Comic book legend Larry Hama has responded to critics of the upcoming Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins film who suggest that casting British-Malaysian actor Henry Golding in the lead role flies in the face of the comic book legacy.
Hama, the creator of the modern silent ninja warrior Snake Eyes, spoke to Fandom to explain why race isn’t the most important thing when it comes to the character.
“You have to understand that almost all of GI Joe has always been retconned,” he said.
Pointing to the differences that all comic adaptations have between their various film and animation versions, Hama said that the characters are held together by their consistency of values and personality.
Hama served as executive producer on the film and played a large role in keeping it as thematically true to its legacy as possible while updating the story for the 21st Century.
Not all fans were happy with the announcement of Golding as Snake Eyes. Some noted that Snake Eyes being a white man with ninja training made him a ‘gaijin’, an outsider, and that played a big role in who he was.
From what we’ve seen of the film, Snake Eyes is found by Storm Shadow working in a fish processing plant. His outsider nature is highlighted by his lack of a family and a place in society – not necessarily his race.
Noting the racial undertones of the criticisms, Hama said that fans who can’t or won’t accept the modernising of comic narratives are “toxic”.
“They’re the ones that objected to Samuel L Jackson playing Nick Fury. They were the ones that objected to there being a female Captain Marvel,”
Hama added that fans who claim to love the characters but take issue with updates like the changing of their race or gender “never really understood” what they were all about.
Speaking about the X-Men, Hama said the narrative entirely centered on social outcasts and marginalised people.
“The whole concept was about others seeking acceptance, and others being discriminated against. The whole anti-mutant crusade stuff, all of that was an allegory and they never got it [laughing]
“If they say the same thing about GI Joe, then they never got it either, because it was always about inclusion on all fronts”.
Hama worked at Marvel in the 1980s during the golden era of Stan Lee, writing for X-Men, Venom, Nick Fury, Iron Fist, Spiderman, Batman, Daredevil, and of course, GI Joe. He is credited as the creator of the modern Snake Eyes and wrote many of his most memorable storylines, giving him the background and personality that we know today.
He spoke about the discrimination he faced as an Asian-American actor coming up in the industry through the 1970s.
“I have been a member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1976 and the only parts that I was ever offered were bad guys.
“Bad guys, thugs, waiters, medical examiners, you can run the entire gamut of all the horrible roles”.
“With the family TV, my grandmother would come running into the other room and start shouting that there’s an Asian person on TV because it was so rare. We never saw any sort of representation”.
“So for me, to be making these tentpole movies with Asians in the lead is something that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime”.
In the comic books, Snake Eyes is thought to be a white man, though he has almost never removed his mask, and Hama has said that he had to “retroactively construct” the Snake Eyes plotline, working with what Hasbro and predecessors had created.
“When Hasbro introduced Storm Shadow, I think in the second or third year, he was the only Asian character in the entire universe, and he was a bad guy. So I deliberately decided to make him over into a good guy over the course of the next six months to a year.
Hama said that he had never really considered the race of Snake Eyes to be important until he was questioned about it years later.
“I was doing a panel and this Asian kid at the back of the auditorium raises his hand to ask a question and said, ‘So tell me, Mr Hama, why is the most badass ninja in the entire world some white guy?’ [laughing].
“I was floored! I didn’t know how to answer him. I thought, you know, there seemed to be almost no way to fix that within the comic context.”
While the casting of a blockbuster action film with an Asian-fronted cast is “huge” for Hama, he doesn’t believe that this, or any other incarnation of Snake Eyes, is in a sense the “true” Snake Eyes. For him, the “flesh and blood” portrayal of his characters as real people is the most important aspect of all.
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is in Hoyts cinemas from July 22.