G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Went back to the Powder Mill AMC to see this, because it is easy to get to, and it has a nice parking lot with plenty of spaces. Was nearly alone in the theater for a weekday matinee.

Well, G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra was actually better than I expected, but only because I was expecting it to be on the level of Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen. The "New World Order" NATO superpolice military police was definitely offputting in a big way, but the story was actually engaging and the special effects were enough to keep me from really losing interest.

But I knew when I was getting when in the middle of a huge futuristic firefight, a hoverplane lands and out of steps a leather-clad female warrior with flowing hair. Right then I knew this was a "sexual inversion fantasy," in which kick-ass busty women run around thrilling their male counterparts.

That's exactly what happens. The back story of the movie, told in flashbacks, goes something like this: an American special forces officer, on the eve of deployment on a dangerous mission, proposes to his beautiful girlfriend. She accepts, then adds the condition that he must protect her little brother (also in his unit) on the mission. He accepts her condition, which weakens him as a hero. A hero, upon proposing, must insist on yes or no, without conditions such as these.

What follows is predictable: the little brother gets killed. The hero, ashamed, is unable to face his girlfriend and doesn't even attend the funeral. In response, his girlfriend becomes a kick ass warrior herself winds up joining a group of evil marauders who are intent on destroying the world. Talk about female rage arising from male weakness! Here it is in spades.

The dialogue among the special forces is packed with references to sexual denigration, with the idea that the men have become feminized. That's very on the spot. We have mindless chest-thumping violence that arising from male weakness.

Another love story sideplot involves a love-bitten starry-eyed male soldier and a hardbitten unemotional female soldier. The inversion lives on! And so do the crummy movies they make from them.

Well, not as crummy as others. Not completely unenjoyable, as I said. An obvious sequel on the way.