One of G.I. Joe‘s most bada** characters gets his own fan film with Rene Perez’s Snake Eyes. The G.I. Joes are disbanded and on the run from assassins after the government framed the team after finding out that a powerful coalition had developed a virus. Snake Eyes has revealed all of this in a letter to his fiancé (or wife). While his lover (Victoria Olona) is reading the letter, it is weaving back and forth between Snake Eyes in hand-to-hand combat and a gunfight while she is following instructions also given to her in a letter to search for items that he has left behind for her.
There’s a thing about fan films that people have to understand – the film is one fan’s interpretation of a character. And that’s what makes it fun to watch. You get to watch what someone else would do if they had rights to the character, and as a viewer, you can disagree with it or agree with how that fan interpreted a character, so there is no reason to get up in arms when a fan makes these types of films. I’ve seen some amazing fan films in the past and not such amazing fan films. At the end of the day, there has been no harm done to a beloved character or intellectual property. It is all in fun.
“…on the run from assassins after the government framed the team after finding out that a powerful coalition had developed a virus.”
With that being said, this is a fan film that does some pretty cool things. The beginning of the film looks like an 80s action film with 80s synth music playing in the background. I wish this was kept through the rest of the film, but unfortunately, it does not. Speaking of the action, it has a lot of it. There are a number of faces being blown off, and it is awesome. In this respect, it does feel like something I would have watched in the 80s with the likes of Robocop and Toxic Avenger. It also tells a story without dialogue to keep true to the character’s inability to speak. The story is told with comic book-like narration boxes, so it pays tribute to the character’s life in the comics. Snake Eyes’ look is also spot on from the G.I. Joe film franchise, so you get a bit of everything that the character has been seen in. Although there are a lot of hand-to-hand combat and gun battles, something I happened to notice is that the were no fight scenes with Snake Eyes using a sword, something that the character is known for.
The film does humanize Snake Eyes more than ever by adding a love story to it. It is something that is a bit hard to believe since he is usually seen as this silent assassin, but it does give the character an extra layer to play with. And as mentioned before, it is an interpretation of the character from a fan. Overall, I think it is a very different take on the popular G.I. Joe character, but it also still keeps what fans love best about the character.
