Yeah, yeah. That was a clickbait headline. Sue us. You see the parenthetical? That’s good reason.
The man who made the G.I.Joe franchise effective and accurate where martial arts is concerned — and with not one but two ninjas in a film, that’s a skosh important — is not invited to the making of Snake Eyes: Origins or whatever those twerps decide to call it.
Ray Park is largely known as a “character actor,” in that he portrays characters and doesn’t typically have speaking parts that amount to anything memorable. He was ‘Toad‘ in X-Men. Did you see Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? He was ‘Baraka‘. Heroes, anyone? The jumped-the-shark-after-one-season-even-though-it-had-four TV show on NBC. He was Edgar…on Season Four. (Sigh.)
We loved his work as the clandestine mute death wish ‘Snake Eyes‘ in both G.I. Joe films. And, oh yeah, he was this guy…
Dude is convincing. He’s skilled. He makes an impact. And, oh yeah, he’s an old fart. Well, if you ask Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, producer of the announced ‘Snake Eyes’ origin, as he shares with Slash Film.
Will the Wushu master play the ninja in the spinoff?
“Probably not, because we are going to the origin story,” Di Bonaventura said. “As you know in the comic book, you saw his face. And it is, I’ll say, the formation of a hero. So you’ve got to see somebody and it can’t be Ray’s age, unfortunately.”
It’s not like Park has his AARP card. Guy is in his mid-40s. Not for nothing, but there is this fancy anti-aging technology in movies. Maybe you have seen it on Nick Fury’s mug in recent trailers, Lorenzo? Also, the guy doesn’t have a tracheotomy plug crammed in his throat. He’s been a voice actor. He has a Scottish/British accent. These days, that means more than some goof who sounds like he’s from South Philly.
But no, we’ll use someone else that the production house can spend endless hours to CGI fight scenes and give some ham-handed approach to fighting. It’s Hollywood. They got the money…or maybe they wouldn’t if they knew we wouldn’t be interested.
Maybe Di Bonaventura can star Park in ‘The Unknown Comic’ biopic? Look it up, kids.
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