G.I. Joe

I went into G.I. Joe with extremely low expectations and the movie certainly benefited from the low bar, but even my friends who are big fans of the old cartoon seemed to like it and while it still felt like a top commercial in places and certainly was cheesy it was worth watching.

The marketing of this movie was probably its worst aspect. The trailer for this movie showed all of the things that I generally think fans of G.I. Joe are likely to like the least.

The power suits are mercifully used less in the movie than you might fear. There is one long car chase with them and that is about it and they largely just replace cars for most of that scene.

The five main Joes all had something interesting going on which helped quite a bit, and while the movie didn’t really gain a great deal from the romantic subplots they were well enough done to not make me groan.

The real star of this movie is the special effects. There is a new vehicle or toy in almost every major scene from the underwater base to the jets and snow mobiles and they all looked good. Giant submarine battles shouldn’t be all that interesting but they are.

This certainly isn’t the best movie of the summer and you’ll miss a fair amount of you aren’t the correct age to have watched the cartoon, but it is still worth watching and if you’re going to watch it this is a movie that benefits from the movie screen.

Picture by Rex_203 on deviant art

My first reaction to movie trailers

I got the chance to see Wolverine and Star Trek this week and one of the things that means is that i got to see trailers for quite a few of the major shows that are coming out this year. I doubt that I remember them all but here are a few.

Terminator — They only show a little more of this and very little in the way of plot. It appears that this is the beginning of the human resistance though what it really looks like is an excuse to have many differnt types of robots. From the trailer all you can really tell is that it will have great special effects

G.I. Joe — This looks like a reasonable action movie that may even have a good story, what I’m not certain about it what it has to do with G.I. Joe. I admit that it’s been a long time since I’ve watched G.I. Joe but the rust bomb and power suits just don’t have the feel I was expecting.

Land of the Lost — This is a Will Ferrel movie and sadly that is probably all you really need to know. This could be a really fun movie but I suspect that Will Ferrel will get annoying in far less than 90 minutes.

Night at the Museum 2 – I have to admit that Night at the Museum was a fun movie. It wasn’t brilliant but it was good enough that I’ll probably rent Night at the Museum 2. The real draw of this trailer of course is all of the Museum displays, which includes Darth Vader and Oscar the Grouch.  What i am afraid of though is that many of these will be cameos that don’t really have all that much to do in the movie and just make it feel frantic and disjointed.

Transformers 2- I was worried that they would have no reason for Sam to be in the next movie. He has done his part, yet without him it would be hard for the movie to feel like a sequel. It appears from the movie trailer that they have discovered a way to involve him that keeps him central to the plot. I also got to see optimum prime with a sword in the trailer so that’s cool.

Based on the trailers that we got from these movies it appears that the future of science fiction is comedies. remakes and sequels. I already knew that was true but it doesnt make me any happier about it, so while I am certain that there are some good stories here my last question is, are there not any new scripts in all of Hollywood?

Toy Story with G.I. Joe