Gingerbreadgirl Productions Movie-tastic Awesometown

I finally bothered to watch G.I. Joe - The Rise of Cobra now that I can actually watch it for free.  After all who, could be expected to actually pay money for this train wreck of a movie?  Apparently almost $150 million worth.  This is not a review of the movie though.  I could cut it all to ribbons but we all know exactly what this is -- a cash grab based on a toy franchise.

Recently I started going back and listening to old podcasts.  While listening to the review on the slashfilmcast, they appropriately talked about how crappy it was while at the same time enjoying the (hopefully) unintended camp value.  But in their followup show an argument errupted with guest Laremy Legel from film.com who wrote about the increasing problem of people lowering expectations for movies.  The main example that he used to base this off of is people being willing to say "well it's based on a toy franchise, what do you expect?"  Laremy's counter-arguement was that this is no excuse and that as audience members, we should expect, nay, demand a good movie every time out.  In particular, Adam Quigley of the slashfilmcast argued that it's more dependant on what the filmmaker was intending and that if indeed Stephen Sommers, knowing the already ludicrous nature of the subject material, decided to make a ridiculous tale that didn't take itself seriously, then he succeeded.  In short, he wanted to make a stupid movie and achieved his goal.

This begs the question, is it okay to make what is essentually a purposefully stupid or "bad" movie?  My own opinion is that no it isn't.  No it's not valid to compare something like G.I. Joe to a Coen Brothers movie, but the simple fact is we've seen other debatably silly properties turned into great movies.  What would a director like Sam Raimi do with it?  How would Peter Jackson have handled Transformers?  Why is it Bryan Singer can make an excellent movie like X2 and Brett Ratner can completely undo everything with X3.  The simple fact is that some people are competant storytellers and some people are not.  Stephen Sommers has proven over the years that he is not a good filmmaker, and yes, I hope to one day be able to go up to Mr. Sommers and tell him to his face how crappy I thought Rush Hour 3 was, and while he's confused I'll already be heading for the door with his wallet in my pocket.

A good example of an intentionally "bad" movie would be the Crank series.  In that Neveldine/Taylor manage to make a balls-0ut, ludicrous and unapologetic movie.  The larger difference is that Crank so unabashedly pushes the envelopes of quality and taste in such an audacious way that it becomes an artform unto itself.  With something like G.I. Joe however, there's nothing over the top, groundbreaking, envelope pushing, original or inspired.  It really is a movie that is made specifically to please a carefully calculated test audience in as bland of way as possible.  For Sommers to say, and not that he has, or for people to defend this movie on the basis that it's supposed to be dumb, really is just a case of laziness and lowered expectation.

Despite my massive disagreement with Adam Quigley in this case, the slashfilmcast is still one of the best podcasts I've heard and I recomend listening to it on a regular basis.  I also heartily recommend them inviting me on as a guest. (hint, hint)