Main cast: Henry Golding (Snake Eyes), Andrew Koji (Tomisaburo Arashikage), Úrsula Corberó (Ana DeCobray/The Baroness), Samara Weaving (Major Scarlett O’Hara), Haruka Abe (Akiko), Takehiro Hira (Kenta Takamura), Iko Uwais (The Hard Master), Peter Mensah (The Blind Master), and Eri Ishida (Sen)
Director: Robert Schwentke
The track record of movies that push inclusiveness and diversity as its main and only selling point is pretty dire so far. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is another of these movies, of which I have heard nothing about its story-related selling point but way too much about how they have finally cast an Asian guy as Snake Eyes, despite the character always being a white fellow all this while. You see, only Asians can do ninja and kung-fu stuff, and that’s not insulting stereotyping of all Asians, because everyone knows good Asians do flying kicks for at least an hour before they settle down for their morning tea and stuff.
Worse, and I can say this because I am a Chinese born and living in Asia, Henry Golding does not have a drop of Japanese blood in him. He’s half-Dayak, and I should know because I live in the country where he spent a while slumming and trying to be famous after he didn’t immediately catch on in the UK. He doesn’t even look Japanese, so how can those stupid white people in Hollywood claim that they are doing diversity and inclusiveness right by casting a half-white, half-Dayak fellow in the role of a Japanese protagonist?
Once again, Hollywood reveals that, to them, every Asian is the same, the whole continent is one homogeneous lot, and if the movie had kung-fu and explosions, folks in China will mindlessly watch and give Hollywood lots of money.
Now, I have no issue with characters of any race or religion or gender doing kung-fu and ninja tricks. I am only pointing this out because this “We finally have an Asian ninja… like it should be, because current year!” nonsense is the main selling point of this movie, and it’s not even done correctly. Mind you, this isn’t the only “inclusive” movie guilty of this all-Asians-are-alike nonsense (ahem), but I’ll stop here because I have a feeling I will have much more to say for a certain upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that white people are telling me that I’m supposed to love to pieces because they finally put an Asian guy on screen doing kung-fu crap like it has never been done before, and I’ll save the rest of my rant for that momentous event.
Okay, let’s talk about the movie itself. Now, I like G.I. Joe. I won’t say that I followed that franchise closely, but I had watched and enjoyed the early seasons of the cartoon in the 1980s. This one, however, is so completely dissociated from the cartoon even more so than the previous movie adaptations ever were, to the point that I wonder whether these people just fished out some B-grade martial arts script from a bargain bin and slapped the names of G.I. Joe characters all over it.
The race swap aside, this Snake Eyes also talks, doesn’t wear a ninja hood to cover his face, and has a completely different origins story altogether. Basically, this Snake Eyes saw his father killed when he was a kid, and now, as an adult, he is willing to work with dubious people to infiltrate and betray a ninja clan in order to discover the identity of his father’s murderer. Predictably, he soon feels conflicted about having to betray the people he has come to see as worthy and noble sorts, and here’s a shocker: the murderer of his father is one of the bad guys he will have to go up against later.
This is pretty much the premise of every other B-grade martial arts movie since the 1980s, and the only treatment to make this derivative story line stands out in this instance is that this movie has a bigger budget than the average B-grade martial arts movie and, hence, looks nicer because of this. On the other hand, the action scenes aren’t particularly impressive, and I have actually seen much better fight scenes in much lower-budget movies of similar nature like Ninja and its sequel Ninja: Shadow of a Tear.
The acting is fine from most of the cast, although Henry Golding stands out like a super sore thumb as the Japanese guy that doesn’t look even a bit Japanese, especially when he is surrounded by actual Japanese members of the cast. Sure, Iko Uwais doesn’t look Japanese either, but no one is claiming that his character is Japanese. Snake Eyes, on the other hand, is a vaguely Japanese-looking kid that grows up to look like a half-white, half-Dayak bloke. Did they cast him because he was quasi-famous after Crazy Rich Asians?
Andrew Koji, who has to play second fiddle here because he has the misfortune to be an actual Japanese, would have easily been a more believable Snake Eyes. He’s the more expressive actor too, because unlike Mr Golding that sports the same constipated-confused scowl throughout the whole movie, he seems capable of having at least two different facial expressions.
Samara Weaving is pretty alright here, but she seems to be auditioning to be the next Harley Quinn or something, as her character here doesn’t behave like the character with the same name in the comics and cartoons. I can’t hold that against her, though, as Snake Eyes, the title character, only shares the same name as the character in those comics and cartoons, and nothing else.
Simply put, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is a generic martial arts movie that I have seen many times before, only more expensively made but at the same time less entertaining than some of its cheaper-made counterparts. The miscast lead actor is distracting for all the wrong reasons, and it doesn’t even have authentic-looking martial arts scenes to elevate it above its tired-ass derivative nature.
Worst of all, it doesn’t even have much of the camp or unintentional comedy that makes many worse put-together B-grade martial arts flicks, like American Samurai and a hot David Bradley in tight orange briefs, still entertaining regardless. This one is just boring despite its gloss, a made-by-committee movie that doesn’t fully understand what makes a martial arts movie tick, while at the same time showing little competence when it comes to making a still entertaining film despite its complete disregard of the source material.
