Will G.I. Joe Be The Worst Movie Of The Year?
We’re all expecting G.I. Joe to be one of the worst movies of all time — but we were actually overestimating it. Judging from the novelization, G.I. Joe will be a masterpiece of badness, Showgirls meets Plan 9. Spoilers ahead…
We were lucky enough to get a copy of Max Allan Collins’ novelization of G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA. And we had not fully appreciated the dementia of this storyline, which really is all about nanotech and how it’ll eat the world.
In the G.I. Joe universe, nanotech can do almost anything — turn regular people into super-soldiers, control your mind, devour the Eiffel Tower. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie’s script was actually written by nanobots, which sliced up a million other action-movie scripts and mashed them up into a wonderfully incoherent mess. There are undigested scraps of Sho Kosugi movies and bad war movies floating around this gray goo of a story, and it’s nice to watch them sail past.
This might actually be the most prominent nanotech action movie ever — I’m straining to think of another movie where nanotechnology is so central to the plot.
The central villain of the movie, of course, is the Scottish James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), an arms merchant who secretly hungers for power. In a flashback, his ancestor gets tortured by the French by being fitted with a searing-hot metal mask, and so McCullen has a special hatred for French people. When we meet the present-day McCullen, he’s selling the NATO brass on his latest weapon — nanomites, which are basically nanomachines that eat anything metal, until you hit their “Kill Switch” and turn them off. They can disarm an opponent without the need for bloodshed, and so one NATO suit jokes that McCullen may be the first arms merchant to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
But McCullen, of course, has other plans — after he delivers the nanomites to NATO, he launches an attack of his Neo-Vipers to steal them back. The Neo-Vipers are supersoldiers who have been enhanced by nanotechnology — which also controls their minds. At one point, McCullen gloats that his troops still have their own thoughts, but they’re incapable of doing anything but obey his orders. The convoy escorting the nanomites is led by Conrad “Duke” Hauser and Wallace “Ripcord” Weems, and they’re the only ones who are prepared when the Neo-Vipers attack.
3 Responses to “Will G.I. Joe Be The Worst Movie Of The Year?”
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i have been watching GI Joe cartoons since childhood. a year ago, i was thinking why Hollywood has not yet created a movie version of GI JOE. I am very happy now that i can watch a movie version of my favorite cartoon show.
i am a big fan of GI Joe. it was originally a cartoon series that i always watched when i was just a kid. i also collected many GI Joe action figures.
GI Joe the movie is awesome. it focuses mainly on nanotechnology. this movie should have been made a couple of years ago.