New, Final "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" Trailer!!

It’s driving me fucking crazy that I can’t find a link to this fucking trailer that does not fucking skip every 2 fucking seconds. So expect the embedded video here to skip a lot.

But that won’t stop me from commenting on it!!

I can pontificate on it point-by-point, but I won’t. I don’t have it in me. The toy-movies lately have been sapping my energy, I must admit. Bottom line: they aren’t what I want them to be. So let’s just say I accept them at face value, shall we?

And the face that "G.I. Joe" has shown has just been plain STUPID. It has looked like, and looks like still, a big dumb live action cartoon for kids. But can’t that still be fun?

The pratfall in the "Accelerator Suit" in this new trailer is particularly vexing. These are suits made for battle, right? Running headlong TOWARDS danger and explosions and bullets, etc., right? So what, then, is the point of saying ‘these are worth millions of dollars, be careful’? How can you possibly be careful with something that was intended to stand up to literally the harshest conditions imaginable? It’s not the pratfall that bothers me–weak attempts at humor don’t kill a movie for me, just induce a groan–it’s the fact that the set-up seems unnecessary and out of place within the reality of the movie.

From what I’m hearing from early reports, the movie is filled with silly humor. I get that. I even understand why Michael Bay does it–these movies are primarily for kids, even though all of US kids-at-heart want them to better reflect our grown-up personalities and sensibilities. But what I DON’T have to do is like the humor they attempt. There are PLENTY of movies ostensibly for kids that have humor that appeals to adults (re: every Pixar movie ever), or is actually tuned specifically TO adults (re: golden age Looney Tunes, etc.), so I KNOW it’s possible to have humor that doesn’t insult our intelligence. That these movies aren’t primarily concerned with doing it perfectly is somewhat understandable, but we should never settle, people. As geeks—self-proclaimed lovers of all this stuff and rightful tastemakers of what is done with our beloved properties—it is our duty to demand greatness.

We are not getting greatness.  We are getting attempts at entertainment and are ham-strung to be satisfied by the results.

But I WILL say, even with my terrifically high standards, what I’m seeing isn’t immediately and vehemently deplorable. Yes, I hate the Accelerator Suits. Yes, I think the attempts at humor are ill-conceived and poorly executed. But the rest of it looks like a huge, colorful, over-the-top romp. It looks like what went on in our imaginations when we played with our action figures and playsets when we were nine years old.

And that isn’t necessarily an easy–or wrong–thing to do. I will at the moment choose to give kudos to at least the trailers because they are reminding me of the nonsensical abandon with which we all used to play with our toys, and with a movie that is based on toys, that’s not a terrible thing at all.

There’s going to be vehicles and explosions and exotic locales, etc., and that’s just fun no matter what. Now, if all the rest of the movie is utter stupidity, then it’s going to ruin that sense of fun. But what I’ve seen so far hasn’t pointed to that. There’s no ‘haha old man robot uses a cane’ or ‘Bumblebee sings "I’m so excited"‘ or a wise-crackin’, 30’s-gangster-sounding RC robot sort of red flags like there are with "Transformers 2" (because I know you’re all going to jump on me and say ‘how is that different than what is in Transformers’, etc.). There is stupidity on display here, but not in such a high amount that I’m willing to write it off–yet.

So this looks like it could either be lots of stupid fun, or just lots of stupidity that gets in the way of fun. The trailer very cagily avoids letting us know which way the movie will go, so I guess we’re just going to have to pay to see either way!