Good Guys Don't Drive Black Helicopters

    You may have been hearing a whole lot about Easter lately. Maybe your local paper ran an article about a neighbourhood Easter egg hunt, or you saw a news report on TV about some church related antics. If you read other blogs, then you might have read someones intimate thoughts and recollections of Easter celebrations with their family.

    I'm not going to do that, because I don't pander. Even if I did, I'd still have nothing to say, because my family didn't celebrate Easter. We also did not celebrate Christmas, Hallowe'en, my birthday, or New Year's. We aren't even Jewish or anything. We just aren't a very celebratory family.

    I think I was around twelve before I realised other kids had birthday parties, even though I did not. I asked my Mom why this was so, and she told me was because other kids are "special". I understood this as code for "mentally handicapped", and was satisfied by her explanation. I was almost twenty-five when she clarified for me that "special" meant "exceptional, gifted, distinguished, and/or extraordinary". I was hurt by this, until she went on to suggest that my failure to understand her was further proof I did not belong in that category. I had no argument against this, and I resigned myself to Mother's appraisal.

    So, instead of Easter, I'm going to talk about this weekend's other cause for no celebration, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation". First, a little history.

   Four or five years ago, G.I.Joe fans the world over rejoiced over news of their beloved toys finally making the transition to the big screen. After they had a chance to see "G.I.Joe: Rise of Cobra", those same fans prayed fervently that the franchise would die quietly. Those prayers would go unanswered.

    So it was that a sequel, entitled "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" was announced with little fanfare, and less excitement.

    Initially intended to be released in the summer of 2012, it was decided at the last minute to push it back to the spring of 2013. Officially, the reasoning was for post production conversion to 3-D. Conspiracy theorists rejected that explanation, and took the opportunity to cast all kinds of aspersions on the quality of the film.

    Just this very Easter weekend, "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" finally hit the theatres, in all it's 3-D glory. Reviews, while not exactly effusive, have been positive. Does this positivity exist only in comparison to the dismal, original offering? Or is "Retaliation" truly deserving of it's faint praise? Allow a G.I.Joe expert to illuminate you.

    "G.I.Joe: Retaliation" is a big piece of shit.

    Never before has the noble and time honoured art of story telling been so bastardized during the transition from one medium to another. For example, the mysterious robot warrior known only as Snak-Eyes? Doesn't even use his force field once. This is tantamount to blasphemy. Everyone knows that Snak-Eyes has a force field that can stop any projectile. Even when D'Inventro invents a gun that can shoot through any force field, Snak-Eyes still has his "force field that can stop bullets from the gun that can shoot through force fields".

    For whatever reason, this is completely ignored. Snak-Eyes is instead reduced to a second rate Inspector Gadget, with springs for legs and telescoping arms. He even has a helicopter hat.

    For all that it gets wrong, "Retaliation" manages to preserve the lifelong rivalry between Snak-Eyes and Storm Shabow. Unfortunately, they have chosen to portray Storm Shabow as a sort of evil James Bond, who infiltrates the G.I.Joe team and gains their trust by sleeping with all the women. For the uninitiated, Storm Shabow is traditionally portrayed as a wise cracking hobo who commands an army of dim-witted bikers.

    Nevertheless, the final confrontation between these bitter foes, with Snak-Eyes's cybernetic enhancements and Storm Shabow's bottomless bag of technological gadgets, is actually pretty exciting. It just doesn't belong in a movie based on this property.

    Let's not ignore what is perhaps this movie's cardinal sin: That the leader of G.I.Joe, General Clayton "Hawk" Abernathy, and the leader of Cobra, Cobra Commander, are actually the same person! Hawk is my hero. I don't own six bomber jackets for nothing. He would never stoop so low as to sponsor terrorism just to get more government funding for G.I.Joe. Even if he would, any idea that they might be the same man was thoroughly disproved in issue #182 of the comics when they played a game of chess against each other, each launching a real life nuke against a strategic target every time they captured a piece.

    But the most preposterous is saved for last. The Joe called "Tollbooth" is sent in a rocket to the moon, and that's how Cobra is defeated. Just because he ends up on the moon, Cobra decides to pack it in.

    "There he goes! Too bad he took off in all our tax dollars! How much does it cost to get your car to work? How much does it cost to go to the moon?"

    "There he goes, oh look! He turned around before he landed on the moon!" Who fucking cares? What does that prove? And the hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger, ya' fucking dinks!

    Thoroughly dissatisfying. Overall, I give it four stars out of five.