GI Joe

[rowyn]

[Sitting in the theatre, watching the opening credits roll.]

Lut [leaning over to whisper to me]: "I've never seen any of the cartoon or other media for G. I. Joe, so no matter how badly they mangle the source material I can't be offended by it.
Me [giggling]: "Yeah, I saw a few of the cartoons as a kid, but I don't remember them. I don't think they'll be able to offend me either."

[15 minutes in:]

Me: "Wait, G. I. Joe is supposed to be a NATO operation? Are you kidding me?"

---

It was chock-full of explosions, pretty things, and fight scenes. I was bored halfway through. About what you'd expect. Best exchange:

Duke [in power armor and lying atop a car, gasping as he recovers from crashing onto it]: "OK, that was crazy. What happened to you?"
Ripcord [next to him, in similar condition]: "I went through the train. What happened to you?"
Duke: "I jumped over it."
Ripcord [pause]: "You can do that?"
Duke: "Yeah. You should've read the manual."
Ripcord: "There's a manual?"

Comments

[wildcard-47.livejournal.com]

LOL, I am tempted to see this movie but only for the promise of villain!Christopher Eccleston.

Besides that, the exchange you posted -- part of it, anyway -- made it into one of the longer trailers and made me laugh. It also made me realize that I probably should not see GI Joe if the funniest parts of the movie are put into the previews....

[rowyn]

Eh, I enjoyed watching Ripcord, but none of the other actors really made a much impression on me. If you like explosions and lots of action and don't care if it makes sense or has much character depth, it's a fun movie. It even has a few bits of character development here and there. It wasn't awful and the acting was fine, it just didn't really grab me. I never forgot I was watching a movie.

[caffeinewabbit.livejournal.com]

For me, it was ruined the second the trailers emphasized the power suits. Those have nothing to do with G.I. Joe - or at least not the version I grew up with - and just felt like some moronic toyetic add on.

My middle aged nerd indignation is RED HOT. I PLAN ON WRITING MY CONGRESSMAN.

[rowyn]

The power suits aren't a big part of the movie, actually. They have Ripcord and Duke in them for one chase scene and the (brief) ensuing fight.

But by all means, do not let me encourage you to see it. >:)

[jurann.livejournal.com]

And the 80's cartoon had exactly HOW MUCH to do with A) the original GI Joe figures and stories from the 50's or B) the comic books that came out years before the cartoon? Nada. It already has a history of being transformed every generation or so into something completely new and different and "ahead of it's time", so this is simply more of the same. =)

[rowyn]

Heh, I didn't even realize there'd been a GI Joe before the 80s until I looked at Wikipedia yesterday. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Wow! Well, I guess I ran into it because when I was a little kid, there was still this idea that dress-up action figures were cool for young boys, and thus I had a Six Million Dollar Man "Steve Austin" action figure, with optional cybernetic arm attachments, and "Mr. Goldman" with his exploding briefcase, and some weird android dude with interchangeable faces and pop-off cybernetic limbs, and an inflatable secret base dome set that at the time was large enough that I could actually fit inside it. But then, at the time, I could also fit inside my parents' laundry basket.

Now I'm suddenly feeling nostalgic about cardboard boxes and magic markers. Har! (Huge cardboard boxes + markers + duct tape + scissors = Best toy EVAR in my mind back then.)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

^_^ Those were the days, except it was repurposed electronics bits and gardening supplies to look like 'ray guns' and the like.

[rowyn]

My favorites were Legos and these nice wooden building blocks we had. You could make anything out of those things!

[rowyn]

I always liked modular toys where you could swap things on and off, like clothes or guns or whatever. I actually didn't like that all Barbie's best outfits were sold with a new doll, because I didn't want another *doll*, I wanted clothes to put on my current doll!

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. My sister had either a Barbie doll, and although there were clothing sets sold separately, my mom went with the homemade option.

Some time back when she was a stay-at-home mom, before she got a job, she would make lots of custom outfits using fancy-looking remnant fabrics and such from craft stores and various notions salvaged from old clothes and such. At one point, she made an "apartment" for my sister's Barbie out of a sturdy cardboard box, a little remnant section of carpet (when we recarpeted our house), some crimped fabric and a dowel (for drapes for a window with a scene cut out from a magazine), and furnishings made from various boxes and repurposed empty containers with pasted on bits of fabric and pattern paper for faux textures. I THINK there was a "vanity" with a "mirror" made from a piece of aluminum foil carefully kept smooth, but I can't be sure whether that was the case or just an embellishment of memory.

I had no interest in playing with Barbies (no guns, no explosions, no space ships, no fun), but I was still awfully impressed with the whole setup. No doubt it had some sort of influence on my building of gaming terrain later on down the road. ;)

[rowyn]

I can certainly tell where your instinct for making stuff comes from! :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Hey, I got it from both sides! My dad would get all sorts of junk cheap from estate auctions - basically grab-bags of stuff that might or might not include the occasional useful tool, but usually just involved a bunch of scrap metal. He'd let me pick out odds and ends to "build my own toys" (often involving various types of glue, duct tape and, much later on, welding - with supervision, of course), and he'd routinely start welding bits together and sawing wood for various projects around the house - work tables, benches, trailer hitches (or an entire trailer), a computer desk (which I'm still using), etc. Probably the most fun I recall was when my dad converted the garage temporarily into a "shooting range," and made an attachment for the air compressor to fire BBs into a target made of styrofoam with plywood backing. (We wore protective goggles, just in case.) My dad also introduced me to some of my earliest experiments in mold-making, using lead melted down from cast-off tire weights, or plastic melted down from butter-dish containers (that is, the kind of plastic that can be re-melted - not the stuff that burns and lets off fumes).

But then, my dad also helped restore a TBM that had a cameo appearance in the extended version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, did most of the work on refurbishing my first car (a 1950 Dodge Diplomat), built a hovercraft (from a "kit"), built a Mustang II small plane (from purchased plans) ... Yeah, I'm way behind on doing anything to compare.

At least I fixed Gwendel's computer chair over the weekend? =)

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

[rowyn]

Heeheehee!