Part 22: Overview Pt. 1

I've hinted at it in the past, but I was thinking of doing something really different with this thread and the in-universe Snakefist franchise. At the end of the day it could be a lot of fun or it could be really bad, but that's going to depend on what people do. I'm encouraging people to write Snakefist fan fiction, so to speak. mocked up Wikipedia articles, script pages, novel excerpts and whatever else you can come up with works. I'll keep a library of sorts in the third post of what people put together and post in the thread. I plan on providing a general overview and everyone else can use that to springboard ideas off that. This is one of those things that either works really well or fails totally, so let's find out which it will be:

SnakeFist (Multimedia Franchise)
This page is for the multimedia franchise. For the first movie in the original trilogy see here. For the first movie in the rebooted franchise see here. For the character SnakeFist see here.

SnakeFist is a multimedia franchise spanning novels, comics, video games, TV series and a two US film franchises that are considered the “canonical” Snakefist while other media is considered expanded universe or, in the case of the “Batman and Snakefist” ongoing comic series part of an alternate universe. Along with these, there are several non-US produced Snakefist movies that are also outside of the scope of the official story and universe by decree of copyright holder Warner Brothers.

The SnakeFist franchise began as a series of action movies written and directed by low-level Warner Brothers executive Hal Bouchard credited under the name Rock Mayhew. Bouchard had spent a decade making underground films before being hired by Warner in 1975 and was given a budget of $1 million dollars to film SnakeFist in July 1977 as part of a company policy to attempt to produce small hits through a subsidiary called Transition Films. According to Bouchard the idea for SnakeFist was conceived after an actor described part of the book First Blood to him during a break while shooting the short film Among the Bodies in 1973. Bouchard worked on the script in earnest for the next few years, shelving a near-final draft when he began working for Warner Studios. In a strange twist of fate, Warner held the rights to a First Blood movie and sold them off just a month before Bouchard was hired.

In Bouchard’s drafts SnakeFist was a former CIA operator in Vietnam who resigned under unexplained circumstances before the story begins and travels the country at random. In 2006 Bouchard explained “Realistically, I needed a reason for no one to know his name, no one to know who he was. He was supposed to be the veterans who came home and found themselves good at things that weren’t allowed in normal society.” SnakeFist’s story changed much between the drafts and the script for the first movie, changing him into an undercover CIA agent attempting to root out Communist cells in the US instead of being the disaffected drifter of early drafts.

SnakeFists’s Effect on Film
SnakeFist is primarily a film franchise that began in 1978 with the release of SnakeFist, which concerns SnakeFist searching for a fellow CIA agent in rural Ohio and completing the job the original agent had failed to finish. While the first movie was shot on a $1 million budget by what was more or less a shell company of Warner Brothers, the following movies would have larger budgets and release under Warner proper. By the time the original series of movies ended with SnakeFist 5: Breakneck in 1988 Writer/Director Hal Bouchard was working with a $20 million budget and attracted major stars instead of the no-name actors he had to hire due to the low budget of the first movie. The franchise itself would kickstart the careers of David Herbert, Earl Bowie, Joan LeBarron and Doug Parish and gave Bouchard the ability to pursue whichever projects he wanted to as a director and gave him clout in the Warner boardroom.

Despite making his name as an action movie director, he had a long career prior to the SnakeFist franchise as a director of small plot driven movies and preferred to work on those over the SnakeFist movies. Films like The June Crisis and political thriller The Beast of Washington would earn him widespread post-SnakeFist critical acclaim, though Bouchard would never claim a Best Director or Best Film Academy Awards. Of the major awards, Bouchard was only ever nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director once for Vulture in 1991; considered one of his weaker movies. Many theories exist for why Bouchard would never get nominated, but many point to a 1985 rant against the Academy that appeared as part of an article about him in the New Yorker having soured relations between him and the Academy for many years.

The original series of SnakeFist movies was said to have inspired a number of subsequent action franchises. The general action of the first movie supposedly influenced the re-writes of the First Blood script. SnakeFist II: The Tower in 1981 saw SnakeFist deployed to clear Russian affiliated terrorists out of an unnamed skyscraper as they attempted to steal the blueprints for the US’ newest planes and missiles. While the movies are wildly different, many point to this movie influencing 1988’s Die Hard. Roderick Thorpe, the writer of Nothing Lasts Forever; the novel the first Die Hard movie is based on, did attempt to sue Warner for seemingly using the concept of that book without attribution. Warner won a court settlement in 1986 by playing the now famous Rooftop Motorcycle Chase sequence at the end of the film and pointing out that the novel didn’t have any motorcycles, CIA blimps, fire ax vs. harpoon fights, nor a single use of the phrase “Fuck You.” Judge Hailey Middleton threw the case out later that same day.

Warner did end up suing Universial in 2003 over the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious which Warner claimed was a close copy of SnakeFist 5: Breakneck in which SnakeFist entered into illegal underground races to uncover a dangerous ring of Columbian drug dealers using the street races as a way to get the police and authorities to devote manpower to the races instead of their drug dealing operations and other criminal activities. The endings are incredibly similar, as SnakeFist hands the keys to his car over to Aaron Kent, the American ringleader whom he had formed a friendship with so he could make an escape. Unlike the ending of the first Fast and the Furious, Kent doesn’t make it far as SnakeFist produces a detonator and mutters his famous “Fuck You” before hitting the button and causing the car to explode off screen. This last point was part of Universal’s defense, along with the lack of scenes where Snakefist and other riders played chicken in the subway system and the monster truck race on the highway during rush hour. Warner would end up withdrawing the suit and paying the court fees.

SnakeFist IV released in 1986 is often considered the fan favorite movie, nicknamed “SnakeFist’s Empire Strikes Back.” by adoring fans. The film sends SnakeFist to New York City to track down a ring of weapons dealers who have acquired material to make a nuclear weapon. The film finishes with a 22 minute seemingly single shot car chase that becomes a running gun battle through the Alphabet City area of Manhattan. One of the largest debates over the movie is if there are cuts in the sequence or not, as it appears seamless, but the use of extreme close ups on faces or guns firing has led to a belief that Bouchard inserted cuts at key moments. This scene was credited by the director of HBO drama True Detective for the inclusion of a long tracking shot during the first season of the show, which was well received by critics and SnakeFist fans alike.