![]() There, Snake Eyes befriends Tommy (Andrew Koji), who is actually working undercover to take out Kenta they both have familial ties to an ancient ninja clan known as the Arashikage, which protects a sacred stone capable of untold power. After being spotted at an underground fighting circuit, Snake Eyes is recruited by yakuza boss Kenta (Takehiro Hira) to smuggle weapons in Los Angeles. (Resist the urge to shout, “the Chamber of Secrets has been opened!” in the theater.) But while the giant CGI snakes will (understandably) grab most of the headlines, Snake Eyes is an oddly intriguing (if flawed) film because of its characters’ choices, which is an element of storytelling that blockbusters often ignore.įollowing a brief prologue in which his father is assassinated when he was a child, Snake Eyes-yes, he doesn’t ever go by a real name-is driven by the single-minded pursuit of avenging his father’s death by finding and killing the man responsible. It’s a conventional choice in an otherwise unconventional movie-by which I mean Snake Eyes appears to be a grounded action film until a trio of giant, man-eating anacondas show up as part of a ninja training rite of passage. In the hands of Henry Golding, Snake Eyes not only speaks, but also shows off a handsome, unobscured face. Snake Eyes’s self-titled origin story doubles as a franchise reboot in 2021-and in the film, the character gets a reboot of his own. ‘Fear Street’ and the Revolution of the Rapid-Release Film Trilogy What Is the Twist in ‘Old’?īut a wordless ninja wouldn’t necessarily make for a compelling lead. Yet the temptation to flesh out any breakout character’s backstory is strong-i.e., discovering why Han Solo is called Han Solo-and Snake Eyes’s mysterious origins were ripe for the stand-alone treatment. The result was a character who soared during fight scenes and otherwise faded into the background, like a toy being put away on a shelf after a kid’s done playing with it. (Snake Eyes’s specific peculiarity came from the fact that his signature helmet in The Rise of Cobra had creepy-looking lips that were entirely unnecessary on account of the whole “vow of silence” deal.) But given Snake Eyes’s limitations as a character, martial artist Ray Park-known primarily for his memorable, if nearly wordless, portrayal of Darth Maul-was at least able to focus on what he does best. That overarching weirdness extended to Snake Eyes, a fan favorite who lets his ass-kicking ninja stuff do all the talking because, well, he had taken a vow of silence. After all, Joseph Gordon-Levitt showing up in The Rise of Cobra with a sleep apnea machine attached to his disfigured face was nothing if not an inspired choice: Paramount Pictures “I fucking hate that movie,” Channing Tatum said of 2009’s The Rise of Cobra, while costar Christopher Eccleston went even further by saying, “I just wanted to cut my throat every day.” It’s a tough look, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that The Rise of Cobra and its 2013 sequel, Retaliation, have been misjudged, there’s a cheesy quality to these movies that might be somewhat underappreciated in our current era of homogenous superhero blockbusters. Joe films don’t exactly have a sterling reputation-something that even the actors who participated in them can agree on. When measured against other contemporary action franchises, the G.I.
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