Snakes on a Plane
2006
David R. Ellis
Whether this is a good movie is probably besides the point. That means that this blog post turns more into an explainer than a subjective opinion piece, which is fine. I don't mind. I'm just saying that I'm a bit hamstrung here, because if I try to tell you that this is a bad movie, than that means that I'm missing the point. We'll get to the point. Just know right here at the beginning that it's a bad movie, okay? It's not worth watching, especially not approximately 20 years after the lame-o internet hubbub has died down.
There's a huge fucking difference between a movie having a fun premise and a movie doing something interesting with its premise. I could see someone making a compelling case for "a bunch of venomous snakes are released on a commercial plane and the passengers band together to survive" being a fun and interesting premise. The problem is when you take the premise and fill out the rest of the movie with the most generic tropes in the book. You know what's going to happen every step of the way. Something like, ya know, a specific snake popping up out of nowhere and killing a passenger, something like that is of course surprising on a literal level, but what I'm saying is that the idea of snakes jump-scaring you is itself very predictable. Which made for, in my opinion, a bad movie.
Again, that's besides the point. The point here is why this, a certified B movie, was elevated in the pop culture consciousness, to the point that some fucking idiot decides to watch it 20 years later as part of a "watching films he should have seen already but hasn't" blog project. I did not watch it when it came out (too busy getting drunk in the woods with the other seventeen-year-olds), but I was certainly aware that it was happening at the time. And I think... I think I have empathy for all those early too-online mopes who got roped up into the Snakes on a Plane mania.
Look, it's all about having the temerity to give yourself away to something. Something stupid, I mean. Something in pop culture that seems stupid but something that you can adopt as your own. I understand this impulse. I've collected so many dumb little pop culture curios over the years, just because they are silly and innocent and fun to think about. Think about my devotion to "Grannies Gone Wild," Trolls World Tour references, a faux obsession with the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, that kind of thing. So I understand, pretty intimately in fact, why there might be a type of person who would see an early trailer for a STUPID as FUCK movie called Snakes on a Plane and think, boy oh boy, wouldn't it be fun to become obsessed with this dumb little fucking thing?
The problem with this specific example of the phenomenon is twofold. The first is that the balance was all out of whack between the creator and the consumer. How it should work is that the consumer should heap attention (undeserved, sure, but that's the joke!) on something, and the creator should either be flummoxed or completely unaware of it. That's not how it was with Snakes on a Plane. The filmmakers were very much aware of the weirdly large amount of hype that this thing was getting, and they made changes within the film, at the last minute, to kowtow to the unhinged imaginations of its future audience. "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" is a fun line, but that shit wasn't in the movie originally! Samuel L. Jackson added it in after becoming aware of its origins in a fan fiction script! I feel uncomfortable with this, and I think it's because it's the filmmakers attempt to take back the reigns from an audience who has every right to make of this art what the want to make of it. It would be like Reba McEntire reshooting "Grannies Gone Wild" to include speaking lines for all the jurors. I wouldn't like that at all. This is my shit now, not yours, Reba!!!!
And the second part is that, when the overly willing audience eventually did see this movie that they chose to be preemptively obsessed with, I have to imagine that the overall feeling was disappointment. This kind of thing is never as good as you build it up in your head. Even with reasonable expectations about its status as a modern-day B movie, the level of hype surrounding this stupid fucking movie no doubt excited many of its contemporaneous audience members past what was feasible. Imagine going to the opening night premiere of Snakes on a Plane, dressed in your snake outfit, and having to sit through two hours of this dumb shit. YIKES.
However, that temerity I spoke about earlier is real, and I know that at least a few people survived the ordeal, and came out the other side still glad that the hype happened. I'm sure there were others who were disappointed by the movie and maybe wished that it never saw release, since the lead-up to the event was so much more fun than the actual film itself. All legitimate responses. Sometimes the excitement for a party is way better than the actual party. Plus, that excitement actually ends up justifying the existence of the party, even if the party itself is a little lame. Snakes on a Plane is a bad movie. I don't have stakes in it, but I have infinite empathy for those that consciously chose to have stakes in it. The excitement is worth it, always.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: It's Transportation Film Week! Strangers on a Train is up tomorrow!
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