It's become almost expected that a video game based on a movie is going to be horrible. Still people rush out to buy G.I. Joe: The Video Game because they want to be able to play as their favorite character from the movie. Well not that movie because it was like watching puppies get murdered for an hour and a half. It's been said that in certain situations just before you die there is this level of calm that passes over you. You're ready to die. At 22 minutes into that movie I felt that and it scared me a little because I didn't want to be ready to die. This movie and everything associated with it (even the collector cups) is a perfect example of a wasted opportunity.
Before I talk about the movie itself, video games based on movies are a strange thing these days. It's become this weird circle of loathing. It's expected that the game will be bad, often times the game is bad, people buy the game anyway, and then complain about video games based on movies being bad. I wonder if the developers accept this and that allows for the quality to stay in the toilet. It's very much like the example I used in Stolen Opportunities. There must be some level of success because there's no end to bad video game/movie tie-ins.
G.I. Joe has been around (at least in its most recognizable form) since the early 80s. It allowed boys to play with dolls by calling them action figures and making them smaller than Barbie. He came with tiny accessories and weapons. Each one had a different job or specialty. Wait, how is this not a doll? Anyway. For years there had been talk of a live action movie showing how Joe would protect America's freedom from the faceless bad guys known as Cobra. The problem of course was that war isn't exactly kid friendly, especially when America has been in an armed conflict every decade since WWII.
Finally after it was shown that various "kid" properties like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Transformers could be insanely successful, they started working on the live action movie everyone (and by everyone I mean those who owned the toys and could name every character to this day) was expecting. Fast forwarding past all the signs and portents that indicated something about this movie wasn't quite right, the film is released. Shockingly the thing was a disaster and millions of fanboys, who had been waiting their entire lives for a real movie, wept.
The really sad part isn't just that the movie was bad. It's that if they had taken it a little more seriously and thought about establishing something that could last, the movie might have been ok. There are no illusions about a movie called G.I. Joe being remembered like Citizen Kane, but it could have been something remembered fondly and possibly opened the door to a new generation of fans. Instead they made it into some half-ass cartoony spectacle that even children don't want to watch. So now G.I. Joe will go quietly back into the realm of nostalgia.
It's not just franchises that waste their chances. Individual actors do it too. Not being an actor I have no idea what it must be like to be struggling to stay in the spotlight before your 15 minutes is up. Look at some of the Academy Award winners who have just squandered their potential by making terrible movies. Tommy Lee Jones won in 1994 and by the next year he was playing Two-Face in Batman Forever. After that he went on to play various roles in several forgettable movies. In 1996 Cuba Gooding Jr won and since then he's starred in movies like Chill Factor, Rat Race, and Snow Dogs.
Now I get that having the statue doesn't mean you get to just pick and choose, but I have to imagine it has some pull. When Meryl Streep won her award for Sophie's Choice, there's no doubt she was offered ridiculous roles for female buddy movies or the chance to star with a talking donkey. The difference was that she didn't take them. Instead of wasting that limited amount of time she continued to make quality movies. Well until she made She-Devil, but that was a one-time mistake in judgement.
There are several young actors out there who showed promise at possibly being very good, but instead they wander off to do something else. Ashton Kutcher is one I think of. He was good on his television show. He made a couple movies that showed he could act. Instead of going with this he went with the safe play, made some movies where the plot and characters were interchangeable with each other and is now selling cameras. Maybe this is actually genius, for right now. He's probably making a ton of movie just lounging around for minimal work. The question is, as an actor what is he going to do in 5 or 10 years? The shelf life for young actors is always so short, so it seems like a mistake to be wasting it on showing us practical jokes.
I get that in the entertainment business it's probably better to take the money and run than try to make a serious living at it. It's possible that most people get into it not really caring if they make a quality product. They just want the movie associated with it so they can be famous for a little while. That just makes us, the audience, that much more quick to dismiss someone when they come along. Eventually our attention span will be calculated in nanoseconds.
