GI Joe: The Movie
1987
D: Don Jurwich
**********
Pros: Decent animation and action, Some amusingly
over-the-top dialogue, Nostalgic value
Cons: Absurd story with a terrible retcon, Terrible hero
I grew up watching GI Joe. Even though it has a
lot of nostalgic value for me, I do see that in was a silly cartoon in a lot of
ways. Even this direct-to-video movie
released after the end of the second season was part of my childhood. The story was simple: a US military force
protecting the world from a sinister terrorist organization named Cobra. When I revisited GI Joe: The Movie in recent years, I recognized it violated this
premise that I had come to like.
In the
movie’s introduction, GI Joe stops Cobra from blowing up the Statue of
Liberty. Now most terrorist
organizations would launch a surprise bombing without any warning and then make
their demands, but Cobra had the courtesy to send troops parachuting into the
city and attacking people cameras.
They must have had terrible counter-intel because the Joes where
apparently lying in wait for them. Cobra
then sends one of its high-ranking leaders to plant the bomb in plain
sight. Needless to say, the Joes win the
day and the battle ends with Cobra Commander (Chris Latta) calling for a
retreat. The intro is easily the best
part of the movie. The action is good,
the animation is excellent and the music is also very enjoyable.
After
this, we see a mysterious figure approach a Cobra base while Serpentor (Richard
Gautier) is inside giving Cobra’s High Command a “You-F---ing-Guys”
speech. Cobra Commander does what all of
us are tempted to do, but most of us are too smart to do, in this situation and
attempts to turn it against Serpentor.
The scene demonstrates why this is a bad idea. Cobra Commander seems to think everyone else
in the room has his back, forgetting that they were the ones who created
Serpentor to usurp him in the first place.
Serpentor responds by singling Cobra Commander out for blame and even
gains a leadership point by inviting everyone else to speak their minds when
the latter accuses him intimidating them into silence. Predictably, the other Cobras are more than
happy to gang up on Cobra Commander now that the heat is no longer on them.
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| SWO Thermodynamics in action. |
Interestingly, he is accused of cowardice, even though
founding and running Cobra never stopped him from fighting alongside his troops
on the frontlines. In a sane world that
would be considered the opposite extreme.
He’s given an unexpected reprieve when the intruder breaks in. He intentionally misleads the others in
pursuit of the would-be assassin, allowing her to reach Serpentor. She reveals herself to him as Pythona
(Jennifer Darling) and tasks him with capturing an invention called the
Broadcast Energy Transmitter.
In the next
scene, Cobra forces attack the Joes in the Himalayas in order to steal the
device. Cobra Commander hypocritically
second-guesses Serpentor for wasting resources to steal a top-secret weapon
from the Joes, something he’s done multiple times in the past. I must point out that Serpentor's catch phrase is "This I command!" Neither he nor the writers realize how awkward that sounds if it's almost always immediately preceded by and imperative sentence. During the battle Serpentor is captured, and
Cobra Commander sees this as an opportunity to retreat. He leads the Cobras to Cobra-La while being
pursued by a few Joes. They reach it and
meet the forces of Cobra-La and Nemesis Enforcer (Peter Cullen), a winged man
who communicates in bestial roars. Cobra
Commander greets him and is promptly bitch-slapped to the ground. Nemesis Enforcer is awesome.
At the
Joes’ base, Beach Head (William Callaway) is training the Rawhides, GI Joe’s
newest toy line recruits. The
group consists of a kunoichi named Jinx (Shuko Akune), an explosives expert
named Tunnel Rat (Laurie Faso), a spy named Chuckles who seems more like dumb
muscle in this movie, an MP named Law (Ron Ortiz), a guy who showed up in a
basketball uniform named The Big Lob (Brad Sanders) and Lt. Falcon (Don
Johnson). Falcon is noticeably absent
from the training, being too busy giving a tour of the Joes’ Top Secret base to
a beautiful woman who turns out to be Cobra spy Zarana (Lisa Raggio). Unfortunately, Falcon is the hero of the
movie. Duke (Michael Bell) berates him
for this, and it is revealed that Falcon is his half-brother. Beach Head takes other recruits through their
needlessly lethal training. When Tunnel
Rat and The Big Lob (who provides his own sports commentary) easily defeat the
obstacle course, Beach Head is visibly upset.
I know that a drill sergeant may act unimpressed to recruits to motivate
them, but Beach Head’s private display of frustration suggested that he was
genuinely angry that his recruits were
succeeding. Yet when he fills in for
an AWOL Falcon as a sparring buddy for Jinx and defeats her, he dismisses her
from the training until she fights him blindfolded and wins. Um, Beach Head, isn’t the whole point of
training dependent on the trainer’s being more skilled that the trainee? Also, Jinx is Falcon's love interest, so it makes little sense to put them in the same unit, let alone have them sparring together. Another test involves Law being told to find
some (actual live) explosives. Law
suddenly breaks out his German Shepherd Order, who seems to be a very
poorly-trained duty dog since he wants to play fetch with the explosives and
almost gets his masters killed. Beach
Head’s a terrible drill instructor.
Falcon
again shirks duty, abandoning a watch post so he can sexually harass Jinx. When she calls him out for playing hooky,
Falcon describes the security barriers that Cobra has to face before they can
rescue Serpentor. In a pretty cool
scene, we see the Cobras easily infiltrate each barrier as Falcon describes
it. Their job was made easier by the
fact that he was not at his post to sound the alarm, and their rescue succeeds. It’s bad enough that such an unlikable and
deliberately irresponsible man is the hero of this movie. What makes it worse is that he’s supposedly a
Green Beret, which is remarkably insulting to real life Special Forces
personnel. Either he’s some idiot who
found a green beret at a surplus store or GI
Joe takes place in an alternate universe where Green Berets are useless screw-ups. In an odd display of nepotism, Falcon’s relation to Duke
saves him from the “ultimate punishment,” but he’s still sent to the Slaughterhouse,
a rigorous training program run by Sgt. Slaughter (himself). Somehow putting Falcon in a more elite
training program doesn’t seem like appropriate punishment. When Falcon is dumped by parachute into the
desert, he sees a man who is clearly wearing an anti-Cobra symbol and somehow
mistakes him for a Cobra. It turns out
he’s one of Slaughter’s trainees, the Renegades. Slaughter makes him run to base and denies
him food for not being fast enough, because who needs nourishment during heavy
training?
Serpentor is
brought to Cobra-La where he meets its leader Golobulus (Burgess
Meredith as a probable reference to this movie). He reveals to him that he was
the mastermind behind his creation, not Dr. Mindbender (Brian Cummings). Apparently, the idea of combining the DNA of
various military geniuses into one being was too brilliant for a human mind to
conceive….uuuunless you write cartoons, apparently. Oddly specific advice for future writers: don’t
try to claim an idea is inconceivable to the human mind after proving otherwise
by describing it. What’s funny is that
this dumb retcon actually seems to be supported in the series (In the episode "Arise, Serpentor, Arise," Mindbender is clearly struggling to comprehend the dream that inspires him to create Serpentor). It’s the only thing that is. The entire canon of the GI Joe series comes crashing down when Golobulus tells everyone the
“real” history of the terrorist organization called Cobra. He tells the story of how Cobra-La once ruled
the earth but was displaced by humans and their inorganic technology. When a Cobra-La scientist disfigured himself
after sticking his face into some kind of hazardous material, Golobulus chose
him to lead an army to retake the earth for Cobra-La. This man, of course, is Cobra Commander. So Golobulus just entrusted world domination
to a man solely based on his failure to use proper PPE during a science
experiment, and he acts surprised that
this didn’t work. Trusting enormous
responsibilities to stupid people seems to be a theme in this movie.
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| Golobulus is shaped like one of my characters. |
Their plan is
to use the B.E.T. the energize spores that are launched into orbit by these
giant Space Needle-like plants. The
spores, when matured, will cause humanity to devolve into beasts, allowing
Cobra-La to reclaim the world. This begs
two questions: how come no one ever noticed these giant plants, and how does it
make evolutionary sense for them to develop a (reproductive?) trait that
depends on an artificial power source that has never existed until now? Naturally, most of the Cobra’s personnel,
having just learned that everything they were fighting for was a lie and that
there will be no more human civilization to rule over if Cobra-La succeeds,
defect. An alliance of opportunity is
formed with the Joes and they work together to defeat this common threat to
humanity….oh, wait. Actually, everyone
is totally okay with this. Seriously,
they just go along with all this bulls--- without batting an eye. This may be because of their loyalty to
Serpentor, who has reason to follow his creators. This ignores the TV show, in which the Cobra
leadership was becoming increasingly disillusioned with him as he proved to be
no better a leader than Cobra Commander.
In the movie, they practically worship him. The only one who has a second thought is
Zartan (Zach Hoffman), whom Pythona silences with a big gemstone, even though
Zartan has no way of knowing just how valuable it is.
Golobulus then
punishes Cobra Commander for his frequent failures by exposing him to the
spores, which cause him to slowly transform into a cobra. When he is brought to the prison, the Joes
attempt a breakout, but only Roadblock (Kene Holliday) and Cobra Commander
escape. They regroup with a group of
Joes. Sgt Slaughter and the Renegades
stage an attack on a Cobra base, where they find out about Cobra’s new
plans. A slightly heartwarming scene
happens when Mercer (Kristoffer Tambori), a former Cobra Viper, says this is
the first he’s heard of this plan. When
the others are skeptical, Sgt. Slaughter says he believes him. Falcon is captured, and the two funniest
moments of the movie happen. First,
Serpentor’s interrogation of him involves light slapping, and then Nemesis
Enforcer reacts with annoyance when Serpentor panics during the battle. The Renegades escape, but Serpentor leads an
attack of Cobra-La forces on the Joe base where the B.E.T. is kept. The Cobra-La military, with its disgusting
organic technology, does well in the battle and they succeed in capturing the
device. It makes one wonder why they
couldn’t have just done that in the first place when the B.E.T. was right at
their doorstep at the beginning of the movie. Seems like it would save them a lot of time.
I like how Nemesis Enforcer rudely shoves the Dreadnoks out of the way
when they can’t penetrate a protective shield.
He’s my favorite character in this movie. Serpentor attempts to kill Falcon during the
battle, but Duke takes the hit and dies lapses into a coma. Now most Joe fans know the story behind
this. This movie was to come out before Transformers: The Movie, but was
delayed. Duke was supposed to die, but
when they decided to change this because of the negative reaction that Optimus
Prime’s death invoked from fans. The
change is very transparent. It’s
painfully apparent that his “death” is unaltered with the exception of someone
saying he’s gone into a coma without any way of really telling.
The Joes invade Cobra-La to save the world. Sgt. Slaughter
fights Nemesis Enforcer and beats him up so bad that he apparently forgets that
he could fly when he gets thrown into an abyss.
Jinx fights Pythona, who also falls into said abyss. Falcon fights Golobulus, who sheds his
bulbous hovering body to reveal that he is half snake. Unable to stop the spores from being
energized in time, he uses the B.E.T. to fry them as Golobulus flees to parts
unknown. The Joes flee the fortress as
the overloaded B.E.T. causes a massive explosion. In a painfully lazy and rushed scene, the voice of
Doc (Buster Jones) is heard saying that Duke woke up from his coma, and the
jubilant reaction of the Joes is quick and barely animated. The movie ends with Jinx and Falcon looking
up at the stars as Falcon says, “Thanks, big brother,” a line which makes no
sense unless Duke actually is dead.
Despite
its nostalgic value, G.I. Joe: The Movie
is a disappointment. The story is
absurd, even by G.I. Joe standards. It’s clear that not as much effort was put
into this as Transformers: The Movie. The animation is good by direct-to-video
standards and it’s an improvement over that of the show, but maybe borderline
for a theatrical release. Also, aside
from the excellent intro music, most of the score is from the cartoon. It sounds distinctive and adds to the
nostalgic atmosphere, though. Action
scenes are good, and there’s a lot of entertaining, if cheesy, dialogue which
makes the film watchable. The Cobra-La
retcon is a ridiculous violation of the show’s basic premise. It must not have been received very well,
since the cartoon was sunk until DIC revived it in 1989. Amusingly, everything about Cobra-La was
completely ignored (along with poor Big Lob), and was movie was only
acknowledged to the extent that Cobra Commander was still a snake. The show wasted little time in turning him
back into a human and that was last of it.
With this movie providing perspective, it’s hard to accuse the recent
live-action movies of “raping” my childhood. Michael Bay's "Transformers," on the other hand...
MEMORABLE QUOTES
SERPENTOR: Blunderers!
Fools! We possess power greater
than any on Earth, yet our conquests are stripped from us on every front! Our most dangerous enemy is not GI Joe, but
your collective incompetence!
COBRA COMMANDER: Hogwash!
SERPENTOR: What you dare say?
COBRA COMMANDER: The fault, most imperial Serpentor, lies
not within us, but within you! Your leadership has been pompous, pusillanimous
and pathetic!
SERPENTOR: Yes, leadership is at the very heart of this
matter, but it is not mine that is inadequate, Cobra Commander. It is yours!
Your ego-driven stupidity has converted victory to catastrophe for the
last time!
COBRA COMMANDER: Go ahead, make me the scapegoat. My loyal subordinates can testify to my
superb stewardship of COBRA, but you don’t have the courage to let them speak!
SERPENTOR: Wrong again!
Defend him, if you can.
COBRA COMMANDER: Indeed they shall. You first, noble Destro.
DESTRO: Militarily speaking, it’s only fair to say that
Cobra Commander is a world class…buffoon.
COBRA COMMANDER: What?!
Baroness, Dr. Mindbender, brave Xamot and Tomax, you won’t let Destro’s
treacherous assassination of my character go unchallenged, will you?
DR: MINDBENDER: Certainly not! Destro forgot to mention your frequent
displays of cowardice.
COBRA COMMANDER: [Groans]
BARONESS: …and you botched our desert campaign…
DESTRO: We had won, but you countermanded my order!
BARONESS: Your meddling brought us defeat again and again
and again!
DR. MINDBENDER: You’re not just a fool, you’re COBRA’s
curse!
XAMOT: Inept…
TOMAX: Insufficient…
TOMAX AND XAMOT: Inexcusable!
COBRA COMMANDER: Unsubstantiated fantasy! Lies!
Lies! Lies!
CROSS-COUNTRY: [chasing his out-of-control Havoc over a hill] Stop!
Stop! Stop! [running back over the hill] Go, go, go!
It’s…
TOMAX: CO-
XAMOT: BRAAA!
QUICK-KICK: Snow Job, need a lift?
SNOW JOB: Maybe walking’s better for my health!
QUICK KICK: Since when are you the nervous type? YOOO JOE!
SNOW JOB: Man with a problem, Quick-Kick!
QUICK-KICK: What are friends for?
ROADBLOCK: Cobra’s through, what do we do?
JINX: And you should be guarding Serpentor.
FALCON: Don’t sweat it.
Nobody could even get close to the stockade without an ID bracelet [Zarana uses the ID bracelet she lifted off
Falcon to gain entrance to the base. Wow, Falcon's really stupid if he didn't notice that], and even if they faked the bracelet
the pentaplastic shield would stop them cold. [Pythona cuts through the shield with her acidic claws] But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose
our mythical intruders did make it into Serpentor’s cell block.
JINX: Yeah?
FALCON: They’d still have to blast through a couple of
yards of super-hard concrete [Monkey
Wrench blows up the concrete wall, which should've alerted the base]
JINX: Uh-huh?
FALCON: Then they’d have to get through three of our best
guys. [The COBRAs begin to fight the Joe
guards] It’s not just unlikely. It’s impossible.
ALPINE: The alarm circuit’s been cut! How you at
splicing?
GUNG-HO: Nothing like a little on-the-job training!
GOLOBULUS: Be silenced!
Or be silenced.
GOLOBULUS: Nemesis Enforcer, throw this worthless sewage
into the Abyss of Oblivion.
SERPENTOR: No, put him in with the Joe prisoners, so they
can see the fate which awaits them.
PYTHONA: I like that.
It’s poetic in its own simplicity.
GOLOBULUS: [rubbing
his eyes] A trifle melodramatic…
SERPENTOR: [lightly slapping Falcon] How many in your force? What is the purpose of
your mission? You can’t resist forever…
SERPENTOR: Nemesis Enforcer, finish him off! We have work to do! AAAHH!!
HELP! NEMESIS ENFORCER, HELP
MEEE!!!!!!
SERPENTOR: He took the snake meant for your heart, but
his sacrifice will be in vain! This I
command!
GOLOBULUS: The last thing you will hear is the cracking
of your vertebrae one by one!
