GI Joe: Retaliation

Ok, why wasn't The Rock in the first movie? Why was casting him not the first thing they did, after deciding to make a GI Joe movie? Why didn't the conversation go like "Hey, let's make a GI Joe movie. And, let's cast The Rock." I mean, you'd think one would naturally follow the other.

Oodles of fun. The Expendables 2 for people too young to see The Expendables 2. And actually, not a bad film in its own right. Reasonably solid across the board. Except that it's stupid. It has very stupid parts--parts that are stupid in the most enjoyable of ways. None of the soulless, barren incompetence of Transformers here. None of the sickening mixture of the immaturity of childhood with the immaturity of adulthood. This is just the giddy enthusiasm of people who remember what it was like to be a 7 year old boy playing with action figures. Maybe not quite to the extent that it should be, but closer.

The music is pumping, the action is fun (it even features a "modern re-imagining" of Equilibrium's infamous pistol slap fight), the explosions are loud, the bad guys are all bad and hungry for scenery, the good guys are all good and hungry for a simple whitewashed version of justice that could be summarized as "bad guys need to die," and The Rock seems about the coolest, toughest guy on the face of the earth, especially when carrying giant heavy machine guns or driving ridiculously overpowered military vehicles. Oh, and it has really surprisingly good sound work too. All the guns and explosions and swordfights sound very satisfying.

Yeah, there are a few nonsensical moments. In fact, one could convincingly argue that the entire film is just a bunch of pasted-together nonsensical moments. How could it not be, given that characters are expected to refer to "The GI Joes" with somber, straight-faced gravitas? But you never feel like the "little boy's action fantasy" card is being played as an excuse for the inexcusable (again, unlike Transformers). Retaliation is just an unassuming movie that doesn't try to be anything more than silly fun, and sometimes silly fun doesn't defer to conventional logic. That's why it's silly. And that's really the worst you can accuse GI Joe of being. Silly.

I do wonder... how awesome would it be to have a blockbuster action film that actually was written by a 7 year old boy? Something like Axe Cop, but with a big budget and name actors? I don't know about you, but I'd pay to see that.