In a q & a with Variety‘s Michael Fleming, G.I. Joe director and Morlock flunky Stephen Sommers blurted out the following comments:

(a) “I don’t think the mainstream critics are relevant [when it comes to G.I. Joe] — they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. Transformers 2 got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?”

(b) “I’d shown it dozens of times, all around the world. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Aside from doing close to $60 million, it got an A Cinema Score with people under 25. No matter what the critics say, the under 25 crowd is what’s most important.”

(c) “I know it sounds cliche, but I don’t read [reviews]. Why would I? I make the kind of movies critics love to hate. They love dark and depressing movies. If you make those, you expect they will love you, you need them to love you. The kind of movies I make? They don’t enjoy commercial or popular movies. I would say that geek love is hard to earn, and I got that in mounds. All the internet movie-haters love this movie. To win them over was something.”

Sommers sounds the way I expected him to sound. Like a polluting chemical plant owner or some sort of defensive Palinesque reactionary who talks in simple-minded us-vs.-them terms. Guys like Sommers are what that book, “When Good Things Happen to Bad People,” was all about.