The G.I. Joe toy line has enjoyed multiple incarnations, but the most impactful by far is the early 1980s revival. Supported by comic books and an animated TV series, and ultimately reimagined on the big screen, G.I. Joe keeps kicking. Now SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS tells the story of the character Snake Eyes (Henry Golding), opening up his backstory to reveal how he found a home with an ancient Japanese clan called the Arashikage after saving their heir apparent.
"To understand that we were rebooting [the movie series], we were wiping the slate clean — we were able to set the tone moving forward," Henry Golding said in a sit-down interview. The chance to make his mark on the series "was really creatively appealing to me, and so sitting down with [director] Robert Schwentke and understanding his take on this was really important and what he had in mind for the origin story kind of blew me away."
The explosive fight scenes, influenced by old-school ninja action, put co-stars Haruka Abe (who plays Akiko), Úrsula Corberó (Baroness), and Andrew Koji (Tommy Arashikage) through their paces. "We did pretty much all of it ourselves except the super dangerous stuff with the falls,” Koji said.
Abe added, "Most of the actors - we do our own stunts. Most of the time, which was incredible. It was very challenging and we trained very hard. We had the most amazing stunt team who were also our senseis who trained us four hours every day for like two straight months before we started filming.”
Check out our full video interview with the cast of SNAKE EYES below:
SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS is in theatres now!
All images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.