FILE // GIJOE-2021-SNAKE CLASSIFICATION: DECLASSIFIED
Rise above your past. Become your destiny.
Robert Schwentke’s Snake Eyes is the strangest chapter of the live-action G.I. Joe films: a standalone reboot that strips the silent, masked commando back to a vengeful, unmasked, fully speaking drifter, taken into an ancient Japanese ninja clan and pulled apart by a secret pact with Cobra. A grounded martial-arts swing that won points for its cast and setting, drew Larry Hama’s pushback for reinventing the icon, and flopped hard at a pandemic box office. This is the deepest record of it anywhere.
Reviews landed mixed and leaned negative: a 35 percent Tomatometer against a warmer 74 percent audience score and a B-minus CinemaScore. Most critics treated it as a modest step up for a troubled franchise, carried by Henry Golding and Andrew Koji’s Storm Shadow, then undercut by choppy, shaky-cam action and a thin story.
Probably about as good a movie as you are going to get that has the words G.I. Joe in the title: a synthetic but exuberantly skillful big-studio hodgepodge of ninja films, wuxia films, Yakuza films and international revenge films.
The mayhem is frantic yet forgettable, and Golding does an awful lot of standing around and looking tense.
Snake Eyes finally speaks, but with frustrating action scenes, a middling story and unearned sequel-baiting, there is not much here that is worth listening to, or watching.
A heavy step up from the previous two G.I. Joe movies, but that is a low bar. The cast is charismatic and the setting gorgeous, yet the shaky-cam action buries everything the fights were built to show.
Too polished to be a war crime, but also too bland to be a decent summer movie. It answers a question nobody wondered about.
A sleek, sometimes silly reboot that swaps the toy-line spectacle for a grounded ninja origin. Henry Golding has a tenacity that is fun to watch, even when the script tries too hard to make him cool.
Henry Golding is so good he should be seriously considered for James Bond. He can telegraph lethal thoughts without saying a word.
Once again, a stellar cast could not save the G.I. Joe franchise from a script that keeps the audience at arms length.
On a budget of at least 88 million dollars, Snake Eyes opened to 13.4 million over its first weekend in second place behind M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, fell 70 percent the following weekend, and finished with about 28.3 million domestically and 40.1 million worldwide, well short of a break-even point estimated near 160 to 175 million. A Delta-variant summer, lukewarm reviews and a cautious theatrical audience made it, by any measure, a box office bomb.
As a boy, Snake Eyes watches his father murdered by an assassin who forces a roll of loaded dice and kills him on a pair of ones. Twenty years later he is a drifter and cage fighter, hunting the killer, when the Yakuza boss Kenta recruits him with a promise to deliver his revenge. Ordered to execute an intruder, Snake Eyes spares him instead.
The man is Tommy Arashikage, heir to an ancient ninja clan, who repays the mercy by bringing Snake Eyes home to the clan dojo in Tokyo to train among the Arashikage. What Tommy does not know is that Snake Eyes is still working for Kenta, sent to steal the clan’s sacred Jewel of the Sun. As the secret unravels, it tests every loyalty Snake Eyes has and turns his blood brother into his greatest enemy, the birth of the most famous rivalry in G.I. Joe.
“Abandon ego. Practice selflessness. Strike with honor.” The Arashikage creed
Tap any file card for the actor, the backstory, and our read on how faithful the design and role are to the comics, cartoons and classic Hasbro file cards. This reboot invents freely, so the fidelity gauges run lower than the earlier films. Filter by G.I. Joe / Arashikage or Cobra.
The beats the film is built on, walked in order. Click any still to enlarge; slots are built to take scene clips as they clear. Everything past the setup is spoiler-flagged in classified red.
As a boy, Snake Eyes watches an assassin murder his father by forcing a roll of loaded dice, killing him on a pair of ones. The charred, rigged dice become the literal seed of a twenty-year revenge, and the name he will carry.
The roll that sets a whole life in motion.
Recruited by the Yakuza boss Kenta with a promise of vengeance, Snake Eyes is ordered to execute an intruder. He looks into the man’s eyes, sees honor, and spares him instead. That single choice pulls him into the Arashikage and the story’s tragic core.
One spared life, and the war that follows.
The man he spared is Tommy Arashikage, heir to an ancient ninja clan. In gratitude, Tommy brings Snake Eyes back to the clan’s white-walled castle in Tokyo to train among the Arashikage, offering the drifter a home and a brotherhood he never had.
A drifter given a family, and a name.
To be accepted, Snake Eyes must survive three challenges: the Hard Master’s bowl of water, which teaches that strength is taken by humility; the Blind Master’s vision, which forces him to relive his father’s murder; and three ancient anacondas that sense an impure heart and nearly kill him.
The clan tests the man, and the man is not clean.
What Tommy does not know is that Snake Eyes is still working for Kenta, sent to steal the clan’s most sacred charge: the Jewel of the Sun, a relic said to hold the power to incinerate anything. As the theft plays out, every loyalty Snake Eyes has is put on trial.
A brother inside the gate, working for the enemy.
The Jewel of the Sun is bound by a blood lock, keyed to the Arashikage line. Snake Eyes bypasses it using Tommy’s own blood, taken from their brotherhood oath, a betrayal that Tommy will never forgive and that turns the jewel’s power loose.
The oath that bound them is the key that breaks them.
Stripped of his birthright for using the forbidden jewel, Tommy blames Snake Eyes and forsakes the clan. The Baroness draws him into Cobra, where he takes the name Storm Shadow and swears to kill the man who was once his brother. The most famous rivalry in G.I. Joe is born.
A blood brother, remade into an archenemy.
In the closing scenes Akiko gives Snake Eyes his black outfit, and Scarlett reveals that his father was a G.I. Joe under General Joe Colton, recruiting him to the team. Snake Eyes goes to the Joes, Tommy goes to Cobra, and the board is set for the brand.
Two men, two sides, one lifelong war.
Three years from a soft-reboot impulse to release, including a shoot split between Vancouver and Japan, a wrap days before the pandemic, and a release date shoved around the calendar for over a year. Scroll the timeline.
Conceived as a clean reboot with no ties to the Sommers and Chu films, Snake Eyes was a chance to restart the brand on a smaller, more grounded scale. The pandemic had other plans: filming wrapped in February 2020 just before productions shut down worldwide, reshoots followed in March 2021, and the release bounced at least four times before landing on July 23, 2021.
To ground the action in real martial arts, the production hired Japanese action director Kenji Tanigaki, of the Rurouni Kenshin films, on the recommendation of John Wick’s Chad Stahelski, who later pushed for Tanigaki to run second unit as well. With Iko Uwais of The Raid in the cast, the fight floor was stacked with genuine talent.
The ambition was a grounded ninja-and-yakuza origin rather than the broad science-fiction spectacle of the earlier films. Tanigaki coaches actors by filming them on a phone and replaying it between takes, chasing a physicality the previous G.I. Joe films never reached for.
Ironically, the most common critical complaint was that frantic, close-up, over-edited camerawork buried the very choreography the film had assembled such talent to stage. Reviewers who praised the cast and setting singled out the editing of the fights as the film’s self-inflicted wound.
Much of the film’s texture comes from rare access to real places: Shibuya Crossing and the temples of Senso-ji and Zojo-ji in the Tokyo montage, Kishiwada Castle standing in for the Arashikage estate, and the thousand-year-old Engyoji complex near Himeji, which also doubled for feudal Japan in The Last Samurai.
Action directed by Kenji Tanigaki, of the Rurouni Kenshin films, hired on the recommendation of John Wick’s Chad Stahelski, with Iko Uwais of The Raid among the cast. The tragedy of the film’s reception is that the most common complaint, frantic and over-edited camerawork, buried the very choreography this talent was assembled to stage.
Composer Martin Todsharow scored the film, with Paramount Music releasing an unusually generous album on the day of release: more than forty tracks running past eighty minutes, opening with Behind the Mask, Unknown Visitor and Dices Are Fallen, with a complete-score edition following for collectors. The music leans on taiko percussion and Japanese textures to match the setting, working hardest in the dojo and temple sequences where the film is at its most confident.
“Impetus” from the original score by Martin Todsharow, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (Paramount Music, 2021).
Official trailer via Paramount Movies on YouTube. Embedded with youtube-nocookie for viewer privacy.
Hasbro spoiled the costume before any trailer. At Pulse Fan Fest in April 2021 the G.I. Joe Classified movie figures debuted, and Henry Golding unboxed his own action figure live on camera, seeing his character’s final design for the first time by looking at a toy of himself.
The marketing leaned into the most divisive change, that this Snake Eyes speaks, with a tagline built around the silent icon finally having something to say. It was a deliberate flag planted in the middle of the fan debate, not an attempt to duck it.
Few films were shoved around more by COVID-19. Snake Eyes was dated for March 2020, bounced through the autumn, pulled from the schedule entirely in July 2020 as theaters closed, then re-set for October 2021 before finally being moved up to July 23, 2021.
The film opened under Paramount’s pandemic policy of a 45-day theatrical window. After the soft start the studio cut even that short, sending Snake Eyes to premium digital on August 17, less than four weeks after release, with Paramount Plus and 4K following that autumn.
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins has no post-credits or mid-credits scene. The sequel setup is delivered inside the film itself, in the closing double-recruitment that sends Snake Eyes to the Joes and Tommy to Cobra, then the credits roll clean.
A direct sequel had been announced before release, but the film’s failure shelved it, and the threads it planted, Storm Shadow’s vow and the Baroness’s Cobra, went unresolved. Plans for a G.I. Joe cinematic universe built on the reboot were quietly dropped.
The closest thing to a hidden scene lives on home video: Morning Light, A Weapon with Stories to Tell, a short film built around Snake Eyes’ sword that adds canon lore existing nowhere else, alongside deleted scenes and three making-of featurettes.
Follow the file into the rest of gijoe.army: the toy catalogue, the character encyclopedia, and every G.I. Joe film.
Explore the Movie Toys The Snake Eyes tie-in line: Hasbro’s G.I. Joe Classified movie figures with the Morning Light sword, plus a Super7 ULTIMATES and ReAction partnership, catalogued on the site. Open → 
Snake Eyes Characters File cards for Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, the Baroness, Scarlett and the Arashikage clan across the encyclopedia. Open → 
The G.I. Joe Films Walk every G.I. Joe movie, from the 1987 animated feature through Retaliation, on the movies hub. Open → Official stills grouped by chapter. Open a section, then click any frame to view it full screen.
No. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins has no post-credits or mid-credits scene. The sequel setup is inside the film, in the closing double recruitment that sends Snake Eyes to the G.I. Joe team and Tommy to Cobra as Storm Shadow.
About two hours and one minute, rated PG-13 for strong violence and brief strong language.
Robert Schwentke directed. Henry Golding leads as Snake Eyes, with Andrew Koji as Tommy / Storm Shadow, Ursula Corbero as the Baroness, Samara Weaving as Scarlett, Iko Uwais as the Hard Master, Peter Mensah as the Blind Master and Haruka Abe as Akiko.
By design. The film is pitched as an origin, the man before the legend and before Snake Eyes loses his voice. Henry Golding’s Snake Eyes speaks throughout and stays unmasked until the final scenes, the opposite of the silent, ever-masked comics icon, a choice that divided fans and drew public pushback from character architect Larry Hama.
No. On a budget of at least 88 million dollars it opened to 13.4 million, fell 70 percent the next weekend, and finished with 28.3 million domestic and just 40.1 million worldwide, well short of a break-even point estimated near 160 to 175 million. It was a pandemic-era bomb.
Almost entirely. In Larry Hama’s comics Snake Eyes is a white American Vietnam veteran, silent after a helicopter explosion destroys his face and voice. The film’s Snake Eyes is Asian, speaks throughout, is unmasked, is motivated by his father’s murder, and is reframed as a Cobra infiltrator. The Hard Master survives, and Akiko and the Jewel of the Sun are wholly invented.
Martin Todsharow, with Paramount Music releasing an unusually generous album on release day, more than forty tracks past eighty minutes, leaning on taiko percussion and Japanese textures. A complete-score edition followed for collectors.
A direct sequel was announced then shelved after the film underperformed, and plans for a G.I. Joe cinematic universe built on the reboot were dropped. Franchise revival has since routed through Transformers, with a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover film announced by Paramount at CinemaCon in 2024.
Streams on Paramount+, or own the steelbook 4K.
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