Echoes of the Multiverse

So apparently after the two Live Action G.I.Joe films under-performed, they've decided to focus on the guy who is more or less the Wolverine of the G.I.Joe franchise and go into his origins, and perhaps build a franchise around it.

Yep, apparently everyone's favorite silent commando/ninja warrior is getting his own film in 2020. And to be fair, that's not a bad idea. Snake-Eye's origins in the comics were fleshed out in great detail by creator Larry Hama, and Snake-Eyes even got an extended origin graphic novel a while back that would serve as a great template for a film. You pull people in with Snake-Eyes and at the end have him recruited by G.I.Joe, which then serves as a follow up franchise with the opportunity to be done right.

Unfortunately, the early buzz seems to be largely clickbait around a potential casting choice for the lead, with rumors that Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding will be playing Snake-Eyes. Inverse writer Eric Francisco praised the choice with choice phrases like: “Finally, we can stop pretending to believe that Snake Eyes is a white guy.”



To be fair, these were the same people outraged that the Netflix Iron Fist series cast a blue-eyed, blonde-haired actor to play a blue-eyed, blonde-haired character.

One reason Larry Hama, who is Asian himself, made Snake-Eyes white was because he was sick of the "All Asians Are Martial Artists" meme back in the 80s, and wanted to make it clear that race had no bearing on how good someone was at a skill. That boiled down to hard work, so there was no reason Snake-Eyes couldn't be as good a ninja as his sword-brother Stormshadow if he received the same training and worked just as hard. It's like these people have never heard of Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damm, Westley Snipes, Steven Segal, or noticed that you can find people of every race at UFC and mixed martial arts tournaments.

Now, the casting choice is just a rumor and this was clearly done for clickbait, but the fact that it was done for that just annoys the heck out of me. It's incredibly disingenuous, hypocritical and honestly, racist. Still, fingers crossed this winds up being good. With Bumblebee rebooting the Transformers franchise and this perhaps doing the same for G.I.Joe, I'd love for some kind of well done Hasbro film cinematic universe.

I'm not too hopeful because Snake-Eyes' origin was all that was wrong with the GI Joe comics: ninjas, ninjas, ninjas.

It was OK when it was just the rivalry between Snake and Storm Shadow but it got out of control as more and more ninjas were introduced and eventually it was "if you're not a ninja, you don't stand a chance against one".

Yep, the blinding double standard when it comes to casting and the race of established characters continues. Don't change established characters, especially when the change is wholly unnecessary, it's disrespectful and lazy.

Shock wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 1:50 pm I'm not too hopeful because Snake-Eyes' origin was all that was wrong with the GI Joe comics: ninjas, ninjas, ninjas.

It was OK when it was just the rivalry between Snake and Storm Shadow but it got out of control as more and more ninjas were introduced and eventually it was "if you're not a ninja, you don't stand a chance against one".

It was okay at first, with Snake-Eyes and Stormshadow being the only respective ninja on their team and the two, while being impressive, weren't invincible. But the sheer amount of ninja nonsense just reached ridiculous levels as time went on, with more of the plot being dedicated to the ninja, and the ninja becoming increasingly more invincible. You'd get think like Storm Shadow beating Quick Kick in a fight while QK was armed with nunchaku and Storm Shadow was using the two halves of a broken arrow as a melee weapon. Quick Kick was suppose to be the Joe's close-combat expert and Storm Shadow just straight up kicked his ass in the space of a few panels.

Part of it was that, since Snake-Eyes was Hama's favorite character and the most popular individual Joe by far, the series grew to focus more and more on him, to the point that the series became G.I.Joe Starring Snake-Eyes at one point. I like Snake-Eyes, I like ninja and I love martial arts, but when that aspect started to completely take over G.I.Joe, it had gone too far.

If they wanted to put any thought in that casting, I suppose the case could be since Snake Eyes was an army brat whose father was stationed in Japan, maybe here his dad married a local?

Makes sense enough to me.

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 26, 2019 9:08 pm If they wanted to put any thought in that casting, I suppose the case could be since Snake Eyes was an army brat whose father was stationed in Japan, maybe here his dad married a local?

Makes sense enough to me.

There's been no confirmation in the casting one way or another. My issue is the idea being put forth that Snake-Eyes needed "fixing" and that the way to do so was to make him Asian.

Ares wrote: ↑Mon Aug 26, 2019 11:40 pm

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 26, 2019 9:08 pm If they wanted to put any thought in that casting, I suppose the case could be since Snake Eyes was an army brat whose father was stationed in Japan, maybe here his dad married a local?

Makes sense enough to me.

There's been no confirmation in the casting one way or another. My issue is the idea being put forth that Snake-Eyes needed "fixing" and that the way to do so was to make him Asian.

Well...it's how I'd do it anyway....

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 2:48 am Well...it's how I'd do it anyway....

And in so doing, you'd be disrespecting the character's history and his creator. A creator of the same ethnicity you're trying to elevate. A creator who made a deliberately anti-racist choice in creating the character. A choice you would be undoing.

BriarThrone wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2019 12:56 am

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 2:48 am Well...it's how I'd do it anyway....

And in so doing, you'd be disrespecting the character's history and his creator. A creator of the same ethnicity you're trying to elevate. A creator who made a deliberately anti-racist choice in creating the character. A choice you would be undoing.

In the context of the casting choice that was made, not with the character as a whole.

Don't go shooting the messenger.

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:44 pm

BriarThrone wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2019 12:56 am

Voltron64 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 2:48 am Well...it's how I'd do it anyway....

And in so doing, you'd be disrespecting the character's history and his creator. A creator of the same ethnicity you're trying to elevate. A creator who made a deliberately anti-racist choice in creating the character. A choice you would be undoing.

In the context of the casting choice that was made, not with the character as a whole.

Don't go shooting the messenger.

So, you're selecting the context you want and discarding the rest in order to justify the action that you've already decided on. That doesn't actually make the rest disappear and cease to matter.