Not Blowing Is Half the Battle

The new G.I.JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA movie was surprisingly fun. It's a pity that non-Bond movies are doing Bond movies better than the actual Bond movies.

It helped that I felt little emotional connection with the 1980's G.I.Joe stories, since the movie weaves its own versions of the characters and their backstories. After all, while some fans grew up playing with and collecting the action figures, I was a teenager when they debuted -- and when I had collected G.I.Joe toys, I had collected the real G.I.Joes, the 12" ones from the '60's (military) and '70's (civilian). Thus, I could enjoy the action, the extrapolation of current military research, and the production design, which looked like a comic book come to life.

True, there's some embarrasingly obvious CGI, and a lot of violent deaths with little blood. (Although, for a movie designed to sell toys to kids, there are an awful lot of impalements.) And (spoiler) I was annoyed at the explanation the movie concocted for the Baroness's behavior, which undercut her as a strong female character. But after all, it's just a bunch of adult kids playing G.I.Joes.

Almost as entertaining: The woman in the row behind me, complaining that her family was making her watch this. "I want to watch JULIE AND JULIA!" she snapped. The kid in the family described the title of that film as JULIE VS. JULIA, which, come to think of it, sounds like another fun film.

The Kung-Fu Grip, It Ain't What It Used to Be

From the Wikipedia entry on GI Joe comes the news that the flexible plastic used for the action figures' hands in the '70's -- the source of GI Joe's infamous "Kung-Fu Grip" -- has degraded with age, leaving even figures in unopened boxes missing hands.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Yet it's still poignant to think that as Joe has aged, even his mighty Kung-Fu Grip has failed him.

Old soldiers never die. They just lose their grip.

How Do They Know? Because They're Watching You . . . .

At Comic-Con, Hasbro Toys had a booth in the Dealer's Room which had a monitor running a loop of toy commercials and excerpts from '80's Hasbro cartoons (which were animated by Marvel Studios). These included the decidedly bizarre "Knowing is Half the Battle" PSAs that ran at the end of GI Joe episodes. Now, I was an adult when these aired, so I was fully aware of how weird these were. But I have to wonder about kids who grew up watching these shows.

Did they wonder why this GI Joe team member was underwater -- in deep-sea diving gear -- at a swimming hole, watching kids splashing around?





Or why this medic was peering through a window into a family's bathroom?



Well, perhaps now they know better. And knowing is, well . . . .