Respond to these rapid questions in our Snake Eyes quiz and we will tell you which Snake Eyes character you are. Play it now.
How is it possible that the American ninja/spy film “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” is more dreary than it is amusing and entertaining? It’s hard to believe this isn’t the origin story for an action figure whose signature characteristics are his cool extreme sports outfit (complete with black visored bike helmet), his lack of speech (he’s mute), and his cool sword.
In fact, “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” is only occasionally as cheerfully silly as that sounds, as in an early scene in which a group yakuza gangsters load a few dozen swords into the back of a truck driven by Henry Golding’s title character. While it is occasionally entertaining, “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” is primarily a dreadful checklist of clichés that were already accumulating by the 1980s, when “G.I. Joe” was a popular children’s cartoon.
To avenge his father (Steven Allerick), Snake Eyes must assassinate an assassin (Samuel Finzi) working on behalf of Cobra, a terrorist organization with a penchant for flamboyantly dressed members. If it means betraying his best friend Tommy “Storm Shadow” Arashikage (Andrew Koji), the main heir to the clandestine Arashikage ninja clan, Snake Eyes is willing to go to any length to find his father’s killer. In order to earn Tommy’s trust, Snake Eyes must first prove himself to Tommy’s family, which includes surviving several ninja trials involving giant snakes and a magical rock. It’s hard to believe, but despite all of the giddy silliness, “Snake Eye’s: G.I. Joe Origins” manages to be neither a romp nor a snooze.
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What could have happened to cause this? Mostly because the filmmakers are committed to, but never fully invested in, the values and identity of a comic book antihero whose primary appeal is his strong, silent type schtick, and as a result, the film falls flat. Snake Eyes is one of those characters where a little goes a long way because, like the other G.I. Joe characters, there isn’t much to him beyond some popular, kid-friendly umbrella concepts like loyalty and honesty.
Snake Eyes Quiz
So Snake Eyes’ most important test of character will be whether or not he will sell Tommy out to Kenta (Takehiro Kira), a disgraced member of the Arashikage clan, in exchange for information about his father’s murderer. The answer will not surprise you in the least, but that is almost beside the point at this point. The real problem with “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” is that it provides an answer to a question that no one has ever asked, and it does so with a slew of overproduced dialogue and action sequences. However, it’s too polished to be considered a true war crime, and it’s also too bland to be considered an enjoyable summer film.
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In “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins,” much of the dialogue serves to exaggerate a convoluted story about stick figure characters who wander around formerly exotic locations—the neon-lit alleys of Tokyo, a ninja fort’s willowy cherry blossom-filled courtyard—and talk at length about betraying and/or testing each other. When asked questions such as who is Cobra, what is a G.I. Joe, why do you want to befriend Tommy so badly, and do you think we can trust this Snake Eyes guy, everyone has a long and/or sassy response to give. There’s also little chemistry between the film’s two leads, which may be due to the fact that they never appear to share screen time for more than a second or two at a time.
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Aside from being hampered by headache-inducing handheld photography (don’t bother seeing this in IMAX), the action scenes also feature ideas lifted from superior action films like “The Villainess” and “The Matrix Reloaded,” which makes for a stale viewing experience. It’s not that pandering to younger audiences is a new or inherently evil practice, but “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” spends far too much time and energy just to throw together a collection of clumsy tropes that don’t necessarily work together.
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Because, after all, we’re talking about a movie that begins with Snake Eyes stuffing an Uzi into the guts of a very large fish (because, after all, how else are you supposed to smuggle weapons in the twenty-first century?). It is later revealed that “Blind Master” (Peter Mensah), a blind ninja who is blind from birth, has camouflage fabric that allows him to blend into the background of a stone wall. There’s also a sparring match between Golding and Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais (“The Raid: Redemption,” “Headshot”), who plays a haughty ninja named “Hard Master,” that’s barely coherent enough to be worth mentioning in between these two scenes. The film “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins” contains a slew of other bizarre ideas and scenes that could have been entertaining to watch, but only a handful of them are actually entertaining.
Catering to children is nothing new, especially when it comes to big-budget films that are intended to exaggerate the significance of action figures in their lives. In the end, though, what’s the point if the best that can be said about what you’re looking at in any given scene is that ‘Well, they tried!’ It is also true that going through the motions is not always the worst sin in filmmaking, but it can be in a big budget spectacle that is only ever adequately staged and blocked. You can talk about the ritualized importance of family and honor all you want, but if there’s nothing on screen that’s visually arresting enough to justify all of your self-serious talk, what’s the point? That has the potential to be quite lethal.
The film is currently showing in theaters.
For more personality quizzes check this: In The Heights Quiz.
