons. He does have shurikens, and when he throws them at people, they get knocked back and thrown through the air. Must be depleted uranium shurikens or something.
Despite the efforts of the Joes, Cobra (Storm Shadow and The Baroness specifically) gets the nano-mite missiles and escapes the Sub-Saharan (haha, get it?) facility. Not long after, they track the missiles to Paris. The Baroness is actually a baroness, married to a baron. Who also works at a particle accelerator. They will use this connection to commandeer the particle accelerator, and use the accelerator to “weaponize” the nano-mites. Basically, the writers took two things that they don’t understand (particle accelerators and nano-mites) and combined them to advance the plot point. The Joes run into Cobra just as they were leaving the accelerator facility, and a chase through Paris ensues. Some of the Joes are following in a vehicle, but Duke and Ripcord participate in the chase wearing mechanical exoskeletons that gave them increased speed and agility.
The modern world has destroyed the classic car chase, because it should be just about impossible to “get away”, with the invention of helicopters and coordinated police action. Midway through the chase, it becomes clear what the target is : the Eiffel Tower. A giant structure made of metal is the perfect target for these nano-mites. Instead of getting in some sort of helicopter and beating Cobra to the chase, they continue to chase the bad guys through the streets of Paris. Cobra, for their part, are “racing” down the narrow streets of Paris in a souped up Hummer, with enough horsepower that it can repeatedly crash into cars without slowing down. This Hummer can withstand the bullets that are being fired at it, but not the sword that Snake Eyes puts through it. Duke and Ripcord are chasing the Hummer in their little super suits, but are neglecting the main advantage of their exoskeletons — the mobility. They should be taking shortcuts between buildings, using cut off angles, etc., not blindly following the car along the road.
At one point during the chase scene, the Joes are separated from Cobra by…a train. Like, a speeding train. In the middle of Paris. According to IMDB, this train is based on the Tramway des Maréchaux, which is a slow moving tram, instead of the bullet-like train that barrels through in the movie, seemingly with no warning. This stops the Joes in the car, although Duke and Ripcord are able to navigate over/through the train. However, all their ill-conceived effort is for naught, because Cobra is able to destroy much of the Eiffel tower before Duke is able to hit the killswitch.
Now, after all of the carnage is over, the police finally show up and arrest the Joes. But not before they find one of the dead bad guys and inspect his brain, trying to analyze the remnants of gray matter to view his last memories. One of the images they play back is a noisy image of the evil mastermind and his shadow. Based on the length of his shadow and a rough estimate of the time, they narrow it down to only one location : underneath the polar ice cap. This whole thread is ludicrous. It’s so ludicrous that it something that I thought of a long time ago in one of my stupid fiction stories in high school. Except my version was actually reasonable, because the character in my story had a bionic eye that maintained a constant 10 second buffer, allowing someone to extract the last 10 seconds of his life, post-mortem. In this case, they are inspecting a guy who does not have bionic implants (although they did have a nano-mite infestation), and they are trying to dig back a lot farther; at best it should be in short term memory. Secondly, even beyond that, knowing the length of the shadow and a definite time would get you a latitude. Knowing how long ago that time was would get you the time zone. Knowing just the length of the shadow and how long ago it was would just get you a line that crosses different latitudes. It just seems like the writers could have found an easier way to identify that the next stop should be the North Pole.
In all the confusion, Duke was kidnapped by the bad guys, so the Joes are resolved to rescue him and defeat Cobra. Soon, they’re off by plane-that-can-turn-into-a-boat towards the North Pole. I don’t know how far into the future this movie takes place, but there’s a decent chance that by that time, there’ll be no ice during the summer. But whatever. They fly past snow-capped mountains on their way. Mountains! There’s nothing but ice and water up there, people.
What follows next is a big underwater battle while our main characters infiltrate the underwater base to rescue Duke and defeat evil. There is quite an extensive evil laboratory/base underwater here, tunneled into the ice pack. Again, considering the recent climate trends, it seems like it would have been better for Cobra to have firmly anchored all of his stuff off of the bottom of the ocean. The big underwater battle is an awful lot like overwater battle, just bluer. That’s always a bit disappointing. I always hope for some interesting physics and sound effects, but nope, everything is just as maneuverable underwater as it would be above water, and sounds mostly the same.
In all the excitement, there are a lot of amazing plot developments. First of all, we find out that the Baroness has at least partially been under nano-mite control. We find out that the real mastermind behind this whole thing has been — the Baroness’ assumed-to-be-dead brother! He was horribly disfigured in an explosion and left for dead, and the pain had twisted his brilliance until he decided to become the Cobra Commander. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow have the obvious showdown that has been building this whole movie, ever since we find out that Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes trained under the same master, until Storm Shadow killed the master due to jealousy over favor given to Snake Eyes. The battle between them is sword-filled and ridiculous, and ends with Storm Shadow falling to his “presumed” death.
There is one scene I have to mention though, because it had me shaking my fist like a madman at the tiny airplane lcd screen. At one point the G.I. Joe rescue party came across a pressure-sensitive security floor. Scarlett, the brainy redhead, recognizes the security measures, and declares that the floor is very sensitive, to the extent that “anything larger than a quarter” will activate them. Snake Eyes responds to this by walking across the floor on his fingertips, which are smaller than quarters. Of course, if this was anything but a stupid movie, that would have exacerbated the problem, since it’s a pressure sensitive floor, and Snake Eyes was concentrating his Weight onto his fingertips.
In the end, the top villains manage to get away (of course), but not before setting off the self-destruct button and launching two nano-mite missiles towards Moscow and D.C. First, the self-destruction : explosions rip through the ice and stuff starts sinking, threatening all the Joes in their underwater craft. Now, I realize that this is actually plausible, because there is a lot of metal embedded within the ice, enough to make it denser than the water. But I wouldn’t put it past the writers to think that they could blow ice up and have it sink down on the protagonists. Now, the missiles. They are already too far away for the kill switch, so they must be shot down. Ripcord finds one of Cobra’s special, experimental planes, and jumps in to fly it, since he’s a pilot and can thus fly anything (he actually says this).
Ripcord has a deadline to work against. One missile will hit Moscow in 4 minutes, and D.C. in the 18 minutes. They’re closer to Moscow, so that’s his first target. He manages to catch up to the nano-mite rocket, but he can’t find any firing controls on the plane. Scarlett immediately guesses the issue : it is voice activated. And since the evil CEO was Scottish, it only responds to Gaelic commands. Which, luckily, she speaks fluently. Ripcord takes out the missile with one minute to spare. Next, he had to save the missile heading for D.C. It’s about 4900 miles from Moscow to D.C. To get there in 17 minutes, he would need to travel an average of ~ 17,000 mph. Which is mach 22. In other words, impossible.
Amazingly, he does it, and gets within range to fire — but he misses his first shot. The missile is now so close to the city that even if it is destroyed, the nano-mites will hit the ground and wreak havoc. Ripcord decides to make a risky move. He accelerates towards the rocket and fires his weapon just before hitting it, flying through the cloud of nano-mites to gather them up and then flying straight up in the air. Within seconds he’s in the upper atmosphere, gaining altitude even as nano-mites are busy eating up his airplane (an airplane this advanced is probably made of fiber-reinforced composite, though, so I bet a lot of it isn’t even metal). At the last moment, he ejects himself, leaving the plane (and the nano-mites) to exit into space. The G.I. Joe crew
waits breathlessly by the radio, waiting to hear word from him. It takes 30 seconds or so, but finally he speaks up, free of the airplane and slowly drifting towards D.C. Everyone cheers! Ripcord is saved! Sure, hundreds of other soldiers have died today, but the wise-cracking new guy is safe! Hooray! Ripcord can be confident that Scarlett will be there for him when he returns to Earth. You see, although she was a cold woman, unflinchingly dedicated to logic and uninterested in emotional attachments throughout the movie, Ripcord breaks through her facade with a few well-timed caring comments over the course of a few days. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works in real life, too.
It wouldn’t be a bad movie without setting up a sequel. One of the last scenes involves the President of the United States going into his secure bunker after the missile warning went out. Once locked in, one of is secret service agents goes rogue (he’s being controlled by nano-mites) and eliminates the others. A secret panel opens up and out pops…another President! Cobra has made up an impostor and are clearly intending to pull a coup! Who is this man, and who’s the real villain here? And really, even if a person looked like the president, could they really pull off the replacement without arousing suspicions?
This movie, unfortunately, made a ton of money, so there will likely be a stupid sequel. Full of horrible, horrible dialogue (with quotes from the cartoon shoehorned in wherever they can put them), nonsensical action sequences, ridiculous use of science, and improbable human interactions. Here’s to hoping that the only chance I get to watch it is while strapped into a chair at 30,000 feet.