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Kurt Russell was apparently once offered to voice Metal Gear Solid 3’s Snake, and in a new interview he explained why he wouldn’t be interested in such a role.
It’s no secret that Hideo Kojima is a massive cinephile, it’s kind of his whole thing – so much so that he gave long-time Snake voice actor David Hayter the boot in favour of Kiefer Sutherland for Metal Gear Solid 5’s Snake. Back in 2016, Hayter claimed that Kojima actually tried to get Escape from New York’s Russell to take over the role of Snake for Metal Gear Solid 3 (for context, Solid Snake’s namesake is a reference to the John Carpenter film’s Snake Plissken). Russel apparently turned the role down, and in a recent video interview with GQ, actually spoke about why he wouldn’t take up a role like that.
Kurt Russell Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ
“Look, I’m pretty lazy by nature,” Russel said. “There have been many different times when people wanted 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 R.J. MacReady, that was that project. That was that thing. You get into that mindset. You create that. You want to make that world happen.
“I used to do interviews when Elvis was coming out and they would say, ‘C’mon, do a little Elvis for us.’ It doesn’t work that way, you don’t just slide in and out of Elvis. You go to work on it. You refine it, and then you do it and you get paid for that. I come from a different era. I wasn’t interested in ‘expanding’ financially off of something that we had created or that I had created in terms of a character.”
Importantly, Russell also noted that anything like that that didn’t involve Carpenter means he wouldn’t have been interested either. “I’d look at [a script] and say ‘that’s not written by John,'” before sniffing the air, adding, “That doesn’t smell right. John’s not here to do this. I’m not gonna do that. Let’s go do something new, let’s do something fresh, let’s go create another iconic character.”
Russell obviously isn’t against returning to characters entirely, he did actually return to play Snake in an Escape from New York sequel, and is in multiple Christmas Chronicle films as Santa. But, I can’t really blame him for not picking up a role in some game he’s never heard of, especially at a time where video games weren’t very highly regarded outside of its own sphere. Plus, Hayter is iconic as the character, they shouldn’t have gotten rid of him for MGSV anyway.