"That's one fast ninja!"

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

This post won't really be a coherent examination of this movie (trailer), or even a review, but just a record of some of some of the thoughts going through my head as I watched it yesterday afternoon. Normally I wouldn't post on a movie without making a bit more of an effort to give what I was writing a bit more structure and reflection, but in this case it seems like that would go directly against G.I. Joe's whole ethos. I'm giving this movie exactly as much thought as it gave me.

— SPOILERS (assuming you actually care about the plot, which you shouldn't) —

So the bad guys have to "weaponize" the nano-warheads to use them. Correct me if I'm wrong—I'm no warheads expert or anything (or imaginary-nano-weaponry expert, for that matter)—but doesn't "weaponize" mean turning something that isn't a weapon into a weapon? For example, uranium normally isn't weapons-grade and has to be weaponized through enrichment (i.e., what we keep worrying about Iran and North Korea doing). So how do you "weaponize" a warhead, which is obviously already a weapon? All they were doing was activating the warheads. It's like saying that you're "weaponizing" a gun by turning the safety off.

Besides the fact that it's just stupid that Destro's jet fighters have their voice-command systems set to a rather obscure language—did he assume that his secret underwater Arctic base would be infiltrated and his fighters stolen?—they refer to the language as "Celtic" and "Scottish," neither of which is actually a language. Celtic is a family of several different languages; it would be as if the voice controls were set to "Slavic" or "Romance." And "Scottish" could theoretically refer to Gaelic (the Celtic language of Scotland), Scots (the English dialect traditionally spoken in Scotland; see Robert Burns's poetry for examples), or simply standard English spoken with a Scottish accent. They mean Gaelic, but that doesn't make much sense, since Gaelic, though a "national" language with some historical/romantic appeal, is only spoken by about one percent of the population in Scotland; it would be like if Destro were Mexican and he designed all his fighters' voice commands only to respond to Aztec. Baffling.

Why does the polar icecap sink when Cobra Commander (or the Doctor, or Rex, or whatever name he goes by) blows it up? Are the makers of this movie actually unaware that ice floats in water? Again, baffling.

How did Destro manage to burn his face during the final battle? Was he holding the gun backwards or something?

The final submarine battle is basically the Death Star assaults from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, with Destro's base as the Death Star, the Joes' mini-subs (or "Sharks"—when General Hawk ordered "Deploy the Sharks!" I was really hoping they'd send out a bunch of actual, trained sharks to attack the bad guys; what a disappointment) as X-Wings, and the enemy mini-subs as TIE Fighters. Not content just to rip off the original trilogy, the final fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was remarkably similar to the final fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace, down to the bad guy's using a double-bladed weapon and falling into a pit when he's killed (or is he?). And Destro ripped off Ozymandias's plan from Watchmen of destroying cities to frighten the world into unity.

Speaking of this movie's "inspirations," there were so many flashbacks I couldn't help but think I was watching the dumbest episode of Lost ever. (Scarlett: "The warhead's re-entered the lower atmosphere! Now you can't shoot it down!" Ripcord: "Don't tell me what I can't do!")

And this summer's movies have been very educational. Everything I know about neuroscience I learned from G.I. Joe—you can retrieve memories from a dead brain by sticking special knitting needles into it—and Wolverine—you can induce amnesia in someone by shooting him point-blank in the head.

Whew, I'm glad I got all that off my chest. All that said, I had a pretty good time watching G.I. Joe. Not only is it in the running for the funniest movie of the summer—seriously, The Hangover had better watch its back—but it managed to be far more entertaining overall than Transformers 2 despite being at least as stupid. Michael Bay, take notes: One, don't turn off the action in the middle of the movie to devote thirty or forty minutes straight to boring, convoluted exposition and wild-goose chases; two, integrate the comic relief into the action rather than just devoting whole scenes to tedious, unfunny attempts at humor (e.g., Shia's mom and the pot brownies); three, there's a difference between kid-oriented (e.g., just about everything in G.I. Joe) and groan-inducingly juvenile (e.g., the robo-balls in Transformers 2); four, a movie of this kind has worn out its welcome by the time it passes the two-hour mark (you can't complain that I have a short attention span when all you're showing me is eye candy); five, actually giving your characters somewhat differing appearances and attributes is a good idea. That's not to say that G.I. Joe is perfect even by its own low standards—Channing Tatum was pretty bland, I think the final battle went on a little too long, and it would've been nice to see the Accelerator Suits do a bit more than just running around—but after Transformers 2 it was nice to be reminded that mindless fun can actually be, you know, fun.

If there's a single image that perfectly captures the spirit of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it's this (courtesy of the great Bill Watterson):