GI Joe: FUBAR

By Wolfen Moondaughter

I’ve recently skimmed the novelisation of the new GI Joe movie, The Rise of Cobra, and I have to say, I am FURIOUS at how they’ve FUBARed the characters. Granted, after how the Transformers were pretty FUBARed in their own film (the first — I have not seen the second), and considering some of the casting in the Joe film, I was already wary, but I was going to at least give the movie a shot, particularly since I did still enjoy some aspects of The Transformers anyway, and because Eccleston (my fave regeneration of the Doctor of Doctor Who) is in the Joe movie. I was also looking forward to the possibility of seeing one of my favourite pairings, Scarlett and Snake Eyes, on the big screen. Now, though, I have no intention of seeing the movie.

If you’re going to see the movie no matter what, you may want to stop reading now, as this is a very spoiler-intensive article. But if you’re on the fence, you may appreciate the warnings therein. Bear in mind that I’m talking about the novelisation, so the film may be different on some points, but if even half of the story is the same, there’s reason, if you are a long-time Joe fan like me, to be sincerely annoyed — especially if you’re a girl.

I realise that a different media is going to have some story differences from these that have come before, sure — there already have been sizable differences amongst the various animated series that have been done about the Joes — but with changes this big, why bother using the same characters in the first place?

For starters, Ana, the Baroness, is no longer the sexy German badass anymore. Now she’s Duke’s (American, if I’m not mistaken) ex-fiancée who is now married to a French baron/scientist. She was a baroness by birth in the comics — now she’s only one by marriage. She’s also programmed by “namites” (yes, that’s an “m” in the middle, not an “n”), so nothing bad she does is really her fault, although she feels guilty because she apparently liked doing the things she did. So basically instead of being a strong woman who does evil because she wants to, she’s been mind-raped and now is feeling guilty because even though she may not have wanted it, she found herself enjoying it anyway (never mind that that enjoyment could very well be part of the namite thing in and of itself); although, she does stop herself from killing Duke. I have no problem with redemption stories — love them really — but this isn’t really one, is it? Not when evil was forced on her. And to make matters worse, her special skill, disguises, is now attributed to her being infected with the namites — as is shape-shifter Zartan’s own power, so way to go to make his ability no longer special — rather than her own cleverness!

Her connection to Snake Eyes — the fact she thought he killed her brother — has been omitted. But she’s ex-fiancée to Duke now? And there’s no Baroness/Destro pairing?? Another disappointment for me. I mean, they’ve pretty much always been in love in the comics (and the cartoon!) — they were even married and conceived a child! But aside from a hinting that Destro’s attracted to her, that ship seems non-existent now.

Also, in this new version, Ana is Cobra Commander’s sister. CC, aka her brother, Rex, was mutilated on a mission he went on with Duke. Yeah, that’s right, CC no longer shares his own origin with Snake Eyes. In the comics, CC had a brother, Dan, whom he shared a deep bond with; Dan took extra tours in the military to prevent CC from being drafted. Suffering from PSTD later, Dan got drunk and got into a car accident, killing the family in the other car — who just happened to be the parents and twin sister of Snake Eyes. Twisted as he was, CC blamed Snake’s family for the accident. Here, though, Movie!CC just seems to have stolen part of ComicBook!Snake’s history rather than sharing it: in the comics, Snake’s face and vocal chords were severely burned during a Joe mission, and CC’s face was always perfectly fine. (While Movie!CC has ComicBook!Snake’s face, though, he retains the use of his vocal chords.) Movie!Snake, though, is not horribly burned.

There are other changes to Snake’s backstory that I’m not pleased with. In the comics, Tommy Arashikage, aka Storm Shadow, served with Snake in the military and was his best friend, even saved his life out in the field; when Snake came home and found out that his family had been killed, Tommy brought him to live with his family, where Snake learned how to be a ninja, and they became clan brothers. Their sensei, Tommy’s uncle Hard Master, was a bit of a bastard, pitting the two men against each other. Then the sensei was killed by Zartan, with everyone, including a broken-hearted Snake Eyes, believing that Tommy did it. But in this version, Snake, rather than being American soldier, started a street rat in Tokyo who was taken in by Tommy’s father, Hard Master. Tommy resented Snake’s presence the whole while, so that when Snake finally got a hit on Tommy during training, earning praise from Hard Master, and then Hard Master was then killed, everyone believed it was Tommy who did it, especially Snake Eyes. Tommy mentions Snake having taken a vow of silence (as opposed to his vocal chords being destroyed); I assume this was why.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I can handle the change of Snake not being a white guy or a soldier but is instead a Japanese boy raised in the martial arts (although I think it’s a shame to lose the idea of a Western man’s life changed for the better through Eastern Philosophy). And while I miss the angst of his mutilation, especially how it took his voice, I can actually tolerate the loss of that in the story as well (though I think it makes his origin a lot more bland and ordinary). What irks me is that there’s no bond of brotherhood between the two men in this story, and so there’s far less nuance to their interaction, their enmity clichéd and two-dimensional. I loved their friendship and the tragedy of them ending up at odds with each other for a time, especially capped off by Storm Shadow’s eventual redemption, as much as I love the Scarlett/Snake Eyes relationship. The bond between the three of them is why I grew so attached to the franchise in the first place”

I guess they figured that it was more important to give all the thunder to the “star”, Duke, and having him have all the ties to the bad guys was certainly one way to do it. There’s even a svebe in the novelisation where Duke strikes Snake Eyes during training, something that they say no one has ever been able to do (at least at Joe headquarters, The Pit).In upstaging Snake Eyes, Duke’s coming awfully close to being a Marty Stu! Yes, Duke’s a popular character and second-in-command, but he didn’t even exist in the initial wave of (80s-era) Joe toys; Snake Eyes, who has been around from the start, has, in the comics, often played a starring role — especially in the more recent comics from Devil’s Due, which revived the franchise. Duke is very popular, yes, but it seems to me that Snake Eyes is more so, so it seems odd for him to have such a secondary (and arguably two-dimensional) presence in the film — truthfully, I expected him to be the star!

And then there’s Ripcord, a definite Marty Stu in his own right. In the comics, Ripcord is a red-headed British paratrooper — and a third-tier (or maybe even fourth or fifth-tier) character. Now suddenly he’s an African American; okay, fine, whatever, I can handle that (though why is he called Ripcord if he’s not specifically a paratrooper?). What I can’t handle is that he’s suddenly gone from being a mostly just background character to being Duke’s BFF. Excuse me, why make him a major player in the story but leave out fan-faves Roadblock, Shipwreck, Quick-Kick, Spirit, Flint, Lady Jaye, and, more recently, Tunnel Rat?

But even worse, they’ve made Ripcord into Scarlett’s love interest!!! He’s now the wisecraker-with-a-heart-who-teaches-Scarlett-what-love-is. (Cue me yawning in a most spectacularly Technicolor fashion.)

Which brings us to my biggest complaint: the alteration of Scarlett herself. To start, she’s gone from being from Georgia to being from Canada — what, they couldn’t get an actress who could pull off a Southern accent? Still, it’s not a huge deal; I can shrug that off like shrugging off Snake Eyes being Japanese instead of American. But now Scarlett is also some sort of genius scientist (in the comics she studied law, not science) who believes firmly that emotions don’t exist and that love is just biology and sociology. In the comics, while Scarlett is very capable when it comes to fighting, she’s always come off to me as the heart of the team, the source of compassion, the one who makes them think about what they’re doing, and as a person who definitely feels and is willing to express love. And now she’s some cold fish, inept at the concept of love? Seriously, WTF?

The book even has a scene where Scarlett, giving in to the attraction she feels for Ripcord, hurries after him to blurt out to him, like a shy, panicky teen, that she and Snake Eyes are not a couple, that they’re more like brother and sister. Yeah, reading that that felt like a kick in the gut. Apparently we’re supposed to forget 25 years of continuity of Snake and Scarlett dancing around their feelings for each other (or the fact that they almost got married, even). The writers certainly seemed to have forgotten the fandom that followed the pair all these years!

I can understand wanting to reach a broader audience, but did that mean they had to leave a large chunk of the fandom out in the cold? I would think they would want to add to the pre-existing audience, not trade it.

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Wolfen Moondaughter is on the editorial board for the comics industry webzine Sequential Tart, for which she has written since late 2001. She’s an artist, too, having done spot illustrations for Dragonlance, among other things. In her spare time, she’s a rabid fanficcer/fanartist. See more of her work at her site, Wolfen’s Webworld.

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