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Hasbro and their toy-etic movies and shows. Sigh.
Keep in mind my age and demographic: I was born in 1974, and have two younger brothers. We watched He-Man because my brothers liked it, we watched She-Ra because I liked it (though my school peers did not admit to liking it.) We watched Voltron because I loved it, we watched GI Joe because my brother liked it. And I gotta say; We watched Transformers because EVERYONE loved it.
I'm a first-generation Brony, only in the sense that I collected a few of the original (and I mean ORIGINAL) My Little Ponies. I did not follow along with the baby ponies, and the clothing collections, and the old TV show/Movies/Whatever. (Ok, I had one Sea Pony. Sue me.)
But I am the generation that was introduced to the idea of TV shows designed for the express purpose of selling toys. There is some good and some bad to that equation, too. On the one hand, you will get bare-minimum effort on the part of some of the people involved. This means that the animation will be choppy, sloppy, and a LOT of "Stock footage" being used. (They had this sequence of "Joes Running" that was probably used at lest twice in every episode, for example.) On the other hand, cheaply made sometimes means hiring young, hungry writing talent with nothing to lose. JMS (well-known now for Babylon 5) cut his teeth writing He-Man episodes, for example. He says that writing Skeletor was one of his guilty pleasures, because he's a scene-chewing, over-the-top melodrama villain of the old school.
So yeah, GI Joe was a kind of hackneyed military fantasy piece about an "elite team" of "Special Forces", keeping the world safe from a terrorist organization called COBRA. Cobra Commander? *Just* like Skeletor; It's convenient that he wore the mask because he had bits of scenery hanging from his teeth constantly. Every episode included a battle that had a lot of people firing a lot of... er... Lasers? Guns? But not one real casualty. Heck, even the bad guys didn't tend to "die" on screen. For all I know they were all using Tasers.
But it was about some other stuff, too. A super-team of elite specialists? See "Group of weird misfits". They all go by code-names that are inane, silly, and usually some kind of awful pun. They all also do NOT wear anything uniform; most of them are wearing random costumes that would look as appropriate in the Justice League or the Avengers. Written as one-dimensional stereotypes initially, the characters grew into fully-fleshed out people as the series grew. The writers came up with some interesting interactions and backstories as we went. Snake eyes, in particular was always an interesting character to come back to, partly because he was so mysterious, but Duke was like a guy that you *knew* if you followed the story at all. Yeah, some of the plots centered around some new piece of equipment meant to sell a new toy, but the writers also gave us stories about working together as a team, supporting your friends and allies, working past scary experiences, and fighting against evil. The fun of the series for me was seeing the COBRA team tear itself apart most of the time. The drama, the backbiting, the power plays... Evil failed most of the time because it could NOT get its crap together. And the message was basic: Good defends freedom and works together as a team. Evil has a selfish agenda and will self-sabotage if given half a chance.
Are these concepts true in the real world? No. Good and Evil are not defined by who shoots red lasers and who shoots blue ones. Our "Real American Heroes" are the actual men and women in our military doing their jobs and working in their uniforms, not some random "Special Forces" team of misfits. Our REAL Special Forces are also awesome and heroic, but their lives bear little resemblance to the GI Joe show, and yes, I'm well aware that GI stands for Ground Infantry.
But the fantasy of GI Joe was very satisfying to a pre-teen kid who liked to play action figures with her brothers. The stories made the little action figures much more interesting to me than a bunch of green army figurines. For a 30 minute cartoon show, it continued to keep my interest over the years.
The first GI Joe movie came out and I went to it expecting nothing more than I got from the TV show: Exploding helicopters, a story about teamwork, and some interesting visual effects. I was stunned by what I got, which was a perfectly wonderful action flick with plenty of strange plot twists and turns.
This time I had the expectations that came from my enjoyment of the first film. What I got was... about what I got from the TV show. Or more accurately, I got three TV show episodes, picked at random, and woven together a little clumsily. I also lost a few of the actors that I really enjoyed from the first film (Ok, nearly ALL of them) but gained Dwayne Johnson. I'll admit it; I dig the Rock. I'm not sure he's enough to replace Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, Christopher Eccleston, and Dennis Quaid.
So on the one hand, I'm not really disappointed; it's about what someone would expect of a grown-up version of the toy-etic TV cartoon. On the other hand, "The Rise Of Cobra" was a better film overall.
So here's why you should see it:
Explosions! Helicopters! Exploding Helicopters! Action! A fist-and-gun fight! Eye Candy! (Boys and girls!) Dwayne Johnson slinging around a BFG! Excellent costuming! (Cobra Commander looks AWESOME in this one...) Ninja Zipline Chase And Fight Sequences! Jonathan Pryce as both the Prez and Zartan! Arguing! With himself! (Seriously, I'm betting that this is the most fun he's had in years, including the Pirates series!) Giving money to Hasbro! (Mmmm. Hasbro...what? You thought I was exclusively a Mattel girl? Silly humans...) For people other than me: Bruce Willis! Kicking some @ss!
Here's an excuse to skip it:
Less character development. Seriously, they've lost all the momentum from the first film because everyone you love from the first film is basically not in this one. Even Arnold Vosloo only makes brief appearances as Zartan. Violence for its own sake, mostly. Kind of unbelievable plot angles. (There aren't really "twists".) Hatred of Hasbro. Lack of interest in the Military Fantasy genre altogether.
Take from that what you will. I tried not to give anything away, so I'm not putting this under a cut.
As for the theater: I'm starting to really DIG the West Olive experience. The chair alone is worth the price of admission, I think. I was not stiff or sore when I got up at the end of the movie. I could adjust it to my comfort in near-silence. The food was pretty good and if I'd had the budget I'd have gone for the booze. Actually, I strongly encourage boozing it up for this film. LOL. Plus: Wednesday night is an AWESOME night to see a movie! We were the only ones in the theater, and the parking lot was nearly empty both before and after the 6:15 showing.
Next up on my agenda:
Iron Man 3: I have SUCH a shirt to wear to this. Tee hee! I'm going to see the 10:30 showing at Creve Coeur Cinema tomorrow night with my coworker/new costumer friend. If you want in, let me know and I'll save you a seat!
The Great Gatsby: OH HELL YES.
Star Trek: There is not enough HELL in OH HELL YES! for this one.
The Lone Ranger: Yep, I'm pretty sure I want to see this one. Yes, JD will likely steal every scene he's in. Isn't that what Tonto was FOR? (Tonto, you go to town/YOU GO TO HELL, Kimosabe!)
Fast and Furious 6: Well, maybe. I do want to see 5 first. Perhaps a movie night at the cookie? OR a movie night at the Cookie watching FF5 and then a journey to the theater to see FF6?
Wolverine: Well... I was sort of interested, then I decided that I was done with it, then I saw a preview tonight and I thought maybe they were finally doing some Miller Wolverine, then I realized that they weren't. I have no idea what this is going to be, but I think I just plain like Hugh Jackman a bit too much to skip it. Sigh.
Ender's Game: I hadn't heard that this was coming, but the rumor is fall of this year. Whoo? Harrison Ford is apparently in it...
Keep in mind my age and demographic: I was born in 1974, and have two younger brothers. We watched He-Man because my brothers liked it, we watched She-Ra because I liked it (though my school peers did not admit to liking it.) We watched Voltron because I loved it, we watched GI Joe because my brother liked it. And I gotta say; We watched Transformers because EVERYONE loved it.
I'm a first-generation Brony, only in the sense that I collected a few of the original (and I mean ORIGINAL) My Little Ponies. I did not follow along with the baby ponies, and the clothing collections, and the old TV show/Movies/Whatever. (Ok, I had one Sea Pony. Sue me.)
But I am the generation that was introduced to the idea of TV shows designed for the express purpose of selling toys. There is some good and some bad to that equation, too. On the one hand, you will get bare-minimum effort on the part of some of the people involved. This means that the animation will be choppy, sloppy, and a LOT of "Stock footage" being used. (They had this sequence of "Joes Running" that was probably used at lest twice in every episode, for example.) On the other hand, cheaply made sometimes means hiring young, hungry writing talent with nothing to lose. JMS (well-known now for Babylon 5) cut his teeth writing He-Man episodes, for example. He says that writing Skeletor was one of his guilty pleasures, because he's a scene-chewing, over-the-top melodrama villain of the old school.
So yeah, GI Joe was a kind of hackneyed military fantasy piece about an "elite team" of "Special Forces", keeping the world safe from a terrorist organization called COBRA. Cobra Commander? *Just* like Skeletor; It's convenient that he wore the mask because he had bits of scenery hanging from his teeth constantly. Every episode included a battle that had a lot of people firing a lot of... er... Lasers? Guns? But not one real casualty. Heck, even the bad guys didn't tend to "die" on screen. For all I know they were all using Tasers.
But it was about some other stuff, too. A super-team of elite specialists? See "Group of weird misfits". They all go by code-names that are inane, silly, and usually some kind of awful pun. They all also do NOT wear anything uniform; most of them are wearing random costumes that would look as appropriate in the Justice League or the Avengers. Written as one-dimensional stereotypes initially, the characters grew into fully-fleshed out people as the series grew. The writers came up with some interesting interactions and backstories as we went. Snake eyes, in particular was always an interesting character to come back to, partly because he was so mysterious, but Duke was like a guy that you *knew* if you followed the story at all. Yeah, some of the plots centered around some new piece of equipment meant to sell a new toy, but the writers also gave us stories about working together as a team, supporting your friends and allies, working past scary experiences, and fighting against evil. The fun of the series for me was seeing the COBRA team tear itself apart most of the time. The drama, the backbiting, the power plays... Evil failed most of the time because it could NOT get its crap together. And the message was basic: Good defends freedom and works together as a team. Evil has a selfish agenda and will self-sabotage if given half a chance.
Are these concepts true in the real world? No. Good and Evil are not defined by who shoots red lasers and who shoots blue ones. Our "Real American Heroes" are the actual men and women in our military doing their jobs and working in their uniforms, not some random "Special Forces" team of misfits. Our REAL Special Forces are also awesome and heroic, but their lives bear little resemblance to the GI Joe show, and yes, I'm well aware that GI stands for Ground Infantry.
But the fantasy of GI Joe was very satisfying to a pre-teen kid who liked to play action figures with her brothers. The stories made the little action figures much more interesting to me than a bunch of green army figurines. For a 30 minute cartoon show, it continued to keep my interest over the years.
The first GI Joe movie came out and I went to it expecting nothing more than I got from the TV show: Exploding helicopters, a story about teamwork, and some interesting visual effects. I was stunned by what I got, which was a perfectly wonderful action flick with plenty of strange plot twists and turns.
This time I had the expectations that came from my enjoyment of the first film. What I got was... about what I got from the TV show. Or more accurately, I got three TV show episodes, picked at random, and woven together a little clumsily. I also lost a few of the actors that I really enjoyed from the first film (Ok, nearly ALL of them) but gained Dwayne Johnson. I'll admit it; I dig the Rock. I'm not sure he's enough to replace Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, Christopher Eccleston, and Dennis Quaid.
So on the one hand, I'm not really disappointed; it's about what someone would expect of a grown-up version of the toy-etic TV cartoon. On the other hand, "The Rise Of Cobra" was a better film overall.
So here's why you should see it:
Explosions! Helicopters! Exploding Helicopters! Action! A fist-and-gun fight! Eye Candy! (Boys and girls!) Dwayne Johnson slinging around a BFG! Excellent costuming! (Cobra Commander looks AWESOME in this one...) Ninja Zipline Chase And Fight Sequences! Jonathan Pryce as both the Prez and Zartan! Arguing! With himself! (Seriously, I'm betting that this is the most fun he's had in years, including the Pirates series!) Giving money to Hasbro! (Mmmm. Hasbro...what? You thought I was exclusively a Mattel girl? Silly humans...) For people other than me: Bruce Willis! Kicking some @ss!
Here's an excuse to skip it:
Less character development. Seriously, they've lost all the momentum from the first film because everyone you love from the first film is basically not in this one. Even Arnold Vosloo only makes brief appearances as Zartan. Violence for its own sake, mostly. Kind of unbelievable plot angles. (There aren't really "twists".) Hatred of Hasbro. Lack of interest in the Military Fantasy genre altogether.
Take from that what you will. I tried not to give anything away, so I'm not putting this under a cut.
As for the theater: I'm starting to really DIG the West Olive experience. The chair alone is worth the price of admission, I think. I was not stiff or sore when I got up at the end of the movie. I could adjust it to my comfort in near-silence. The food was pretty good and if I'd had the budget I'd have gone for the booze. Actually, I strongly encourage boozing it up for this film. LOL. Plus: Wednesday night is an AWESOME night to see a movie! We were the only ones in the theater, and the parking lot was nearly empty both before and after the 6:15 showing.
Next up on my agenda:
Iron Man 3: I have SUCH a shirt to wear to this. Tee hee! I'm going to see the 10:30 showing at Creve Coeur Cinema tomorrow night with my coworker/new costumer friend. If you want in, let me know and I'll save you a seat!
The Great Gatsby: OH HELL YES.
Star Trek: There is not enough HELL in OH HELL YES! for this one.
The Lone Ranger: Yep, I'm pretty sure I want to see this one. Yes, JD will likely steal every scene he's in. Isn't that what Tonto was FOR? (Tonto, you go to town/YOU GO TO HELL, Kimosabe!)
Fast and Furious 6: Well, maybe. I do want to see 5 first. Perhaps a movie night at the cookie? OR a movie night at the Cookie watching FF5 and then a journey to the theater to see FF6?
Wolverine: Well... I was sort of interested, then I decided that I was done with it, then I saw a preview tonight and I thought maybe they were finally doing some Miller Wolverine, then I realized that they weren't. I have no idea what this is going to be, but I think I just plain like Hugh Jackman a bit too much to skip it. Sigh.
Ender's Game: I hadn't heard that this was coming, but the rumor is fall of this year. Whoo? Harrison Ford is apparently in it...
