An ancient Japanese clan called the Arashikage welcomes tenacious loner Snake Eyes after he saves the life of their heir apparent. Upon arrival in Japan, they teach him the ways of the ninja warrior while also providing him something he’s been longing for: a home. However, when secrets from Snake Eyes’ past are revealed, his honor and allegiance get tested – even if that means losing the trust of those closest to him.
For those of us unfamiliar with the Saturday morning cartoon lineup, welcome to Hasbro’s B string IP cinematic reboot. After the success of the first Transformers movies, toy company Hasbro saw an opportunity to make more movies based on their pre-existing IPs. Whether it started as a cartoon and became action figures or started as toys and became a show is irrelevant. This international-style semi-explosive franchise doled out mediocrity in generous portions ever since its beginning. Hasbro, it seems, can’t get enough of it with their ever-growing Transformers world, and now it’s time to bring the Joes back. “Snake Eyes” upholds the mediocre action of its predecessors with rapid cuts, often at the expense of some impressive fight choreography, and litters its story with utterly awful exposition in a way that makes it very middle-of-the-pack.
For anyone unfamiliar, “Snake Eyes” is the ninja of the anti-terrorist unit the G.I. Joes. In the 2009 and 2012 movies, he never utters a word, only slicing enemies apart with his katana. Now, in a more international-facing venture, we get the true origins of Snake Eyes. Henry Golding plays the titular character as he’s discovered by a ninja clan, invited in to join them. Snake Eyes and his brother-in-arms Tommy (Andrew Koji) must protect their clan’s ancient stone from a ninja outcast who’s grown an army of Yakuza sword-wielding thugs, and allied himself with global terrorists Cobra. Snake Eyes’ struggle to uncover his father’s killer will lead him to clash with basically everyone until he finally discovers his path going forward.
Look, “Snake Eyes” is a very middling movie. The previous G.I. Joe movies never really found their footing as anything other than middle-budget action movies with overdeveloped CGI. The previous entries starred rising action heroes and a plethora of faceless enemies. “Snake Eyes,” at least, has more emotional depth than those entries and while that’s not saying much it does speak to the attempt at an origin story.
It would be punching down to poke the deep plot holes of “Snake Eyes.” We’re talking about a movie with a crystal shard that explodes people guarded by a modern-day ninja, murdering people with a katana. There are certain holes that leave a lot to be desired from the audience regarding characters: What happened to Snake Eyes’ mom? Why is Akiko an outsider? How did Tommy and his cousin feud? For an origin story movie, a shocking amount of origin is missing from the overall plot. Instead, we get multiple explanations of character intent (“I want to modernize the ninja clan”) and extreme exposition (“The G.I. Joes are an elite counter-terrorism unit”). I could do without many of those and arguably would strike those lines in the first or second round of edits.
Instead, I want to talk about while we’re all here to begin with: the action. “Snake Eyes” draws from a rich tradition of martial arts cinema. Much of the opening sequence owes its camera technique and fighting prowess to Hong Kong fight cinema. While its camera-whips and handheld running make the visuals all but impossible to see, it’s still in the vein of eastern fighting cinema. The rest of the movie lingers on these facets to some extent, but the budget has to show at some point and it becomes an incredibly complex dance of stunts, fight pieces, CGI, and plain ol’ camera trickery.
“Snake Eyes” started off very weak. The near-unintelligible amount of camera whipping made it hard to watch the opening fight. While the camera steadies over time, there’s still an insane amount of cutting to every battle. The hard work of fight choreographers and stunt choreographers goes unnoticed more often than not and cleverly construed shots can really enhance an impressive fifty-on-one fight but director Robert Schwentke decides to use every camera shot in the book. It’s hard to construe a fight when it’s stitched together from over fifty different angles. On-camera fighting requires camera trickery but lately, I’ve bemoaned the near senseless filming of these incredible dances. These choreographers take great pains to make everything look feasible or exciting. An editor can butcher all that hard work with their keyboard and mouse.
“Snake Eyes” could be admonished for its sexism (the all-powerful female team-up moment happens entirely offscreen) or for its lazy writing (a bad guy teams up with a good guy after being betrayed) or for its lifeless exposition dumps, but mostly it should be admonished for taking the one element we all wanted and chopping and screwing it into oblivion. Luckily for the film, the costume design, locations, and basic story carry enough weight to counteract the worst of this film’s sins. Instead of feeling like a blatant cash grab, this feels like a well-intended cash grab, designed by some truly trying to honor the material but not knowing the best way possible. “Snake Eyes” is weighted in plenty of bad ways and filled with only a handful of exciting action scenes, making it another very medium entry into an otherwise unnoticed action franchise mostly based around selling toys.
It says something that the last thought I had of the movie was: “They are going to sell so many action figures for this. Wait. Isn’t this based on action figures?” Ah, the cycles of commerce and art.
In Theaters, Dolby Cinema, and IMAX Friday, July 23rd
