G.I. Joe

Remember the comic?




Remember the cartoon?

Now here is the live action movie!

Will was SO excited when he saw the previews last Spring! I thought it would be an appropriate end of the summer movie. We went this afternoon and watched it.

If you can leave reality at the door, it is a very fun film. The special effects are great and the cast is so much eye candy.

The main comic/cartoon characters are all there.

The end of the movie sets up for a sequel and it was so fun to hear a young boy's voice in the theater ring out with an "Oh, no!" at just the right moment. The whole audience laughed! I hope he wasn't too embarrassed.

For me, the most fun part was watching my son watch the movie. He has been a big G.I. Joe fan for a long time. I don't mean a fan of the comic, or of the cartoon (which he has never seen). I mean that he grew up playing with the 12" Hasbro action figures. He owned several and their accessories could fill a medium sized bin. My personal favorite is the paratrooper with parachute. He has been launched off the roof several times.

I can't tell you how many times I have come into Will's empty room, only to discover that G.I. Joe has staged a battle in there. Will would leave them all frozen in the heat of battle. There would be Joes shooting at the enemy behind overturned jeeps. More Joes would be rappelling down from the top bunk, one hand on the rope, the other training an automatic rifle at the enemies. Once or twice the battle would spill out of Will's room into the rest of the house, even! I have a photo somewhere of several Joes rappelling on the blinds cords in the living room!

In fact, over the years, my daughter's Barbies often dumped Ken in favor of a boyfriend in uniform! Yo Joe! Poor Ken looks like a country club sissy pants next to bulkier Joe.

As Will got older, Joes battles got more bloody and grizzly. Many of his Joes are maimed war veterans now... missing limbs and coated in permanent marker blood. I am not thrilled about that, because now I can't save them for my grandsons to play with. But I understand the workings of a pre-teen boy's mind and don't find it as disturbing as my sister, Kirsten, does. What he has done to the Joes reflects a lot of what I see in the artwork of many of my male students at that same stage in life.

Fortunately, paratrooper Joe survived all the battles unscathed and has returned from war whole.