The general public may not know his name, but a lot of true geeks know who Ray Park is. Raymond Park was born in Glasgow, Scotland and started with martial arts at the age of 7, is a legitimate bad ass. For years, he was known for doing the Park “Spin” which is a cool move where he “flies” at someone while doing a full body spin. He is the man who is always silent, but deadly and makes his presence felt in most of his films. Or should I just say – he is better known as Star Wars – Darth Maul, who many agree, was the best thing about Episode I and in the GI Joe films he is a “little known “character by the name of Snake Eyes! Park also played the acrobatic Toad in The X-Men movie (very small but, memorable appearance) and was Edgar on the hit show Heroes. I recently had a chance to talk to him about GI Joe: Retaliation (now available on Blu-ray/DVD). Here is our review of the Blu-ray.
What did you do to prepare for playing Snake Eyes again?
Park – When they released the first one, I didn’t know what the time frame was going to be for the next one so, I kept up my regular training routine and started thinking about what I was going to do if the chance would happen again. I trained for a year or two before shooting began on this movie.
Is it difficult to train for a role like this when you don’t have the suit to train in?
As much as I train and prepared, nothing compares to what it was like to actually put on the suit and train. The first suit was a really difficult to move in, but the new one was much loser and gave me room to breathe and work.
In the extra features on the Blu-ray it mentioned briefly how stiff the original Snake Eyes suit was, how much input did you have in the design of the new one?
That came down to the producer, directors, etc. I did not complain that much about the first suit, but they did ask me what I thought worked and didn’t work about the first one. I believe that may have been taken into account for the creation of the new suit. They wanted me to be able to show off everything that I could do and I think they wanted to make it less constricting.
Don’t take this the wrong way, that while I personally loved the first movie, the first film was not received particularly well by fans and critics alike. Where you surprised that a sequel to the movie was green lit?
The same thing happened with Star Wars, while some people may not have liked it, I thought the first one (GI Joe: Rise of Cobra) did ok – I took my family and they loved it, so did a lot of other people. I wasn’t really surprised that they were going to do another movie, I just wanted to be a part of it.
After this movie, where do you think Snake Eyes’ story is going to go if there’s a third film?
I’ve been thinking about that for the last few days, while nothing is official. I’ve been training and maintaining my shape just in case there is a 3rd film.
When I posted on Twitter that I was speaking with you today, several people asked me if you were coming back. Can you talk a little bit about your use of Twitter.
When I was shooting the movie, it was a great way to interact with fans and get the word out about everything that was going on. I did find that I was spending too much time on it and not enough on other things, so I needed to take a break.
Can you talk a little bit about your fighting style and what Wushu is?
I’ve been training since I was about 7, doing a combination of Kickboxing and Martial Arts. I wanted to get into movies so I studied other martial arts people, one of the people I really liked was Jet Li. He used Wushu. It is a very “showy” type of fighting (than traditional martial arts) that involved the use of big kicks and weapons. It is a non-combat sport and is more like gymnastics and sparring.
Every generation seems to have a go to guy for Martial Arts films – Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Chuck Norris, etc. There doesn’t seem to be that guy for this generation….
I wanted to be the next Martial Arts person in film; there was a gap in movies. I wanted to be like Van Damn and Jet Li. Of all the things I’ve done I’ve never been able to quite become that guy, but still moving towards it.
What would your ultimate movie role be?
It doesn’t have to be a big million-dollar budget film but I want to do something that will allow me to showcase everything that I’m capable of doing. There’s a movie that I’m waiting to happen, that was written by a friend. He wrote one of the characters after me. My character is a Special Forces fighter and Zach’s character is an upper class playboy. I get demoted after ignoring orders to save a village. We get cursed by some guy and forced to still things for a collector. For me as an actor it is a chance to really stretch and do something big and cool. The movie is an action, comedy and adventure piece with elements of the supernatural thrown in. We’re raising money for it now.
Would you consider doing a Kickstarter?
Yes, we’re looking into that possibility right now.