Another Obama Era film from 2013, one of my favorite recent years for cinema. It was such a highly political year for films and Hollywood was just starting to embrace the voice of social media and not yet trying to control it. In 2012, they fed into the hysteria of Mayan calendar apocalypse and with 2013 the bipartisan executives and stars either saw Obama as the Muslim Illuminati antichrist or flipped off the racist paranoid conspiracy theories. A few in the middle saw him for what he is: a popular NeoLiberal puppet with questionable authority but a typically human guy.
GI Joe 2 is interesting because it can't make up its mind and rather cowardly but fiscally walks the line. It casts Dwayne Johnson (Hollywood's Obama surrogate) as its hero. The Rock, like Obama, is a decent person with mediocre skill but a unique star magnetism. Interestingly, as "Roadblock", The Rock plays a militant lackey who is only in authority because the first GI Joe film's All-American white boy protagonist is killed. Already we get rightwing whistleblowing that blacks are subordinate and this liberal change is only temporary. The film shoehorns in some Asian characters for the Asian market but always reminds us that they are inferior to Snake Eyes. That would be true to the source material but its offensive here because Snake Eyes is barely in the story at all and the Asian characters are very important to the plot. In Michael Bay fashion, women are stripper-ish eye candy who are just skilled enough to not come off as mannequins. There's also the lame homophobia and colorism that comes along with every Dwayne Johnson role. Can we admit this guy is a sellout already? If he thinks Barack failed to live up to Ronald Reagan I would say The Rock has failed to live up to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The topper is the plot set-up by the 2009 predecessor's cliffhanger ending: that The President is a plant from the shadowy Deep State terrorist group Cobra. Now this would be a fair criticism of Obama's NeoLiberal and CIA ties, but "Retaliation" goes out of its way to draw parallels to Isis and The Illuminati. The entire film is a rightwing nut's militaristic fever dream that stops short of Reptilians ruling the planet (ironically, that IS the plot of the far superior 1987 GI Joe animated film).
Obama wasn't the superhero the Democrats claimed he was, but he was far from a bad guy. He was bad at national security, instituting crazy government abuses of surveillance and drone strikes and, when the Dems actually got control of the Senate, he didn't do much for the American citizen unless you were gay or rich. Because he played to whatever the leaders of the party wanted. This is what EVERY president has done since Kennedy. So why cast Obama as a demon? Why replace him with Trump? Because really, as this moronic meathead film displays, Republicans just want strong old school white male values in place with everyone lower than them on the pyramid food chain. Just... because. It feels right to them and this film disgustingly feeds that insanity, selfishness and inferiority. Oh yeah. For no real reason, the 2nd half of the film throws in a pointless role for Bruce Willis to browbeat The Rock, shoot people and give the Joes old white men as backup.
Its odd because while far from egalitarian or radically progressive the G.I. Joe franchise is very much against the regression, racism and sexism in this film. This film lacks the dark faces, estrogen and democratic patriotism that even Stephen Sommers brought to the childish 2009 film.
I love the G.I. Joe cartoon and comic books. This shitty, cynical film has nothing to do with it. It lacks the heart and most of the characters that G.I. Joe fans love. I'm not even talking about kids. A gritty Christopher Nolan style G.I. Joe film isn't a bad idea, but it should avoid everything this film is. But it shouldn't be "Dunkirk" either.
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