Behold, the incredible shrinking movie, not so much in length as in breadth and depth: G. I. Joe runs for 1 hour 58 minutes; Star Wars (1977) ran for 2 hrs 1 minute. The latter developed several characters (and two droids) in a good deal of depth, introduced a galactic empire, a mystical order of warriors, a psychokinetic power, an energy blade weapon, a moon-sized space station and a lot of other things (all new to the viewer) while telling a decent story. The former on the other hand, is a movie of a well known franchise with plenty of background that nevertheless spectacularly fails to achieve, well, anything. Anything, that is, except being a live action remake of Team America: World Police.
[Spoiler]
Amazingly, G.I. Joe covers the backstory of each character but the characters still remain essentially stereotypical: the Soldier (Duke), the Funny Black Guy who nevertheless comes through when it matters (Ripcord), the Tough General who cares but dare not show it (general whatshisname), the Babe (take your pick), the Cool Silent Guy (snake eyes) etc. The reason is that the movie rushes through the back stories, character development, explanations and basically everything that isn’t action, almost as if to say “character, schmaracter, now let’s get back to the ACTION!”. The Baroness’ and the doctor’s origins in particular could have been told much better — people just don’t turn evil on their heels like that. Also, the director doesn’t seem to understand the concept of pausing or slowing down – conversations and flashbacks cannot take place at the same pace as combat. There was no need to rush — they could have simply cut down on the action and told just one backstory, preserving some measure of mystery. Now they have nothing to tell in the sequel (yes, there is a sequel coming).
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The last three Star Wars movies, the two Transformers movies and the first of what promises to be several G.I. Joe movies were all clearly targeted at male teen audiences: thin on story, characters and complex issues, and thick on action, toys and scantily clad women (not that I’m complaining about the last three). Marketing and demographics have largely taken over the movie industry. It seems targeting a teenage audience not only maximizes revenue, but also cuts costs — younger viewers cannot sit in place for too long and therefore prefer shorter running times, which translates to lower production costs. Then of course you can fire the script writers, pull dialogs out of a hat and paste them together, sprinkle the whole thing with computer generated McGuffins, include all the boilerplate scenes (like the now hacked-to-death slow-motion Power Walk from The Right Stuff), hire the most-Googled actress of the year and Voila! Blockbuster.
