belatedly, G. I. Joe: Retaliation
So I went to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Why did I do that? WHY?
For the same reason I see all terrible spring movies, of course: The Rock is in it. But I'm not sure it was even worth him. It was pretty terrible. I didn't see the first movie (it doesn't have The Rock), but I expected slightly more quality than this sequel delivered. I should have known better.
There's an opening montage of... the plot of the first movie? Unrelated character shots? It's all "here's a bunch of characters, remember which ones are good and which are bad". Then we get a fade in with lots of war noises and yelling and psych! it is not in fact a real battle, but a video game that The Rock and Channing Tatum are playing. If they're in the same room and playing on the same team, why are they wearing headsets? Who are they talking to? Hilariously, Channing Tatum can only make his character spin in circles while The Rock's character slowly dies. I'm with you there, Channing Tatum. Three dimensions is one more than a game needs, that's what I say. Also I say that Channing Tatum's character's name ("Duke") is stupid and vastly inferior to the name Channing Tatum (which sounds like a kind of bait or perhaps a sex act), so I'm going with Channing Tatum.
The pathetic attempt at gaming is interrupted when The Rock's kids burst into the room and attack Channing Tatum. Heh. It's all very familial and cute, and I vote for a "The Pacifier"-style inbetweenquel. I'd much rather watch little kids beat up Channing Tatum while The Rock laughs in the background than watch the mediocre gun porn that comes later. During Channing Tatum's tickle attack on The Rock's kids, he and The Rock see a report on CNN that the Pakistani president was assassinated and that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are missing. Whoops!
Did I mention that this movie is set five minutes into the future, so no one can be offended? No, we didn't kill you off and write off your people as terrorists! We killed your successor and wrote off your people's slightly younger cousins as terrorists! I know it's hard to find acceptable bad guys these days, writers, so let's all agree to use Nazis. It doesn't matter how there are still Nazis around, they're Nazis. No one has to think about whether it's okay to kill Nazis (hint: it is) and you won't alienate every non-American that sees your films. Problem solved. Please send my royalty checks at your earliest convenience.
Naturally, the country's elite fighting force gets all their information from CNN, so The Rock and Channing Tatum immediately leave to go shoot something. The Rock points out that Snake Eyes isn't with them, but Channing Tatum assures us that if Snake Eyes isn't around he has a good reason. While the Joes are on their way to Vaguely The Middle East to recover the nuclear warheads, there is much banter among the brethren and one woman, all the better to establish the deep and abiding relationships among these 23 nameless dudes. To cement their bonds they have a ten-minute ammo'n'cocking gun orgy that could have been much shorter. Yes, I see your many guns. Ooh, you all are so badass and manly, even the one woman, who for some reason is not Michelle Rodriguez. Channing Tatum yells encouraging things like "lock and load" and "drive it like you stole it" which, as The Rock points out, are inexcusably lame. I really, really hope that a general failure to be cool is part of Channing Tatums' character. I could find out by watching the first movie, but let's be honest: no.
Having arrived at Bad Guy Nuclear Factory, the Joes rappel from the helicopter to the roof and sneak into the building because no bad guys heard a giant helicopter practically land on the roof. The Joes immediately start killing mooks left and right. There's a lot of shouting and shooting and it's visually confusing so I tuned out. In the end, the Joes are successful (surprise!) and drive off in a hummertank with the nuke. Nukes. There are four nukes now, when did that happen? Channing Tatum calls the president to report and hears that the extraction team will be there in a few hours. To kill the time, The Rock and Channing Tatum banter some more while they shoot at a cupcake on a post (I don't even know). Then a lightning bug zips by and suddenly many helicopters show up and explode the Joes' sandy little hiding place. So, that's bad.
There's a lot of fire and shouting and Channing Tatum dies to save one of the named characters, because that's what happens when you bail on a movie halfway through production. Farewell, Duke. Your name was dumb but your death was heroic, and I'm sure you'll be cloned back to life in fanfic. The Rock, the one woman, and the guy Channing Tatum saved (his name is Flint) survive by hiding in a well for about six hours. The Rock et. al. have to do that ninja wall-climbing trick to get out of the well, and I feel sorry for the dudes who aren't The Rock. He must outweigh the other two by at least 50 pounds, that is a lot of manly man to hold up. They make it anyway, The Rock, What's Her Face, and Flint (Flint demonstrates throughout the movie that his name does not refer to his razor-sharp wit. I get the idea that the Joes don't keep Flint around for his intellectual contributions).
The Rock has a touching scene where he finds a random dead guy and takes the guy's dog tags with much sorrow. Wait, is that supposed to be Channing Tatum? 'Cause Channing Tatum got blowed the hell up, there's no way he'd still have a face. Director, if you wanted to fool me into thinking that was Channing Tatum, you could have CGed his face on there. Because that's just a random white guy. But okay, it's Duke, whatever, Flint's like "let's leave, there's nothing here" and The Rock is like "OUR BROTHERS" and What's Her Name is all "conciliatory words, Flint didn't mean that, he's kind of dumb". Plus, The Rock, what are you going to do, haul all those dead guys into the desert with you? No! Then Flint is all "let's call for a ride" and The Rock gives a poorly phrased speech about how only the president could have ordered the strike, and now that everyone thinks they're dead, these three can and must get revenge secretly. They walk off into the desert.
Back in the States, the president gives a sad speech about how the G.I. Joes stole the nukes or whatever, so he killed them all, and also Snake Eyes killed the Pakistani president. No! Snake Eyes! That isn't a good reason to be missing! Immediately after this speech, the president heads downstairs to his vacation house's bomb shelter to reveal that he's holding himself prisoner. There's two of him! Gasp! Turns out the non-kidnapped one is Zoltar, or Zartan, or whatever, a bad guy. He is supposedly a master of disguise, though the ability to wear some face-imitating nanites doesn't look like it requires a lot of skill, actually. It looks like a really lazy way of disguising yourself. I demand rubber noses! Back in the plot, Zoltar... Zartan? demands that the real president tell him where Cobra Commander is being held...
ATTENTION: DIGRESSION
...and it tickles me to no end that someone is seriously talking about Cobra Commander in an actual movie. I'm all about the nostalgia flicks, I am, but somehow G.I. Joe is harder to take seriously than giant transforming robots or all the neon accents of Tron. Maybe it's code names, or how the Joes spent all of the 80s making PSAs and now they're like nanites! nanotech! smart nano-bullets! But it's probably the code names. And no one seems notice that Snake Eyes and his whole M.O. are really fucking weird in this universe. I'll make one weirdness allowance for Snake Eyes, let him be the one bizarrity in this mess, because Snake Eyes is awesome and everyone knows it. But really, Cobra Commander? Really?
Really?
END DIGRESSION
The real president declines to tell Zartan where Cobra Commander is, but just before they get to teeth-pulling Zarmom finds out another way. Maybe a mook told him, I don't know. I wasn't paying attention.
At the prison holding Cobra Commander (hee!), a transport truck is rolling in. It contains Snake Eyes, shackled within an inch of his life, and a number of guards. The guards attach a couple of those animal control poles to Snake Eyes's collar to walk him around, and I'm sure that would be very intimidating and impressive if they weren't still within arm's reach. Guys, come one. A dog with one of those around its neck can't bite you, but Snake Eyes has hands. If he gets out of those cuffs he can still strangle you. You didn't think this through.
The warden of Wherever Prison is so obnoxious I can't tell if he's supposed to be a good guy or not. He is, I guess, if this is a prison for bad guys, but he's super obnoxious. Also he fanboys over having Snake Eyes in his prison, so he shows off all the Chekov's Guns that will come into play in about three minutes:
1. The prison is so far underground it would be 210 degrees Fahrenheit if they didn't have air conditioning.
2. The prisoners (Cobra Commander and Destro) are shot full of artificial REM sleep chemical so they're awake but can't move in their enormous floaty tanks.
3. All the guards are located in this one room, so they're mega-easy to kill.
Why the floaty tanks, scientists? To avoid bedsores? Seems unnecessary. There's about eighteen shots of the faces of these paralyzed bad guys, because paralyzed dudes in full face masks make for great reaction shots (/sarcasm).
The guards prop Snake Eyes up on his very own floaty tank base, and the warden says something obnoxious to which Snake Eyes responds with something cool-sounding but actually dumb, and everyone is shocked because Snake Eyes doesn't speak. They take his helmet off in preparation for tankifying and oh, it's Storm Shadow. Wait, who? I think he's a bad guy. Not bad on the eyes, though. Apparently, the warden doesn't mind that he's got a totally different person than he was supposed to, 'cause into the tank Storm Shadow goes, dolled up in a fancy astronaut suit like the other two. Also Storm Shadow, as a codename in a real-person movie, is weird.
Outside Wherever Prison, someone is riding a tricked-out motorcycle towards the prison at high speed. The motorcycle is mostly made of guns. Also a bunch of tiny robot lightning bugs take off from the motorcycle and suicide bomb the prison gates. Then the biker bails so the bike can separate into several pieces, all of which are self-propelled explosives that blow up significant portions of Wherever Prison. Ooo....kaaaay. How... did that bike stay together if all its working parts.... were bombs? I feel a little skeptical, but the movie doesn't care. Right as the explosions are happening upstairs, downstairs Storm Shadow pulls that zen ninja trick where you slow down your heart until it stops. See: James Bond, Die Another Day. Just like in that other high-quality movie, all the doctors panic, pulling him out of the floaty tank. At this moment Storm Shadow restarts his heart and kills a bunch of dudes, and I shit you not, in 2.7 seconds he ditches the astronaut suit and is flexing around shirtless. How did he did get out of an astronaut suit THAT FAST? Also, the astronaut pants make him look like he's wearing a giant codpiece. Hilarious!
So the warden, somewhat shortsightedly, left Snake Eyes's Storm Shadow's swords nearby, which Storm Shadow uses to kill eeee'erbody in the room, until only the warden and two guards are left blocking the elevator. At this point a grenade drops out of the elevator shaft and that's it for the good guys. Following the grenade is a southerner called Firefly, which explains all the robot bugs from before. That would have been great foreshadowing if I'd known there was a guy called Firefly in this franchise. Firefly, thrilled about all the explosions, and Storm Shadow, torso carrying at least a liter of body oil, remove Cobra Commander (snerk!) from of his floaty tank by shooting it. Somehow they are surprised when it explodes in glass shards and 200 gallons of water. Great job, guys. Way to plan.
After a moment of non-tension, with many reactions shots from a paralyzed guy in a full face mask, the three bad guys decide to leave Destro where he is so there will be a villain for a third movie. Striding boldly from the tank room, Storm Shadow's codpiece leading the way, the bad guys don't notice that the warden isn't quite dead, and he rallies long enough to shoot the air conditioning system and suddenly everything blows the hell up. I don't think HVAC systems work like that, writers. Whatever, Storm Shadow gets hella burned all on his back, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you wear a shirt in combat situations. Firefly and Cobra Commander drag him into the elevator and decide to take Storm Shadow to "the mountains" where someone will fix him.
Elsewhere, The Rock and co. are traipsing through the desert when a plane flies overhead. It lands at an airbase not 500 yards away, and how did the Joes not see that? They came from that direction! The Rock announces that they're going home. We don't get to see how, so I'll assume they killed everyone at that airbase and flew the plane themselves.
In the B plot, now located in "the mountains" somewhere in Asia (I'm pretty sure the writers think Asia is a country), an old woman is doing things to Storm Shadow's burned-up back with wax and I don't know, Asian magic. It's really stereotypical. So is the good guy lair in Tokyo, where some woman named Jinx is practicing sword fighting with her blind master. Snake Eyes arrives and gets into a fight Jinx because she was bad (but she's good now?) but then the master calls it off. There's some explanation about why Snake Eyes and Jinx have to go kidnap Storm Shadow, but who cares? It's just an excuse for a mountain climbing sword fight.
Returning to the actual protagonists, The Rock and his minions are wandering a shabby neighborhood in L.A. when they are confronted by some central casting gangstas. After a long and boring spell of posturing, it is revealed that these are The Rock's family, and that they have set up an abandoned community center for The Rock to hang out in. Given that all the action takes place on the east coast, that's kind of a weird place to operate out of. How do they get around the country? In a black GMC Vandura? Ooh, crossover! The Rock as the new Face! It's perfect! Snake Eyes can be Murdock and the burned, blackened corpse of Channing Tatum can be Hannibal. I see Storm Shadow as Baracus. He's got the fighting skills and the grumpiness.
END DIGRESSION
In their abandoned rec center, What's Her Name uses circa 1992 computer parts to build a modern flatscreen setup and sends out a worldwide secret signal that only G.I. Joes will be able to decode, announcing that she and her Joes yet live. Also she immediately figures out that the president's a fake. She's like, linguistics! which is cool, and body language! which is also cool, but is insufficient proof of fakery for the guns'n'ammo crowd. The Rock decides to run this by General Bruce Willis anyway, because there's a new law that says he has to appear in all action movies from now until he dies. It's a funny scene, though. The Rock and his minions arrive on Bruce Willis's doorstep all TOTAL INNOCENCE and IT'S COOL, WEALTHY NEIGHBORHOOD, WE'RE CHILLIN', and IGNORE FLINT'S ENORMOUS BAG OF GUNS. Bruce Willis's front door is open when The Rock knocks so they just walk inside, only to have Bruce Willis silently drop down from the ceiling into a Mexican standoff. Bruce Willis, why did you leave the door open? To lure them in? Why? If they were bad guys they wouldn't have knocked! Also, why were you on the ceiling, there are eighteen rooms where you could have hidden on the floor. The Mexican standoff doesn't last because they're all good guys, and although Bruce Willis doesn't believe the body language stuff, he does get The Rock an invitation to a fancy D.C. party where they can recon the fake president.
Using their Joe-begotten invite to the fancy party, What's Her Face rolls into the black-and-white ball in a red dress. She wrangles her way into a dance with Fake President Zoltan, who's all about this foxy lady, and shouldn't he recognize her? I thought he was the archnemesis of the Joes, you think he'd, you know, learn their faces. Maybe she wasn't in the last one, I don't know. Anyway, What's Her Face steals a hair off him and her lipstick DNA analyzer (yes, really) identifies him as Zarlan just as the ball security team figures out that she's a Joe and shouldn't be there. Or alive. She takes off her heels (thank you!) and runs away while The Rock waits outside to shoot Zoloft. Unfortunately, just as The Rock gets a good angle, a swarm of tiny firefly robots shows up and tries its darndest to blow him up, all chasing him through a warehouse. Then the actual Firefly shows up and they have a fistfight which The Rock does not win, I assume only because they need the plot to continue for another twenty minutes. Luckily for The Rock, Flint's one job in this mission is to drive the truck, and he appears in time to drive it right over Firefly. Then he puts it in reverse and backs over Firefly. Heh. Flint, I like you. If there's a third one of these monstrosities, please be in it. The Rock limps into the truck and everyone gets the hell out of D.C.
Back in the B plot, Snake Eyes and Jinx are rolling through a snowy valley when they get What's Her Name's signal, and they're like yay Joes! Only without enthusiasm, because Snake Eyes is a mute guy in a helmet and Jinx is a former bad guy. They are, respectively, unable and not allowed to smile. Instead, they fill a montage traipsing across mountaintops and setting rappeling lines in preparation for their ridiculous battle with the Cobra Commandos, Asian Division.
At the headquarters of Cobra Commandos, Asian Division, Storm Shadow sits up and is cured. Thanks, magical Asian woman! Just then, literally, just then, Snake Eyes and Jinx come through the window to start a rumble. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow pair off to have a very confined ninja fight in a narrow hallway, leaving the girls to fight each other. Three women in this damn movie and they only ever fight other women. The battles proceed in ways that aren't fun to read about until Jinx sneaks up behind Storm Shadow and gases the hell out of him. Snake Eyes zips Storm Shadow into a giant, hilarious sleeping bag, perfect for all your ninja shipping needs.
Then there's an extended fight sequence that probably looked good in 3D but which doesn't make sense in any dimension. I get that Snake Eyes and Jinx have climbing ropes attached every which where on this mountain, but where did the Cobra Commmandos' lines come from? How can they swing back and forth so much without tangling? Is Storm Shadow going to notice later that he's hella bruised from getting swung around the mountain in a giant padded envelope? While I am wondering this, the good guys win and take off with their Storm Shadow burrito.
Back in the Tokyo dojo, Storm Shadow doesn't seem particularly bruised, but he is pissed. Apparently he did not kill the previous dojo master, the Hard Master (omfg, really?) twenty years ago, but was set up. There's a flashback: Storm Shadow, 10, stands in front of the dead Hard Master (omg!), who has a sword stuck through him. Young Storm Shadow takes off running, past a young Snake Eyes, out the dojo gate and down the road, to a shack where an old guy offers him sanctuary. End flashback. In the present, Storm Shadow says he was set up and accuses Snake Eyes. The blind master uses his Wisdom of Being Old to figure out that they were all tricked by.... Zoltar! Zaltan. Zarmov. And the flashback returns to helpfully show the really old guy peel off his face and it's Zardoz underneath. Thanks, flashback! I'm pretty sure that Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes could have talked this out years ago, but it's handy that everyone's non-evil now because the Joes need a favor from Storm Shadow.
I think this is where the plots meet up, because The Rock etc. are sitting down to dinner in their abandoned community center when The Rock's spider sense goes off and they all pull out guns. The lights go off and there's a brief tussle in the dark, and when the lights come on it's all guns and swords pointed at vitals, and What's Her Face and Jinx are paired off because they are both girls. Snake Eyes uses his Powers Of Muteness to convince The Rock that all the bad guys he brought with him are actually good guys, and there are introductions all around and I miss What's Her Face's name again. Dammit! Storm Shadow has a fantastic line when his non-evilness is challenged: "I am not with you, but neither am I against you". Honey, the fandom will take care of both those things. Woo!
Having decided to milk this cameo for all it's worth, the good guys go to Bruce Willis's house again. They plan their takedown of the fake president (and Flint contributes, bless his heart) and then there's an eight-hour montage of BW handing out the guns he has hidden everywhere in his house. Some of it is actually funny, the guns under the fake stove and behind the fake cereal and an entire camouflage wardrobe hidden in the pantry. He must not cook much. Bruce Willis apportions guns to everyone and gives The Rock a tank he has hidden in the garage. You know, for a guy that the army disowned and keeps a watch on, Bruce Willis has a lot of dakka.
And now it's time for shit to go down. Fake!President Zoloft used the stolen Pakistan nukes as an excuse to have a summit in Fort Sumter. All the nuclear countries are there, North Korea included, because this is The Future and also they needed someone to make fun of. While the Joes sneak in from various angles and The Rock tries to sneak up in a goddamn tank, Storm Shadow waltzes in at Cobra Commander's side so we can get another good look at him in the light. Lookin' good, Byung-Hun.
Fake!President Zarkan speechifies at the delegates about unilateral nuclear disarmament (wasn't this the plot of the Justice League pilot?) and they disagree, so he up and launches all the American nukes. Wait, what? Naturally, everyone else follows suit and launches all their missiles... what? why did they do that? If you're going to die anyway, it doesn't matter how much you die. What a poorly written scene, because next Zircon blows up all the American nukes in mid-flight, so all the other delegates blow up their nukes, and now there are no nukes. Lord have mercy, I paid money for this.
But we finally we get to see what the bad guys' plans are, or maybe we already knew, I wasn't paying attention. All those nukes they stole form Pakistan are somehow involved in some giant satellites that Cobra Commander launched in the very recent past. Rather than bombs, the satellites drop really big tungsten RODS that PENETRATE the earth and destroy all the shit but don't leave radioactive fallout, so it's better than your run-of-the-mill nuclear bombs. Zarmax busts out a stupidly fancy bomb-launching briefcase to demonstrate. Seriously, how many screens do you need to have spin gracefully out of a fat suitcase to show what you're blowing up? Even Mission Impossible 4's bomb suitcase just had numbers. Zarlog launches a rod at London, which dies in rippling waves of CGI mayhem. You're welcome, London! It's a cool visual and all, but 25 million pretend people just died for a demonstration of a stupid weapon, so I'm not even into it. The English delegate is all "I say! I do say!" but otherwise doesn't seem terribly upset.
So Fake!President Zatador is like "pledge your loyalty to Cobra Commander, who is entering now with that foxy non-traitorous Storm Shadow guy, or I will blow up all the important cities and Pyongyang in the next three minutes". The delegates are miffed at this and argue a lot.
Meanwhile, in the other fight, Non-Brenda and Bruce Willis break into the real president's vacation home and rescue him. There's fighting and whatnot, but the only notable part is where Bruce Willis steals a bad guy's suit and pretends to get knocked down the stairs to the bunker, and when the other bad guy checks on him, Bruce Willis jumps up and cold clocks the guy. Nice move, Bruce Willis.
Not!Brenda gives the other Joes the good news, so they commence to attack Cobra Commander. All the sudden Storm Shadow whips out his swords (heh) and starts killing mooks. And all the Joes start killing mooks, and so do Snake Eyes and Jinx and whoever else they brought with. Outside, The Rock blows up bad guy vehicles with Bruce Willis's weird-ass tank. It's like a tank skeleton, just the treads and the little part that holds The Rock. There's fighting and whatnot and it's not even fun.
In the confusion of all the gun and sword fighting, Zoltan runs off to escape via Fort Sumter's very damp basement. Lotta crates in there, for a basement knee-deep in water. The crates provide convenient cover when Storm Shadow follows to take his revenge for a lifetime killing people (including, most recently, the Pakistani president) when it turns out he didn't really need to. There's a scene completely lacking in tension where Zartan somehow manages to sneak up on Storm Shadow while wading through knee-deep water. Zartan takes a shot at Storm Shadow, but Storm Shadow cuts the bullet out of the air and stabbity stabs Zartan.
I don't buy the bullet thing. I reject it. The writers can't make up their minds about the rules of this universe, and if they can't commit then I can't suspend my disbelief. Zartan's anticlimactic death leaves a film of nanites floating away in the water, presumably to latch onto the next fish they find. Hey, Storm Shadow? I know you're not with the Joes (not in canon, anyway! woo!), but it would probably help them out if you kept some proof that the president was a fake. No? Okay, just leave, then. And he does.
Back upstairs in the A plot, Cobra Commander just sort of leaves, and sends Firefly in a different direction with the Ridiculous Spinny Briefcase of Tungsten PENETRATION. The Rock is designated to catch him, so instead of like, shooting him with all the tank missiles, they have a boat chase, crash the boats, and play hide-and-seek among some bridge pillars. The Rock wins the eventual fist fight and walks off to abort the tungsten rod earth-penetrator launch. Firefly isn't dead yet, though, and he's about to shoot The Rock in the back like the practical person he is when a fireflybot lands on him and blows him up. So there, The Rock turned it all around on you. Symmetry! Also how did he control one of Firefly's own bugbots? Whatever, The Rock stops the tungsten rods with a mere two seconds to go, and everyone's happy.
There's a funeral scene for all the dead Joes, who get giant posthumous honors for all the good that does them. The Joes in general are vindicated in the media, the real President is back in charge without any explanation as to his bizarre behavior, Storm Shadow leaves to be non-evil elsewhere, The Rock returns to his kids, and Snake Eyes disappears, I assume to return to his day job of being Tim Howard. Go Joes. Only, you know, your movie sucked, so please don't go again.