Away From the Hype: SNAKES ON A PLANE

If you were a film buff between the late 90s and early 2000s, chances are one of the first sites you checked each day was Ain’t It Cool News. The brainchild of Harry Knowles, the site began in 1996 and gradually dominated the movie news landscape. Or to be honest, it created that landscape. It was the place to go for scoops, grainy telephoto lens shots of movies in production, and reviews.

As it grew in reputation and notoriety it became a place for budding film writers to make their names and for movie stars and directors to try and create buzz for their movies. During the lead-up to The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone fielded questions from fans and answered them in long-form essays that were candid and fascinating. After the announcement of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson took to the site to answer questions and put fans’ minds at ease because at that time, if Ain’t It Cool News gave a movie its blessing then it was likely to be a success.

And then, it all went wrong. Knowles, the figurehead of the site, was accused of writing good reviews for bad movies because the studio would lavish him with trips and exclusives. His articles became a bit too… starf*cker-y in some cases and weird in others. His review of Blade 2 that compares it, in detail, to performing and receiving oral sex is a masterclass in seeing a writer operate with no oversight or self-awareness. And more recently, he was accused by multiple women of inappropriate behavior causing the site’s writers to depart in droves, the Alamo Drafthouse to cut all ties with him, and his ousting from the site he created.

Before all that, though there was Snakes on a Plane. It’s hard not to overstate what a weird little phenomenon this movie was. Consider that in 2006, the idea of knowing about a movie’s production a year or more in advance was still quite a novelty. If you were in the movie industry or read the trades, etc, you’d have that information but for us schlubs sometimes we only knew a movie existed because we were sat in the theatre and the trailer came on.

With Ain’t It Cool News though, we knew Snakes on a Plane was coming well in advance, we got to see it change its name to Pacific Air Flight 121 then change its name back after fan backlash and got to influence some of the tone and scenes of the movie, which I’ll get into more about below.

The problem with the hype for Snakes on a Plane is I’m not sure we knew what kind of movie we wanted Snakes on a Plane to be. Camp insanity? Claustrophobic horror? An animal action movie? Did we even want it to be good? It’s a weird one. It’s not like, for example, The Phantom Menace, a super-hyped movie that we wanted to be an instant classic.

Snakes on a Plane made 62 million on a 33 million budget and has an RT score of 69% which are both… fine. If you were deep in the hype at the time you would have expected a heap more money and, probably, a lower RT score but that is the danger of hype vs reality.

When I saw this movie on opening night, I had a great time and one of the more visceral movie experiences of my life because I am absolutely terrified of snakes. Just thinking about watching this movie for this article makes me feel sweaty and ill but when I think of movies created and undone by hype, this one is near the top of the list so now it’s time to see how Snakes on a Plane fares away from the hype.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

There are very few actors who can do what Samuel L. Jackson does in this movie. Throughout he is always on the thinnest of tightropes balancing a performance that is winking at the camera and giving the audience their money’s worth. He knows he’s in a movie called Snakes on a Plane, but he knows the audience paid to see him, so he gives them 100%. Nothing is phoned in, not the jokes, the scares, the budding romance, or the constant self-awareness that the movie he is starring in is based on an absurd concept, riddled with cliches, and also a hell of a good time.

Other actors couldn’t have achieved this. Some would have played it too straight, others too dismissive. Material like this – which is frankly a lot better than it has any right to be – requires a light touch and Jackson delivers. By the time the credits rolled I was disappointed that there wouldn’t be another movie featuring his character, perhaps trapped in an office block with a tiger or stuck on a rollercoaster with a shark. C’est la vie.

As mentioned above, once the movie was completed, the studio, seeing the online hype, gave the creators five more days of reshoots. Usually, this would be to fix issues but, in this case, it was to add more of what they guessed the people wanted. So that means more cursing, more gruesome deaths both snake-related and not snake-related, and of course, Jackson’s triumphant declaration that he was sick of these motherf*cking snakes on this motherf*cking plane.

The movie being made R-rated and just going for broke makes it an incredibly fun experience. Even suffering from ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), I loved it. It helps that a majority of the snakes are early 2000s CG creations but there’s still some real snakes in there and I did break into a cold sweat once or twice. However, the death scenes are either comical or incredibly gross so if you’re someone who likes to swear loudly at your TV when something gory as f*ck happens to a character, this is a good choice for you.

It’s hard not to simply be in awe of this movie’s level of self-awareness. There was never a moment it tried to be more than what it is: a midnight monster b-movie, but also never a point where it cut corners or got lazy. The set-up is simple: a young man sees a murder and must be protected by the feds as he flies from Hawaii to LA to testify. And then things get complicated when the murderer manages to smuggle 100s of snakes onto their plane in the hopes that the snakes will cause the plane to crash into the ocean. It’s silly but writer David Dalessandro puts in the work to explain each part of the plan.

It’s admirable that Dalessandro has looked at this ridiculous idea and thought “Okay, but how would it work? What would stop it? What questions are Cinema Sins-y audience members going to get hung up on?” So throughout we get little moments that explain why the normally docile snakes are hostile, how they got from the hold to the main plane, and how a bunch of snakes not native to America got onto an American plane. To be honest, I didn’t need these explanations but it’s nice to know that the creators cared enough to do the work.

They put less work into the characters as they’re mostly stock standard air travel archetypes: scared flier, unaccompanied children, Paris Hilton-type with a tiny dog in her purse (which strangely dates this movie worse than anything else featured), a woman with a baby, brash Englishman who is rude to everyone and doomed to die, effeminate male air steward, and a mile high club couple. There are also some interesting additions such as a germophobic rapper and his entourage which includes a scene-stealing Kenan Thompson, a sexist cowboy pilot, and a kickboxer. Each one is bringing their most “I’m on a plane full of snakes”- level performance and there are no dud notes in the bunch, so even though they’re not the most inspired or well-drawn characters they’re all a lot of fun to watch, and in some cases, to watch die.

Final Thoughts – Away From The Hype

If this movie had kept its original title Venom or its production title Pacific Air Flight 121, I wouldn’t be writing about it. It would have been some straight-to-DVD crapfest with some D-list ex-wrestler or a slumming it 90s action star in the lead role. Instead, they called it Snakes on a Plane and that name ignited something in the minds of the perpetually online. Alas, it didn’t ignite it enough as the movie was a box office letdown. It’s a shame that after all that online hype and speculation, the movie just sorta died.

Even away from the hype, it deserves to be in that pantheon of cult horror movies alongside Tremors and From Dusk Till Dawn, self-aware horror that is perfect for watching with friends when you just want something quick, funny, a little nasty, and entertaining as hell. However, the movie hasn’t really had a second life after that initial burst of Ain’t It Cool News hype that brought it into our lives, which is a shame because I couldn’t get enough of those motherf*cking snakes on that motherf*cking plane.

What do you think? How does Snakes on a Plane hold up? Let us know in the comments below!