Nice Collider interview featuring Henry Golding: https://collider.com/henry-golding-s...vie-interview/
These were the stand out points for me:
The relationship between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow
Digging this sense of brotherhood between Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes.There's a beginning where they're brothers. There's a moment where they're sworn enemies. There's moments where they work together to fight an equal sort of enemy. This relationship never sort of ends and sort of peeling back those layers and discovering more. And that's the great thing again about the origin story is we get to see the basis and to see why it's so emotionally charged for both of these characters and at what point does it turn.
And of course, Hard Master being one of the combat specialist at the Arashikage, he of course has some part in training Snake Eyes to be the guy that he is. So Hard Master of course is very reluctant in his teaching because to be honest with you, Snake Eyes is a little shit in the beginning. He isn't the guy that we know him to be. And so of course there's going to be a rivalry. But it plays out so well, and Iko is phenomenal.”
The question if whether or not Snake Eyes has to be a blue-eyed, blonde hair character
So yes, a blonder haired, blue eyed character could work. It has worked. It can still show how he's a "fish out of water." But Golding can do that too. Yeah, GOlding is Asian, but he's not Japanese. Furthermore, the Arashikage could have issues with ANY outsider, Asian or otherwise.I always loved the origin of how Snake Eyes actually became sort of masked, and his time at war. Like, I love that, but I think bringing it up to date was important. And speaking to Larry [Hamma] about the complexity behind back then having a white man, a blonde hair, blue-eyed guy come to Japan to train, it was, he wanted that fish-out-of-water story. And back then the easiest way to explain that was like, yeah, it's a white guy in Japan. Of course it's going to be sort of like different.
But with us, in the 21st century, it's like dropping an American in, let's say Switzerland. It's of course, everyone is going to be feel sort of out of place. So for me, retelling this origin story was kind of important, but of course, paying respect to the stories that came before it and hinting through. The amount of Easter eggs that we put in to please our long-term fans, you really have to kind of like pause each scene and kind of see what we put in the background, what kind of props we've kind of snuck in here and there. But for me, I think, yeah, it was an amazing ride.