Important thoughts about GI Joe: The Movie and Angry Red Planet
Catching up on some writing elsewhere, I have two new reviews up on The Cultural Gutter, for GI JOE: THE MOVIE and the Sid Pink classic ANGRY RED PLANET:
I WAS ONCE A MAN
"After a pretty great opening battle full of jet packs that affords the Joes an opportunity to pose majestically on the top of the Statue of Liberty, the action proper picks up with Cobra Commander and a guy named Serpentor screaming at each other. Serpentor was engineered from the DNA of history’s greatest conquerors to be the ultimate warrior. Cobra Commander should have known better than to trust the work of a genetic researcher who walks around shirtless and wearing a billowing purple cape, because it turns out Dr. Mindbender didn’t take into account how many of history’s greatest conquerors were insane. Thus, Serpentor emerged as something of a mixed bag. Everyone should have been clued in as soon as he started insisting on wearing a hilarious snake costume 24 hours a day. Where the hell did Serpentor even get that outfit? Did Cobra just have it lying around, like the mascot outfit at a fast food restaurant?"
MARTIAN MAN HATER
"According to Sid Pink, he wrote the first draft of the script sitting at his kitchen table, with his children serving as judges of would and would not be cool. I assume they were involved only in the Martian portions of the story — that or Sid Pink’s children have a voracious appetite for stock footage of airfields and scenes of guys standing around in meeting rooms. The dinnertime script apparently still needed a little punching up, which is when Pink called in Ib Melchior to jazz things up a bit with more scenes of guys in military uniforms sitting at a meeting table."
I WAS ONCE A MAN
"After a pretty great opening battle full of jet packs that affords the Joes an opportunity to pose majestically on the top of the Statue of Liberty, the action proper picks up with Cobra Commander and a guy named Serpentor screaming at each other. Serpentor was engineered from the DNA of history’s greatest conquerors to be the ultimate warrior. Cobra Commander should have known better than to trust the work of a genetic researcher who walks around shirtless and wearing a billowing purple cape, because it turns out Dr. Mindbender didn’t take into account how many of history’s greatest conquerors were insane. Thus, Serpentor emerged as something of a mixed bag. Everyone should have been clued in as soon as he started insisting on wearing a hilarious snake costume 24 hours a day. Where the hell did Serpentor even get that outfit? Did Cobra just have it lying around, like the mascot outfit at a fast food restaurant?"
MARTIAN MAN HATER
"According to Sid Pink, he wrote the first draft of the script sitting at his kitchen table, with his children serving as judges of would and would not be cool. I assume they were involved only in the Martian portions of the story — that or Sid Pink’s children have a voracious appetite for stock footage of airfields and scenes of guys standing around in meeting rooms. The dinnertime script apparently still needed a little punching up, which is when Pink called in Ib Melchior to jazz things up a bit with more scenes of guys in military uniforms sitting at a meeting table."
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