Back in the "day", as the kids say, there were only three female GI Joe action figures. Two of them (Scarlett and Lady Jaye) worked for the Joes, the third (The Baroness) worked for that terrorist organization bent on world domination: Cobra! Please, no one email me and complain that I left out Jinx or the cute punker Zatara. I’m talking about the original three women in GI Joe. Which one the boy preferred when he was…um…alone said a lot as to what kind of girl he would look for once they no longer had cooties. I should warn those who do not know (or choose not to know) that all boys at one time or another imagined themselves saving said GI Joe character and thus earning her eternal "devotion". Well, in the case of the Baroness if was…um…I’m getting ahead of myself.

Scarlett was the All-American girl. Scarlett was the woman who dated the captain of the football team, but knew how to change her own oil if she had to. With her red flowing hair, and tight fitting gloves, Scarlett was the woman you could bring home to mom. The boy who dreamed of Scarlett wanted the white picket fence in surburia, 2.5 kids, and a job that granted good benefits and retirement at 62. Scarlett would be a loyal and true girlfriend, and although she wouldn’t take any crap from you, she would never give you cause to mistrust her. Unlike the next character…

The Baroness was Cobra’s chief intelligence officer, and like so many members of Cobra came from the European elite. It is fitting that the Baroness serves on the side of evil, as she is a bad, bad girl. Dressing in skin tight black bodysuits, she is often shown with a slim and sexy rifle and her trademark glasses. If Scarlett is the one you bring home to mom, Baroness is the one you make a video with and brag to all your buddies about, assuming she doesn’t bust your ass first. Rare was the image of a 12 year old saving the Baroness from certain doom, Baroness was the person you got when you were "careless" and needed to be punished. That brings us to the final figure boys would think about…

Lady Jaye was GI Joe’s most rounded team member. She was skilled in all forms of combat and spoke over six languages. With her short brown hair, mousy looks, and olive jump suits Lady Jaye was a favorite of…of…of that girl with the messy hair that insisted she get to play with you also. It was the same girl who didn’t date much in high school and when you finally got the nerve to ask her out years later she simply shrugged her shoulders, shook her head and said: "Poor, poor boy. I’m afraid there isn’t anything you could offer me, but you do flatter me". I never did figure that one out.

So which character was my favorite? I really shouldn’t say, as I don’t want to disturb any people who may read this…but… I always had a thing for women in glasses… Don't look at me that way, at least I left out the obvious Kung-Fu grip jokes!

And, now you know…and well…Knowing is half the battle!

Because it sounds derisive at first, but I find that if GI Joe is going to work, it needs to look like this, and it needs to be as campy and cheesy as possible. Yes, I know Larry Hama managed to make more serious stories work in the comics realm, but sometimes things that work in 4 color glory on cheap stock seriously do not work on screen. They just don’t. And too many people in the movie going audience only remember the cartoon. And trying to apply anything resembling a millimeter’s worth of depth to this film is going to be a waste.

I gotta think that’s why they hired Stephen Sommers in the first place. Van Helsing. The Mummy. Deep Rising. This is not a man known for subtlety, for character shading. He got the fop from Moulin Rouge to play Dracula and made him chew scenery until his jaw fell off. He’s Paul W.S. Anderson with a budget. And who directed Mortal Kombat? Paul W.S. Anderson. As a matter of fact, it still stands as his best movie. And it’s big, dumb, wasteful, throwaway cheese.

That’s the only way Mortal Kombat was going to work as a movie, and I believe the same thing about GI Joe. It’s fun and doofy. I know people are going to point to Michael Bay’s “Transformers” as an example of how you can give a movie based on a toy line some gravitas, but I think too many people confuse real gravitas with overheated bombast—which is Bay’s natural setting. That’s his neutral gear. Plus, for as much as his overexposure is grating now, Shia LeBeouf’s wide-eyed awe helped transport people into the headspace where the awe of 50 foot tall alien robots was realer than any effect onscreen.

There’s no room for such awe in a GI Joe movie. It’s not built for that. It’s built to be pretty and make loud noises. Channing Underwear model is the lead across Heath Ledger v 2.0 aka Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander. It’s built to be The Big Hit crossed with Torque glazed with The Mummy. It’s a chance for people who grew up with these toys and this cartoon to play with those toys while cameras are running, and that’s it. There’s something cool about that: My generation grew up and decided to make GI Joe and Transformers movies. Wasteful or not—my geek heart says that’s damned cool.

Expecting pathos and gravitas from Stephen Sommers pointing a lens at his hand moving a ¾ inch plastic man and going “Pkewww, pchraaargh” is a recipe for disappointment, though. It’s inevitable that people will feel that disappointment, because one of the afflictions of the modern geek is the need to take elements of childhood fun, drag them into adulthood and shade everything with charcoal and noir grime no. 4.

But I look at these pictures and I think “Mortal Kombat all over again” and I grin, because it’s about time something big, loud, and dumb was unleashed on our nostalgia-addicted eyes the way Mortal Kombat was. This might be just as perfect a marriage of content and director as Bay and Transformers was. And these images reinforce that notion. These aren’t actors. They’re toys. If the movie looks plasticene and silly, good. It’s a GI JOE movie. It’s more than appropriate that everything I’ve seen looks like a toy. And I’m curious to see how Sommers is going to push these toys around the sandbox.