It’s hard to know where to begin with this film. Much of my thinking about G.I. Joe mirrors my thoughts about the Transformers 2 film that I recently reviewed. Once again, it’s a big budget action picture, and-once again-it is loaded with CGI special effects. Unlike the Transformers movie, however, I felt that the special effects were very inconsistent. At times, they were highly believable, but at other times they looked almost cartoonish. The inconsistencies in the look of the CGI FX were definitely exposed as I viewed the film in a high-definition digital theater. In any case, there were times it really didn’t look that great.

Also, it seemed that much of the story (what little of it there was) was a mixing of elements from Iron Man, Star Wars, Transformers, and any war movie you’ve ever seen. It felt to me like they weren’t able to come up with a decent storyline, so they made up for it with lots of explosions and high tech gadgetry-just a whole lot of shoot-’em-up action without much purpose. And, it was certainly a movie that was more intended to introduce a series than to tell an actual stand-alone story.

Once more, as with Transformers, the biggest concern I had with the movie was that, although it was based on children’s toys and marketed in kids’ toys and fast-food meals, it is not-I repeat not-a children’s movie. Rough language, sensuality, and bloody violence (at times almost gory) made it a film that could easily be upsetting to children. There were some small children in the theater when I saw G.I. Joe, and that was truly unfortunate.

As for a lesson contained in the film, perhaps it would be that in the military realm there are times when human beings develop technology much more rapidly than we’re able to develop an ethical context for that technology. This is, of course, true in the field of medical research, biogenetics, and similar fields of study-but it is also true in the context of creating weaponry with which to protect ourselves from each other and/or destroy each other. When a technological leap occurs it’s a reminder that we, as finite creatures, simply do not have the wisdom to be able to properly handle our worst inclinations. That primary fault within us should point us to our need of God and the wisdom that He alone can provide. In an age of extraordinary technological advances, we need more than ever to grasp challenge of the book of James, “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you” (James 1:5).