YMMV / G.I. Jane

• Accidental Aesop: While it's a gender equality Aesop, with a dash of You Go, Girl!, the torture scene also perhaps unintentionally highlights that a lot of men will hate seeing the sight of a woman tortured because of internalised beliefs that Women Are Delicate.
• Anvilicious: The gender equality anvil is hammered in very hard but it's still a good lesson. Equality means equality — and giving a woman the same treatment expected of a man.
• Broken Base: Viewers can't decide if Anne Bancroft's performance is too hammy and over-the-top, or effective enough for the character she's playing.
• Ending Fatigue: The movie goes on another 45 minutes after the climactic scene with the SERE training and becomes mostly a political story about efforts to frame Jordan for being a suspected lesbian and using it as leverage for base closures. Then there’s the mission in Libya. The original script even ended once Jordan survived basic training, with Ridley Scott pushing for her to face real combat at the end, wanting to emulate Top Gun.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A double case of this happens in the Japanese dub, and with the same character, no less: Master Chief Urgayle, since the movie was dubbed twice there:
    • In the dubbed version for Fuji TV, he is voiced by Masashi Ebara, who, a few years later, would end voicing Might Guy, a martial arts mentor who is the complete opposite of him in every single way.
    • In the home video version, he was voiced by Akio Ōtsuka, whose most famous role, Solid Snake, was tortured many times in all the games of the series, just like he precisely does here.
  • Urgayle's first name is John and holds the rank of Master Chief, much like the protagonist Master Chief (John-117) from the Halo video game franchise. In addition, he is supervising a very similar Naval Commando training program (adjusted for era) that Halo's Master Chief went through during his childhood and adolescence.
  • Jordan O'Neil shares a surname with Robert O'Neil, a Navy Seal famously known for taking part in the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound and for claiming to have killed him.
• Iron Woobie: Everyone wants Jordan to fail, and she has to endure all manner of punishment. But she takes it all in stride and just keeps going.
• Paranoia Fuel: The scene where some of the soldiers are taken prisoner — and their captors choose to torture Jordan because they know her comrades would hate the sight of a woman being attacked. A disturbingly effective tactic that could easily be applied to real life.^note This is especially considering, this is usually one of the main reasons given when the subject of women in combat roles is proposed for the U.S. military. Not necessarily that women wouldn't be able to keep up, but that their presence would disrupt the normal functioning of a unit, in that male soldiers would instinctively go out of their way to protect or save their female comrades instead of performing their role.
• Presumed Flop: The film is often touted as one of many Star Derailing Roles for Demi Moore in The '90s. While it got awful reviews and she received a Razzie for Worst Actress, the film actually just about broke even at the box office ($97 million worldwide on a $50 million budget), and quickly recouped costs by earning $22 million on home video. This attitude is likely because it followed the very rotten streak of The Scarlet Letter and Striptease.
• Retroactive Recognition: While Viggo Mortensen was building a high profile as a respected character actor, a few years later, he would be far better known.
• She Really Can Act: Well not at the time (see below), but these days people often hold this up as one of Demi Moore's finest moments as an actress.
• Signature Scene:
  • Jordan shaving all her hair off is easily the most iconic moment in the film.
  • Urgayle beating the ever-loving shit out of Jordan in front of the rest of the trainees, culminating in her promptly telling him to 'suck her dick,' is pretty memorable, too.
• Unintentional Period Piece: At one point in the film, the press tries to discredit Jordan on trumped-up charges that she is a lesbian and fraternising with women. This references the army's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that existed until 2011 — which meant that gays in the military couldn't be discriminated against as long as they were closeted. If Jordan had been fraternising, she would have broken the law. It goes hand in hand with Values Dissonance, where being known to be gay or even Ambiguously Gay could make someone an outcast before the 2010s.
• Values Resonance: The lesson of not giving females positive discrimination in the name of feminism is a lesson that's still relevant today.
• Vindicated by History: The film was met with lukewarm reception when it was released (though it was not a Box Office Bomb — grossing a respectable $97 million worldwide), and Demi Moore won a Razzie Award for it. At the time, she was still reeling from the backlash of Striptease and a badly received adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, so she had developed a sizeable group of detractors. This has levelled off in recent years, and many regard this as one of the finest performances of her career and a good addition to Ridley Scott's filmography.

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