Whether it is the weird Cyber Ninjas searching for bamboo fragments on votes under UV lights or it is the origin story of the Silent Ninja: Snake Eyes, Ninjas have been in the news! Okay, let me tell you right away that these films are just shows of big biceps, big guns, big upper bodies, big boots, big SUVs and big movie stars dressed in camouflage.
The most coherent explanation of plotlines will be: It’s cold war stuff, you just (search and) destroy. That said, you will love the fights and wonder how such buffed up bodies can be so nimble, tumbling through the night. You will also be forgiven if despite all the gunfire you find yourself dropping off to dreamland while your kids whoop it up watching their favourite GI Joe beat up baddies.
So who are GI Joes? Special Task Force of Soldiers; not so rebellious that they have to be outlawed, but they jostle one another and talk back to superiors and yet they’re heroes who are sent off on impossible missions.
Their comic books were special, especially the one with Snake Eyes, who had an entire comic book dedicated to him which had no dialogue blurbs because he’s the ‘silent’ ninja. The original comic book team of GI Joes were: Hawk, Stalker, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Breaker, Clutch, Rock 'n Roll, Steeler, Grand Slam, Flash, Short-Fuze, Grunt and Zap.
In the movies, though, there’s a non-commissioned officer Duke who is in charge, played of course by Channing Tatum (I suspect he was cast mostly to bring the girls to the movie theaters). Most briefings happen inside an airplane or in the Pit - headquarters of the GI Joes - located in an abandoned base in Nevada. Oh yes, there’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to pick up the big guns. He plays Marvin F. Hinton and his nickname is rather appropriately: Roadblock. The movies are a tad offensive because Americans have had women in the armed forces for years, but you will hear dialogue like, ‘Girls with guns, eh?’ accompanied by a nudge and a snigger.
Scarlett is the only female GI and she’s a badass. Her rank is Master Sergeant, she is an expert in martial arts, acrobatics and counterintelligence. Seen mostly in comic books, she was featured in GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. And just so you know she ‘likes’ Snake Eyes, but he’s stuck on Ophelia… But I digress into the comic book world.
But comic book villains are so cool! The archenemy remains Cobra, but I love the idea behind a villain called Iron Claw whose baddies are called SKAR: Soldiers of Khaos, Anarchy and Ruin. Now that’s a great gang name to have.
Full recap
Since we’re going to start watching ‘origin’ films for GI Joe characters, let’s do a little recap of the movies, okay?
In the order they appeared: in 2009, The Rise of Cobra was the first GI Joe film to hit the big screen (it’s on Amazon Prime Video now). It was, like any other action movie, baaaad fun.
It’s science fiction and the world is being attacked by what can only be described as corrosive green nanomites. There are missing missiles and other exciting disasters waiting to happen and GI Joes will win in the end, of course, but what can they do if the most powerful man in the world (yes, you guessed right, it is the American President) has been replaced by a double?
I still vividly remember Jonathan Pryce in his double role, and am thrilled even today to see the bad version of the President producing a knife and cutting his face. The good president who’s been captured says, 'You’re insane!’ and the Cobra president says, 'It’s technology!’ These are just completely whistle-podu moments in these action movies.
The second film G.I. Joe: Retaliation (also on Amazon Prime Video) has some really cool action scenes of destruction in the Arctic, there are North Korean defectors, Pakistani nuclear missile sites (experience cheap thrills to hear Hindi being spoken in a Hollywood film!). But the funniest moments come when the filmmakers think that the action scene is totally amazing. Remember Power Rangers and their helmeted costumes? There is actually a rappelling scene on craggy mountains by not one but several masked baddies and the good guys are similarly dressed and they’re fighting with swords while hanging by ropes! It’s rather silly, but worth every penny you spent just to see Jonathan Pryce in his role as President of the United States happy to kill all GI Joes. This film is also perhaps the first film that shows us little bugs that fly in and actually ‘bug’ the GI Joe camp. Also a cool action scene from the back of an ancient flatbed truck introduces General Colton who has a stash like an arms surplus store!
Channing Tatum apparently so hated being stuck with the ‘Duke character in the film that he chose to die in this movie. Does this count as a spoiler alert? Hardly. As a fan, I’d rather see him as Magic Mike than this gun-toting lame-dialogue spouting soldier.
That brings us to this third movie Snake Eyes, which releases in July. Then why am I stuck on GI Joe right now? Because you have to watch the animated series first.
The entire collection is available on YouTube. This cool move by Hasbro, which owns the GI Joe brand, will help you see why action figures usually available for $20 are sold on EBay for as much as $7,500! And I shall tell you one more secret: Hasbro did not want to spend any more money on developing the action figure, so they saved lots of money by giving Snake Eyes a full face helmet! Yes, he’s supposed to be hiding a face burnt when rescuing Scarlett from a burning helicopter. But, hey, this was a move before the Mandalorian.
The animation series is very 80s, so you’ll be able to go on a nice nostalgia trip. So, Snake Eyes is a character who wears a black helmet and is an ace hand to hand combat person. In fact he is a sensei of the Arashikage clan and has his own apprentices. He is so struck by the death of his favourite pupil - Ophelia - that he goes into deep depression and is unable to get to his own wedding. I can imagine what that does to Scarlett, but we like broody characters who say practically nothing, no?
His vocal chords are rumoured to have been cut in a skirmish with Cobra, so it would be interesting to see how much he actually talks in the film. A little bit of nerd-level gyaan for you: He doesn’t have Adamantium coursing through his body, but he has a wolf as a pet, called Timber. So he’s a bit like Wolverine, no? He’s served in Vietnam and has retired in the High Sierra mountains (where Timber guards him) when he’s recruited as a GI Joe.
But it is Ninja skills that would be cool to explore in the film: Snake Eyes' sensei is Hard Master who teaches him secret arts where he can hypnotise himself into not feeling pain and no brainwashing can affect him. That power is called Arashikage Mindset. But his other secret power is mimicking or duplicating the heartbeat, breathing patterns like another person to almost becoming them! It’s called the Cloak Of The Chameleon. These super cool names turn me into a fan girl! Of course the trailer shows us the blind sword technique that the master teaches and when you’re watching these martial arts movies, the connection between the teacher and the student (my favourite is still Pai Mei, the white bearded Kung Fu teacher of the bride in Kill Bill) offer the best moments of the film.
I hope the film offers us a glimpse of Snake Eyes and his best friend Storm Shadow. The two are so different, and yet connected by war and life events… But I read too many comic books. I only hope the movie will not take itself too seriously, or we, the audience, will be deprived of discovering stupid parallels like Citizen Kane and ‘Rosebud’ and Snake Eyes and his ‘Scarlett!’
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