So I had enough to drink that going to see GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra seemed like a good idea. And it was, bangs, ‘spolsions, comedy sidekicks to dull pretty boy action. All was present in this ridiculous live action remake of Team America: World Police. But even with my stout addled mind I wondered about the masterplan of the bad guy of the week, in this case played by Christopher Ecclestone doing a strange hybrid Glaswegian / Mancunian accent. He is an arms inventor and dealer who has developed some kind of nano-weapon that will go on to eat the Eiffel Tower in the clearest Team America nod in the movie. The plot appears to go something like this:
a) Sell weapons to the US government
b) Steal them back
c) Fail, steal them again – in the process infiltrating the base of deadly enemies.
d) Get husband of your evil sidekick to “weaponise” the weapons
e) Use on Paris
f) Try to use remaining three weapons to destroy Moscow, Washington and Beijing
g) Fail. Get caught
h) Replace President with “For he’s a jolly good fellow” whistlin’ master of disguise.
Clearly aspects of this plan may not have been in the original business plan (any bit with “Fail” in it). Nevertheless one wonders about the merits of stealing weapons back off people you have sold them to over the alternative: namely just making more of the weapons. You made them in the first place, you can make as many as you want. Though it strikes me not having the technology to “weaponise” your own weapons is a really downside in arm manufacturing.
Indeed while they are at it, when they infiltrate the base of the oddly named GI Joe organisation, inexplicably in an Egyptian desert, you’d think they might want to destroy it, rather than just steal their weapons. A couple of well placed bombs could easily take out a multistory basement built under two thousand tonnes of sand. For that matter, when they built their own secret base, hiding it directly under the polar ice cap may help directions home after a few pints, but makes it pretty dangerous if you are in a business where small arms fire might take place. Or indeed if you consider toying with installing a self destruct mechanism in your base.
Put it like this, if the actual point to the whole affair was to replace Jonathon Price’s President with a lackey, a quick bait and switch in the toilets would have been a lot easier. And it would not have involved Dennis Quaid looking mor uncomfortable than he must have been being injected into Martin Shorts arse.