Unless you've been lurking here for a long time, many of you don't know we have a bona-fide Mad Scientist on staff as an independent consultant. Bad Cat Robot, aka BCR, who spends her spare time plotting how she will become the Evil Galactic Overlord, and crush our spirits and hopes: but give us cool toys as long as we worship her properly. And we understand we are her toys. She is a Bad CAT Robot, after all.
She recently had occasion to view the barfably bad GI Joe movie, and submits the following review...
She never jokes about the Death Ray. She's very proud of it.
She recently had occasion to view the barfably bad GI Joe movie, and submits the following review...
She means that last sentence, too. After all, the intro in her note to me was... "Death Ray now targeting Hollywood."I finally got around to watching the GI Joe movie. Yeah, yeah, snicker snort. I wanted to see lots of explosions and fights and cool special effects, okay? And if the actors had pretended it was a silent movie and not said anything they might have been able to pull it off, but NOOOOO. I haven't seen such wooden acting since the last tobacco store I walked by. And then they ruined the special effects by insisting that the Evil Bad Guy detonating explosives on the ice above his Sekrit Polar Underwater Lair would crush the good guys (and the bad guys lair) because huge chunks of ice would then (wince) FALL AND CRUSH THEM. Through the water. I can forgive a lot for a good shoot-em-up and I wasn't expecting Shakespeare but I DO expect someone, perhaps the lighting guy? The janitor? To remember that ICE FLOATS. Always has. Anything this lame ought to be on the rendering truck and headed straight for the glue factory. I pass lightly over the gratuitous use of Funny Female Fighting Noises (but only when two girls are fighting each other!) and the Comic Loser Black Guy.
They said rude things about mad scientists, too. They'll be sorry.
She never jokes about the Death Ray. She's very proud of it.
If they were so realistic we'd be listening to them about economics, scientific practice, spirituality and politcs instead of the people who know what they are talking about. Erm. Nevermind.
And why do you look, anyway? IIRC, film is for entertainment, for escape from reality, for avoidance of the future, for looks at a future which the grumpy scientists somewhow can't see coming.
Yep, I watch film to get away from the crushing reality of every day, because I accept that reality.
How about you?
Q: "..which films have you seen lately that offer any unvarnished economic truth, great scientific revelation or even seriouswly debatable politics?"
A: Atlas Shrugs....
I watched GI Joe with my son Christmas 2009. He, former Army E-6, thought the movie was OK if you were, say, about 10 years old. I could have argued about the age part, but it would have been quibbling, and that was a serious offense in WOC Flight Training.
Yeah, if I had just approached the movie as being a live action version of the TV cartoons it might have been better. Of course, they would have to blatantly reuse the same stretch of film (with different background) to mimic the cheep reuse of an animation sequence. The chunks of ice falling through hundreds of feet of water like concrete--why not have dragons, too? They are pretty! If we're not just ignoring but stomping on the laws of physics I Want Dragons.
Me, I kinda liked GI Joe, and I walked in expecting to hate it. Ok, backstory....
I'm about John's age, and as a wee lad back in the 60s one of my favorite toys were GI Joes. The real 12" ones, not those cheesy little 4" things that came later. The real Joes were historically accurate. I was jealous of the kids across the street 'cuz their mom had the money to get them the Jeep, recoiless rifle, the British Joe, and the Japanese Joe. If you never saw them, the figures' costumes & weapons were very accurate for the time. I got over it, because I had the John Glenn Mercury Astronaut Joe. With capsule. Eat orbit, suckers!!
Sorry. Flashbacks. Anyway, when the animated 'toon came out, I was disgusted, even at that young age. It was painfully clear all of their stuff was literally cartoon tech, where I preferred more realistic stuff. (BTW, do you know you can these days buy a 12"-figure scale LOACH? )
As you can guess, my expectations for the movie were very, very low. I suppose that's why I was pleasantly surprised. While I didn't find the acting as bad as Kat did, I was disappointed in Dennis Quaid, who seemed to be phoning it in. The rest seemed to have fun, so I went along for the ride.
And, yes, both the redhead and the brunette were smokin'.
dollsAction Figures when I was a kid. I *did* have an extensive collection of Aurora WWI airplanes, though, and they got a workout until I had proved to my satisfaction that they *wouldn't* fly, even when I launched them from the garage roof...Plastic statues of airplanes don't fly. (You can make them glide in a swimming pool if they are ballasted properly.)
I mean, you could, in a brutish animal way. But hey, while yer ancestors were chatting (grunting?) up the cave chicks, ours were chippin' away at the flint and the chert.
I suspect cave-man engineers didn't get any more, uh, "female companionship" than their nerdy descendants do these days, however. Sigh!