GI JOE: SCIENTIST MAKES MAGMA SUMMONING MACHINE
2003
I watched two eps of GI JOE the other night. It's almost hard to believe just how bad the show really is. The things you don't notice when you're not so jaded, i suppose.
i'll begin with the theme song:
Yo Joe!
He'll fight for freedom where ever
there's trouble.
GI Joe is there.
It's GI Joe against Cobra the enemy
Fighting to save the day.
He never gives up.
He's always there,
Fighting for freedom over land and air
GI Joe- A real American hero
GI Joe is there
GI Joe is the codename for American's
daring, highly trained
special mission force.
It's purpose, to defend human freedom
against Cobra- a ruthless, terrorist organization
determined to rule the world.
He never gives up.
He'll stay til the fight's won.
GI Joe will dare.
GI Joe- A real American hero
GI Joe
As if that weren't lame enough, we're treated to images of the Joes beating down Cobra. At one point, they throw Destro from one Joe to another, each catching him and throwing him to the next... and i know they're muscular guys, but there's no way they can throw an equally muscular guy around like that.
In the first episode i watched, Cobra was set to kidnap some scientist who had the plans to make a device which would cause magma deep under the earth to explode violently to the surface. Naturally, the scientist only had peaceful and beneficial intentions toward this machine. (o_O)
GI Joe is sent in to protect this scientist, but they do a really poor job of it. You would think that, as highly trained as they are, they would notice that the guy sitting next to the wall dressed in a cloak is ZARTAN. I could only see the guy's mouth and i immediately knew it was Zartan... i haven't seen Zartan in several years, and i can still pick him out, even when he's in disguise, yet you have GI Joe, who see Zartan nearly EVERY DAY, and they don't notice?
I thought these guys were supposed to be a daring, highly trained special mission force. I'm supposed to believe that, at no point in time, they are required to ID known terrorists?
Subsequently, Zartan and several Cobra agents jump out and surround the Joes. A fire fight ensues... sort of. For some reason, everyone uses lasers. This defies everything. I am supposed to believe that both Joe and Cobra forces utilize existing technology for most of their vehicles, i.e. TANKS and run of the mill PLANES, but then they have portable lasers, configured to basically look like existing handguns?
Lasers say we don't want to sponsor violence, but people still need to be able to kill each other. Right. If we give cartoons weapons that don't exist... we... won't have to worry about them eventually using existing weapons to reach their ends? Brilliant!
Cobra has the Joes enclosed in a circle, and both sides are shooting back and forth... and no one can apparently shoot very well because no one is getting hit, despite the fact that any two given participants in the laser-fight are 8 feet away from each other.
Again, I thought these guys were supposed to be a daring, highly trained special mission force. I'm supposed to believe that, at no point in time are they required to take target practice? There's no excuse for such sloppy firing. if, by some miracle, someone was shot, it was a pedestrian off camera.
I should also mention that this whole thing took place in broad daylight. Hello? ZARTAN is STANDING in BROAD DAYLIGHT! And he didn't turn green. This defies reality. Zartan turns green when exposed to sunlight. I don't know why he does, but he apparently doesn't like to do it because he usually screams "argh! sunlight!" then runs away... but not this time. And since i'm speaking about Zartan, the man is supposed to be a master of disguise... yet he was dressed in his normal clothes, only he had a cloak on over them...
He's a cartoon character in a show where most of the characters more or less look alike when you strip away all of the colours and get down to the sketchbook behind everything, AND DESPITE ALL OF THIS, i was able to identify him. If that's the best a master of disguise can pull off in GI Joe land, then i surmise that they are not really a special forces unit at all, but a bunch of slow witted people who either met up at a coffee house one day and somehow convinced each other that they were a special forces unit, or that they were brought together by the government purely for entertainment purposes.
Anyway... Cobra makes their escape with the scientist in tow. They shout COBRA!!! every time they pull the trigger on their lasers. About ten minutes into the show you start hearing people scream COBRA!!!COBRA!!!COBRA!!! in your head, easily driving you mad. The Joes regroup, and figure out (somehow) that Cobra is hiding out in some old temple in where i guessed was south amerika, because it look faux-mayan in terms of design and setting.
the Joes fly out to the region in helicopters, and get into a dogfight with several of cobra's mini-helicopters, which are impractical because they lack a windshield of any sort. You're going to tell me that Cobra has portable mini-laser technology, but they can't put glass between their pilots and the 80 mph wind blowing in their faces?
The helicopter fight goes on for a couple of minutes longer than it should, but since the helicopters apparently lack targeting systems (o_O) and no one can shoot worth a damn anyway, it wasn't a very exciting scene. At the end, though, the Joes get shot down, and they crash into the forest.
They wander around for a while... it was Duke, Scarlet, Snake Eyes... some guy with one of those folded hats, a machete, and a big mustache... and there was someone else, but i don't remember. The machete guy (i think his name was RECONDO) helped everyone get through the traps Cobra left in the forest... no, wait, actually, Recondo SHOULD have helped everyone get through the traps because that was his specialty.
Instead, he lets Scarlet step through some tripwire which nearly lands a pickaxe through her skull, and he lets the other guy who was with them fall down a hole onto some spikes (Snake Eyes saved him, though). This brings up another point about technology. Cobra has lasers and mini-helicopters, and mind control devices (i'll cover that in a minute), but they can only afford to use lame jungle traps, like covered holes and pickaxes?
So then Cobra Commander, who is dressed in his hood for this ep, gets the scientist guy and puts a crown on his head which is actually a mind control device, and he forces the guy to build his magmajaculation machine while he (cobra commander) watches the Joes avoid all of his traps via a well hidden camera system in the jungle.
He winds up unleashing a rhino on them, probably a local rhino that he caught in the jungles of south amerika... and the Joes considered the rhino such a threat that they were actually going to kill it! Duke gave the orders to shoot it dead, but Recondo stopped them, then lured the rhino off of a cliff and into a river.
With all of his plans failing, Cobra Commander unleashes hyenas on the Joes. Zartan identifies the hyenas as "Striped hyenas... known for their deadliness." Well, Zartan, i looked striped hyenas up, and found nothing about their deadliness. Either way, the Joes are forced to run or be eaten, and they choose to run. There's a river up ahead, and luckily, there are just enough vines for each of them to swing to the other side with.
The thing that bothered me here was not that there happened to be enough vines for each of the Joes, but that the vines were long enough as well as placed just right that the Joes could swing the entire width of the river, which looked to be somewhere around 20 yards.
Duke doesn't make it to the vines, though, because Recondo isn't really a specialist, i think. He lets Duke run through one of those ropes tied to a tree that catch your foot and string you up. So, Duke's hanging there and the hyenas are jumping at him, and he tells everyone to go ahead without him, which i agree is a pretty good idea, but Snake Eyes decides to be the hero and swing back for Duke. which he does.
Snake Eyes soundly kicks the ass of all of the hyenas without using weapons... aside from his deadly feet and fists. He then rescues Duke and instead of getting praise, Snake Eyes is teased because he's a mute.
DUKE: "i gave you a direct order not to come back for me, etc, and you defied my order, etc, but i won't say anything if you won't."
what a dick, dude. i swear.
Okay, now everyone is on the other side of the river, and Cobra finally shows up on some kind of boat thingy. The Joes soundly beat them and take their clothes. they have Snake Eyes tied up so that he looks like a prisoner, and using the COBRA affiliated boat-driver guy, they head to the temple that Cobra is hiding out in. Then they knock out the Cobra guy and infiltrate the temple as members of Cobra... until they decide to start shooting everything up.
Herein is another problem. If you're going to take the time to disguise yourself as Cobra troops, shouldn't you carry out the charade for, say, more than 30 seconds? Not if you're a GI Joe, apparently. Once they got past the ONE guy guarding the side entrance to the temple... i'm just saying that i would have done it differently.
Cobra Commander was in the middle of choosing a city to cover in magma, and in his list of cities, he mentioned LA. This pissed off one of the Joes who shouted something about not letting Cobra torch his town. the thing is, LA is more of a city than a town, which leads me to believe that this Joe is either really confused or he hasn't been back home since the 1800's. Not only that, but LA is a lot of people's "town." i just think it's pretty unprofessional to try to stop Cobra based solely on the fact that they're going to cover your "town" with magma.
This whole burning LA thing is what sparks the gunfight in this scene... but consider that when Cobra Commander was listing other cities, no one ran out to stop him. I know he listed New York... and the Joes were okay with this? New York, no big deal to the Joes, but as soon as some unmemorable Joe's home"town" is mentioned as a possible target, look out!
The fight carries on, and someone shoots a hole in the roof, causing sunlight to pour in, causing Zartan to turn green and run away. For one, why does Zartan turn green, exactly? For two, turning green doesn't seem to affect him in any other way, so why does he run? He's not in pain, as far as i can tell, and it doesn't immobilize him in any way. He's just... green.
i don't understand why he can't stick around and fight just because he's green. It makes no sense. So, Zartan runs away, and exits the temple, and rather than hiding from the sunlight, he jumps into a boat and yells "AH! SUNLIGHT!!" and proceeds to cruise down the river, which i might add is bathed in direct sunlight. Zartan seems to be as inept as everyone else, sadly.
By the way, the magmajaculation machine tips over and summons magma to the inside of the temple. Good job, Joes. the Joes rescue the scientist and start running down the halls as magma chases at their heels. Cobra Commander escapes by boat, and somehow during the escape found the time to take off his hood and put on his cooler silver mask, though i'm not sure why. Snake Eyes gets trapped as part of the temple collapses, but is somehow capable of kicking, with his foot, a huge stone block completely out of his way.
GI Joe escapes and lava pours into the river. The end.