Kurt Russell’s role as Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York is a major inspiration for Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid games. Series creator Hideo Kojima is an outspoken fan of Carpenter’s filmography and borrowed the name, eye patch and gruff attitude of Russell’s special forces agent for his video game hero. Kojima openly addressed the tribute Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Freedomgiving Snake the code name Iroquois Pliskin.
And at one point, Kojima reportedly wanted Kurt Russell to voice Snake Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and take over from English voice artist David Hayter. (Russell would have portrayed Naked Snake, not Solid Snake, for what it’s worth.)
Russell apparently declined, with Hayter reprising the role in subsequent games (until Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeros And The phantom pain). In a new GQ video interview with Russell about his iconic film characters, the actor explains why he wouldn’t voice Snake.
“Look, I’m pretty lazy by nature,” Russell explains. “There have been a lot of different times where people wanted (me) to do something. I don’t know, I’m a movie guy. You have to understand that from my point of view, whether it’s Elvis, or Snake Plissken, or Jack Burton, or RJ MacReady, that That project. That was that thing. You get into that mentality. You create that. You want to make that world possible.
“I used to do interviews back then (1979 biopic) Elvis came out and they said, ‘Come on, do a little Elvis for us.’ It doesn’t work that way, you don’t just slide in and out of Elvis. You’re going to work on it. You refine it, and then you do it and you get paid for it. I come from a different era. I wasn’t interested in financially ‘expanding’ anything we had created or that I had created in terms of a character.
In addition to returning to a character out of context, Russell says he had another major reason for not reviving his character, in a slightly different video game form than Carpenter’s Snake Plissken films.
“I looked at (a script) and said, ‘That wasn’t written by John,’” Russell says, sniffing the air. ‘That doesn’t smell good. John is not here to do this. I’m not going to do that. Let’s go do something new, let’s do something new, let’s go create another iconic character, instead of saying, ‘What can we bleed out of this iconic character?’
Russell did return to the role of Snake Plissken Escape from New York follow-up Escape from LA, so he’s certainly not above reprising roles. The man has made two sequels The computer was wearing tennis shoesafter all, and has portrayed Santa Claus several times.
The rest of Russell’s interview with GQ is worth watching. He explains his roles in John Carpenter’s in a very entertaining way The thingin three Quentin Tarantino films, and in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. He also does some fun nonsense in the box office battle of dueling westerns Tombstone And Wyatt Earp.