Pissing In Your Cheerios Since 1976
Now I know everybody has a geek hard-on from seeing those pictures of Ray Park dressed up as Snake-Eyes for the new live-action G.I. Joe movie coming out next year.
But Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, while undeniably and obviously the part of the G.I. Joe movie that will rule the most, is unfortunately only one part. I mean, Ray Park as Darth Maul was pretty fucking awesome too, but that doesn’t mean Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was particularly good. Just as for every Darth Maul there is a Jar-Jar, so too for every Snake-Eyes there must be a Chuckles, for every Shipwreck a Lt. Falcon, for every Wild Bill a Quick Kick.
Now, looking at the cast list, there are some good choices (Arnold Vosloo as Zartan, Christopher Eccleston as Destro), some interesting ones (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander? Said “plays the terrorist character in every movie ever” Taghmaoui as Breaker?), some downright weird ones (the guy who played Mr. Eko on Lost as… Heavy Duty, rather than Roadblock or Stalker?), and some entirely predictable ones (Scarlett and the Baroness played by wholly replaceable non-entity actresses, I am shocked I tell you). So far, pretty par for the course.
And then I see it.
Marlon Wayans as Ripcord.
Oh my.
Remember the last time Marlon Wayans was in a movie featuring a property which nerds had been eagerly awaiting to see in live-action form for decades?
March 26th, 2008 la 11:11 am
Hey, I *liked* Quick Kick. But then again, I also like Johnny Cage, Wonderman and pretty much every other ‘I’m Just In It For The Money and/or Fame’ character in geek media.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:12 am
Oh come on! He was hardly noticeably bad in a movie filled with stunted acting and a plot so simple a blind monkey could figure the whole thing out five minutes in. Can you honestly say there is someone who could have played the role of Snails (I think it was?) as written and not come out looking like crap?That whole movie was just shitty. Plotting. Characters,. Script. Execution. Shit. T.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:23 am
Onion, Marlon Wayans was the worst part of a very bad movie. In a movie as bad as Dungeons and Dragons was, he was easily identifiable as the absolute worst part of it. That takes NEGATIVE TALENT.
Also, White Chicks.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:30 am
Pssh, Marlon Wayans was the shit in Requim, and White Chicks is all Shawn’s fault. Marlon is an awesome actor on the low.
He just needs to get rid of Shawn. That boy is draggin’ him down.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:43 am
I’m just going to see it because Karolina Kurkova is playing Cover Girl.
Warning, link goes to a woman posing in a bra.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:50 am
I just have to let you know what you started.
Tomàs: “This is understandable, because Snake-Eyes is awesome” is now my reason for doing everything.
me: laughs
Tomàs: It is INCONTROVERTABLE. “Josh, why did you eat all my bagels?” “Because SNAKE-EYES IS AWESOME!!!!!!”
Me: Ah, Snake-Eyes, what can’t you do?
Tomàs: MARLON WAYANS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Snake-Eyes cannot punch out Superman because Superman is too scared to be in the same place as Snake-Eyes.
me: laughs Snake-Eyes? Cooler than Chuck Norris.
Tomàs: “Superman, why are you running away?” “Because SNAKE-EYES IS AWESOME!!!!!!”
March 26th, 2008 la 12:25 pm
Actually, my line about Dungeons and Dragons was “If Marlon Wayans ISN’T the worst part of your movie, something is horribly wrong.” But I have to give him Requiem for a Dream props, even if it was a fluke. And maybe The Ladykillers, which I haven’t seen in a long while, but that was Tom Hanks’ movie.
I think Ray Park is too short and stubby in these shots, but I’m sure movie magic can fix that.
March 26th, 2008 la 12:26 pm
In all fairness, I think Marlon added a nice layer to “Ladykillers” as well. Sure, it was predictable, but it was still great.
And I have to echo the fact that there really wasn’t ANYTHING remotely redeeming about “D&D”.
March 26th, 2008 la 12:33 pm
I disagree. There was Richard O’ Brien.
That was pretty much it.
March 26th, 2008 la 12:35 pm
I am not giving props for Requiem For a Dream, people. Sorry, but I am in the admitted minority who thought that film was terrible.
And he was the least good bit of The Ladykillers, which was generally fun.
March 26th, 2008 la 1:14 pm
Wasn’t Ripcord white? I mean, I’m not opposed to changing the race of a character. I think Michael Clarke Duncan was a decent choice for Kingpin, for example. I just don’t get the jump from Ripcord to Marlon Wayans, no matter how impressed someone might have been by Requiem for a Dream. It would be like the casting director for the Speed Racer movie going “Hmmm… let’s see… who could play Racer X? Oh, I know! Martin Laurence!”
March 26th, 2008 la 1:19 pm
In all honesty, Marlon Wayans gets messed up cause he’s very good at doing goofy. It’s not his fault if people cast him to be goofy in a role that shouldn’t be.
Marlon Wayans can act very well. Requim is a sign of that. It’s not his fault he’s being asked to play stupid roles.
March 26th, 2008 la 1:36 pm
But it IS his fault he accepts stupid roles.
I think changing the personality of a given G.I. Joe is, for the most part, probably not a big deal. I mean, there’s so many of them that there’s really only a handful of Joes that you’d need to keep intact. Like, Duke, Token Female, Sgt. Slaughter. Seriously, is Ripcord really as important to G.I. Joe as Racer X is to Speed Racer?
March 26th, 2008 la 1:40 pm
I still don’t understand why anyone would use a personal symbol signifying “doing OK, then fucking up at the very end”.
March 26th, 2008 la 1:48 pm
It’s a Hollywood movie, it’s automatically ruined from that simple fact.
March 26th, 2008 la 2:45 pm
It’s a Hollywood movie, it’s automatically ruined from that simple fact.
Generalizations are never wrong.
March 26th, 2008 la 4:04 pm
Actually I thought Snails was the only decent bit in the first D&D movie. But then Marlon is a gamer nerd so I’m biased…
But then I’m not planning on seeing the G.I. Joe movie. For the same reason I’ve avoided the Transformers movie. Its a live-action version of a show from my childhood that ACTUALLY WASN’T VERY GOOD once I stopped being twelve…
Though on the plus side no Micheal Bey for this one…
March 26th, 2008 la 4:53 pm
Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Seriously? Because that just seems like about the most non-Cobra Commander actor in the world, ever. I would be believe you more if you said they were digitally altering existing film to have Audrey Hepburn play Cobra Commander. You’re fucking with me, right?
March 26th, 2008 la 5:25 pm
I loved the Transformers movie. Shia LeBouef (sp? I’ve tried it a couple ways but can’t get it to look right) was totally hysterical, and Fox was just uber, uber hot. The extended sequence when the Autobots follow Shia home so that he can retrieve the secret glasses had me laughing from start to finish. I mean, sure, the plot with the glasses themselves was iffy at best, and the cube was nothing more than a MacGuffin, but John Turturro is usually pretty awesome (Brain Donors and The Illuminatus ftw), and he was in full-on spastic paranoia mode.
So far as Requiem for a Dream, I’ll admit I liked it when I watched it and thought it was rather good (and Jennifer Connelly is hot), but I don’t really like Aronofsky that much. My writing program is known for having employed Selby (I wish I’d attended then. Alas. But, hey, Kershner’s rad, even if deaf), and I liked his novel. But the real shout goes to the score, written by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet, because it’s awesome (used in the Two Towers trailer), as is its remix CD.
I don’t really have anything constructive to add otherwise; I’m not really the demographic for it (I hate war movies, Three Kings being the lone exception so far).
March 26th, 2008 la 5:48 pm
OMG someone except me and my friends actually thought Requiem for a dream was bad As well as transformers?
Thank you interwebs for making me feel less alone.
On the other hand the D&D movie was the purest pike of crack I have ever seen. So many quotes. Such a bad movie. I love it. And yet, I still can’t for the life of me remember Wayans in it. Obviously I am surpressing.
March 26th, 2008 la 6:34 pm
My only concern is that they’ll nerf Cobra into some realistic terrorist organization and keep them from developing any kind of fantastic super-science weaponry that they developed over the years.
Like the MASS device, the weather controller, the pyramid of darkness. That’s just classic Cobra technology.
Naturally, the conservative fans are up in fat, hairy arms about how GI Joe isn’t an All American Hero anymore and that they belong to the UN instead of the USA. Like their base location will matter if Cobra isn’t the fanged serpent they’ve all known and loved.
March 26th, 2008 la 7:21 pm
If the GI Joe movie is based on the comics, it may still be good. If it’s based on the cartoon, it’s doomed regardless of who’s in it. I am, of course, speaking from a plotting/characterization perspective.
But yeah, Wayans. Yikes.
March 26th, 2008 la 9:34 pm
See, I’m confused, because I thought Marlon Waynes was the most talented actor in Dungeons & Dragons.
Admittedly, the last time I watched that movie, me and my buddies got ripped on Jack Daniels and argued loudly about what exact rules were being violated by each scene and what the players were doing wrong.
March 26th, 2008 la 10:01 pm
I just thought I’d bring forth this little peice of horror.
http://movies.ign.com/articles/815/815454p1.html
Gi Joe is no longer a real american hero.
“G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. The property is closer in tone to X-Men and James Bond than a war film.”
March 26th, 2008 la 10:36 pm
^^^
But then Hasbro went and said they’re based out of The Pit (somewhere in PA, I believe), so basically I don’t think anyone involved in this film is talking to anyone else.
While I will probably see this movie (What, I like explosions), I have the barest memories of the cartoon and therefore no real vested interest beyond the fact that IF Joseph-Gordon Levitt is Cobra Commander, I will never be able to stop laughing.
March 26th, 2008 la 11:14 pm
Not that I expected it to be a masterpiece in the first place, but the fact that they made GI JOE a multinational agency killed any interest I had in the film. It just kind of misses the point somehow. You can have a movie about a multinational anti terror team, but it wouldn’t be GI JOE.
Now what I think could be cool is if they wrote a script that involved the October Guard. I have this image in my head of the core members of GI JOE, their team long de-funded after years of no COBRA sightings, getting together with the likewise impoverished and disbanded October Guard to defeat an attempt by COBRA to take over Russia. You could do all kinds of references to the cold war and how GI JOE started out as a publicity stunt and ended up saving the president from COBRA, or something similar. The October Guard being created in response to GI JOE, because it was the cold war and all.
March 27th, 2008 la 2:36 am
“OMG someone except me and my friends actually thought Requiem for a dream was bad As well as transformers?”
Lots of people thought Transformers sucked. Even after they got Peter Cullen to be Optimus. Witty insults like Bayformers and Gayformers got thrown around like candy.
“Naturally, the conservative fans are up in fat, hairy arms about how GI Joe isn’t an All American Hero anymore and that they belong to the UN instead of the USA.”
“You can have a movie about a multinational anti terror team, but it wouldn’t be GI JOE.”
Back in the ’80s, when they showed GI Joe in other parts of the world, it was “Action Force: International Heroes,” rather than “GI JOE: A Real American Hero.”
March 27th, 2008 la 8:21 am
“Back in the ’80s, when they showed GI Joe in other parts of the world, it was “Action Force: International Heroes,” rather than “GI JOE: A Real American Hero.””
Yes, but here in the US it was GI Joe. If they want to redub it for the rest of the world I guess I don’t have a problem with that, but it somehow annoys me that they’re changing the base concept from the get-go. Somewhat silly I know, but the annoyance is still there.
March 27th, 2008 la 12:26 pm
“And I have to echo the fact that there really wasn’t ANYTHING remotely redeeming about “D&D”.”
Tom Baker.
Granted, it seemed as if he phoned in his 2 or 3 lines, but you can never go wrong with Tom Baker.
What I want to know is - who will be playing Snow Job?
March 27th, 2008 la 1:29 pm
I know next to nothing about GI Joes– but the trend recently is to take perfectly good nerd stuff and make it all realistic and crappy, so. I wouldn’t have any hope, guys.
March 28th, 2008 la 12:07 am
“And I have to echo the fact that there really wasn’t ANYTHING remotely redeeming about “D&D”.”
It wasn’t D&D 2: Curse of the White Dragon. A movie that, impossibly, manages to trump its predecessor for sheer stupidity.
“When the random white dragon attacks, the epic druid will use Burning Hands!”
March 31st, 2008 la 3:57 am
To be fair, Marlon Waynes was good in Requiem For A Dream.