Why I'm Looking Forward To G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra

To tell the truth, I have been waiting for a movie like this to come along for some time now. Why? Because, if the trailer and the past history of the franchise is anything to go by, it's a movie featuring tons of cool characters who are immersed in backstory, with strange and cool abilities. It's not so much that these movies are rare, but rather that filmmakers usually tend to avoid the belief-suspending and over-the-top action sequences that they deserve. The way I see it when it comes to television is this: if it looks real, it's real. There is no such thing as being "realistic" in movies.

Realism is a noteworthy element, that if implemented properly can lend itself to enhance a movie by making it more immersive. But that's not how most action movies should work. Movies like The Matrix, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and Spiderman 2 are so immersive because they push reality. When The Matrix came out, millions of viewers watched Trinity leap into the air and perform a double side-kick, then run across the wall. The beauty of it was that what they were seeing on-screen looked very real, yet defied their expectations of real life. Those people that originally saw that first very famous scene in The Matrix were thinking something along the lines of, "OMG, THAT IS SO NOT HAPPENING!!!" Of course, that was why they enjoyed it so much.

It's often that people say the novelty of The Matrix has worn off what with all the "rip-offs" coming out. But I find it rather naive to call an over-the-top and slowmoey action flick a rip-off when The Matrix itself was merely an east-meets-west movie. Asian entertainment(specifically cartoons and anime) had been portraying that type of action for over twenty years. In fact, you can trace the origin of many of the most famous The Matrix scenes back to Japanese cartoons. It's just that only by around the year 2000 that we had the technology to pull off the same brilliant choreography in live-action.

What must be done now is push the boundaries of belief, coming up with wilder and wilder yet real-looking choreography. There's always room for more of these far-out, stylized action flicks; and Rise Of Cobra should be a good start.