I remember having a couple of those GI Joe toys as a kid.  Of course, I was a kid, and a slightly brutal kid, so either they had their legs ripped off—can’t remember, my apologies—or they’re still up there, in that cabinet in the bedroom I’ve been sleeping in for the past two decades or so, still wrapped up and unopened.  Or maybe I got that mixed up.  Maybe it was my uncle’s toys I was talking about.  He was a collector of sorts, after all.

Fast forward to 2009: I write for a living, I don’t play with toys—err, action figures—and there’s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  It’s Dennis Quaid and Channing Tatum fighting Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sienna Miller, seeing that elite group of soldiers come out because of a need to stop that green smoke whatever that’s poised to destroy the Eiffel Tower, which is a shame because it’s been there longer than the creators intended to.   And maybe it’s because of the fifteen years in between my toys and this film, but I was not excited for it.

Don’t balk.   The reason’s simple: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  It’s also a toy line turned cartoon series turned film, and I was also exposed to that—I had Optimus Prime, I think.  The first film was very good, and the second was not poised to disappoint, and the entry of GI Joe felt like an imitation hastily brought out, even if they pretty much came from the same place.  If you’ve seen my summer movie guide, I gave the Transformers sequel a 9.1; GI Joe, a 7.0.

But of course, Transformers sucked big time, and that’s despite my (slight) ill-founded and ill-fated attraction towards Megan Fox.   In a nutshell, it was flashy, it was bouncy, and it was too long—fluffy, to crush the nutshell.

Right now, my expectations for GI Joe have spiked all of a sudden. Will this be the flashy action franchise that won’t disappoint?  I’ve read only a few reviews, and they’ve been pretty much mixed, for the obvious reasons: either it’s fun or it’s fluffy.  (It’s odd Paramount didn’t hold screenings for print critics, because I thought they’d be able to give a more drawn-out review of the film.   Nothing against online critics, especially because I’m slightly one, too.)  I still think the film, with its focus on military technology and the toy series’ fans, will hold its own.  I don’t think it will be upstaged as much, however.   Well, at least I have hopes that it doesn’t get upstaged.

So please, GI Joe, please don’t disappoint like Transformers did, or else I’ll really feel that I wasted a lot of time on you.

It opens today, and maybe you’ll see me in the cinema over the weekend.  Go tell me what you think when you’re done, though.




- Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures)