It's All About Expectations

The Pirate and I just got back from a fabulous day out that included a lovely breakfast, an amazing movie and pistachio ice cream. At this very moment, I am sipping the best gin I've ever had. I shan't tell you the name of it, but it comes in a bottle that looks like it should contain propane.

Back when I first saw the previews for GI Joe, I thought “I have to see this.” I'm a sucker for stuff blowing up and gleefully bad dialogue (not to be confused with unconsciously bad dialogue of the George Lucas type, where he has no idea what a moron he sounds like¹). I expected no plot whatsoever. I expected lots of creative digital explosions of stuff. I expected techno envy, because the characters would have battle rhinos and personal jet packs and all those other things that I've wanted my entire life and have been unjustly denied.

Having modulated my expectations to their very lowest setting, I was pleasantly surprised. There was a limping Swiss cheese of a plot – score! Of course the plot depended entirely on a series of flashbacks that reveal everyone's motivation to be laughably implausible, but in cartoons, nobody's worried about little things like motivation. The whole thing was so circular, with the guy we thought was the bad guy being secondary to the real bad guy who turns the hero's fiance into a bad girl and...nope, I've lost it. I was at the movies not an hour ago and the plot is already evaporating in a puff of nanobot-laced smoke. The most lingering image from the movie is Dennis Quaid, mugging shamelessly.

But who cares about plot - What about special effects? There were not only creative digital explosions, but creative digital metal-eating nanobots and, my very ultimate favorite, a spectacular final underwater battle scene that rivaled SpongeBob SquarePants for scientific inaccuracy! And gadgets? What didn't they have? Guns that attached to any surface, appendage or material! Lee Press-On Muscles galore! A Hummer with a cow catcher! Evil fizzy antifreeze! Robotuna!

It makes me think about the time that the Pirate and I played hooky from work one summer afternoon to watch LXG. Remember LXG? We'd seen the preview when we went with friends to see The Italian Job, and it looked fun. Oooh! we thought. All our favorite literary characters in a steampunky adventure. We thought there would be plot. Character development. The preview showed a woman in a long coat dissolving into a flock of ravens as she walked along. Was any of that in the film itself? It was not (to include, to my immense disappointment, the shot of the woman dissolving into ravens). It was unwatchable, and the Pirate and I spent the whole ride home bitching about what a letdown it was. Obviously, we hadn't correctly modulated our expectations.

At the risk of spoiling it for you completely, I will say that the ending sets things up for the next movie and makes no secret of it and I am as excited as I can be. With my expectations once again jacked down to their lowest level, I'll be there to see what else can be strapped on, shot off, molecularly dissolved, or blown to pieces!

¹ Now that I think of it, this is a movie adapted from a cartoon that was itself adapted from a toy. The movie dialogue sounded very much like the cartoon dialogue and was therefore self-consciously aware of the fact that it's aimed at 6-year-olds. There was much nodding and winking. Similarly, the cartoon series Clone Wars, which was NOT written by George Lucas, has wonderful cartoon dialogue which borrows heavily from actual dialogue from the Star Wars films. This once again affirms my belief that cartoons are the highest form of art.