Opening later this month, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is a brand-new reboot of the famous franchise. So Channing Tatum’s Duke? Dwayne Johnson’s Roadblock? Those guys and everyone around them are gone. Now we’re restarting with Snake Eyes, one of the more popular characters, who also doesn’t usually speak.
That’ll change in this film, though, because Snake Eyes is played by Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding. And Golding lends his voice to this super cute, clever new video created by Paramount and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. It uses G.I. Joe toys to explain who is actually in Snake Eyes, who isn’t, and why this movie exists at all.
The video is obviously messing around but it is accurate. Well-known G.I. Joe characters like Storm Shadow, Baroness, and Scarlet are in the film while the other toys in the video — including Duke, Gung Ho, Lady Jaye and Roadblock — are not. But their inclusion makes it fairly obvious those are characters could appear in sequels, if this movie is a success. Which is certainly not a guarantee.
When the first Snake Eyes trailer was released, we were lucky enough to talk to Golding about the role and he explained that follow-ups to Snake Eyes are already being considered. “I know for a fact that they’re already in the works,” he said. “Speaking to Lorenzo [DiBonaventura], our producer, they’re already thinking, because we can take this anywhere — but depending on how Snake Eyes does in telling specific stories will tell us where we want to take and how to expand the universe. Because if we jump into just a huge G.I. Joe universe and introduce 12 characters, people are going to be like, ‘Oh well yeah. OK, that guy’s cool. That guy does this thing.’ But they don’t know anything about them. So to be able to build the characters from day one, I think, is the real gift.”
That gift is coming sooner than you might have realised, since Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins opens in Australian theatres on July 22. Here’s a new featurette too.