Hollywood needs to be freed from the shackles that are shaky cam fight sequences.
I recently saw Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins and boy let me tell you, it’s not that great. The movie stars Henry Golding as Snake Eyes, Andrew Koji as Storm Shadow (watch Warrior on HBO Max!!), Ursula Corbero as the Baroness, and Samara Weaving as Scarlett.
Being a partial fan of the franchise, it was very exciting when I heard that Snake Eyes was getting his own movie. Snake Eyes is easily my favorite Joe, the early cartoons and late 2000s movies establishing him as a silent badass who drops in, cracks some skulls, and goes about his day. That’s the reason I like Snake so much. Bro just be beating people up and not saying a word. Snake being silent is a major part of his character. He fought a helicopter and lost (that is an overly simplified version of what really happened), requiring extensive face and vocal surgery. He’s been quiet ever since. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins disregards that story for no clear reason. In fact Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins disregards another major part of his origin to, this one kind of makes sense. In other media Snake is a white man with blonde hair. When G.I. Joe was created most protagonists of the 80s were white men with the supporting characters having some kind of color (most of the time they were just black). The movie casts Henry Golding as the titular Joe, completely dropping that white savior trope and for good reason.
On paper Golding’s casting makes sense but I wasn’t a fan of him as the lead. His performance reminded me of Lewis Tan in Mortal Kombat. Golding is good in Crazy Rich Asians but I just wasn’t a fan of him in this. Golding is British and just like Samara Weaving, who is Australian, the biggest battle the two of them face is trying to maintain an American accent for the entire movie. Whereas Golding’s is not as egregious as his co-star, it’s still rough. Weaving on the other hand was trying too hard to come across as an American. She sounded a lot like Brie Larson in Captain Marvel if that makes any sense. The movies keep painting the Joes as a “Global peacekeeping organization” (I guess Real American Hero means nothing to Lorenzo di Bonaventura) so I think it makes little sense for her to have to have an American accent. She could’ve been her natural Aussie self and it wouldn’t have been a problem. As for her character, Scarlett exists literally for sequel bait. Weaving is in the movie for maybe 20 minutes, having her own action scene in the middle of the movie and then being a part of the third act finale. Andrew Koji gets the MVP for best performance. He’s great as Tommy, later known as Storm Shadow, playing a man who doesn’t realize how much rage has blinded him until it’s too late. Every time he fought it was *chef’s kiss* especially when he broke out the white jacket and the double swords which is such a strange fit to fight in, especially with close combat weapons like swords. How do you avoid getting blood on white? And if he gets blood on it, is he taking that to the dry cleaners? Or does he just throw it out and get a new one? I have questions.
Ursula Corbero was a surprise as the Baroness. I had never heard of Corbero until she was cast in the movie and I was a little skeptical of the casting at first considering the Baroness is supposed to be European (French or Russian, I don’t think it’s actually specified in canon). Yes I had a problem with Sienna Miller in The Rise of Cobra, her performance was just lazy, kind of like the rest of the movie. My skepticism went away however once Corbero stepped on the screen. She’s really good in her role. Is it because she looks good? Probably. She still acted her butt off though. I really liked her costumes, she and the actual main antagonist Kenta (Takehiro Hira) had true supervillain costumes in the final act complete with unnecessarily large shoulder pads. The Baroness also had my favorite moment in the entire movie, after being betrayed by Kenta and joining up with the heroes, she dips out of the fight once she realizes that she has no reason to be there. The rest of the cast has the their moments here and there, the Hard Master’s (Iko Uwais) training session with Snake Eyes being a moment that stands out to me.
I thought the fighting was pretty good, even with the poor editing. The fight on the highway which was in every trailer was still good even If that was the movie’s entire selling point. As briefly mentioned before the fight between the Hard Master and Snake Eyes was enjoyable albeit brief. The big opening fight on the docks between Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow and the Yakuza was really good. Andrew Koji gets to shine in that scene, especially when he fights Kenta at the end of the sequence. Even though there were some great moments, those moments couldn’t save the rest of the movie which was bogged down by its poor editing and excessive use of shaky cam. The editing in fight scenes are laughably bad, especially in the scene that introduces the older Snake Eyes. American filmmakers have the idea in their mind that in order to show how frenetic and fast paced a fight is that the camera needs to shake like a geriatric stripper. On top of the excessive shaking, they also edit the crap out of the scenes making it truly impossible to follow anything that is happening, unless you want a headache. That first fight scene is truly one of the worst edited fight scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.
Overall the movie is wildly mediocre. There’s a few bright spots here and there but there isn’t much else to write to home about. It’s disappointing knowing that this movie is supposed to be the restart of a G.I. Joe cinematic universe similar to how Bumblebee was a restart of the Transformers cinematic universe, but I don’t see this franchise getting of the ground anytime soon, especially with the tepid response to this film.
Above and Beyond the Screen 