Roadkill at 35,000 feet?

Hi Jim!

Back in March, my friends and I had such a blast with the idea of Snakes on a Plane, that we ridiculed it and kicked ourselves for not thinking of it first. We joked about it for a long time, and it became our catch-phrase of the summer. We found the idea of this film both repulsive and genius at the same time. It was a summer film that felt absolutely honest, for once. Unlike most summer films that tote themselves as scary, or romantic, or "the action thrill ride of the summer," this was simple, and it was almost as if Samuel L. Jackson himself was daring us to see it with its straight-forwardness. Sam Jackson with Snakes on a Plane - what more do you need to know?

I'm not a fan of most summer films, but I hold comic book characters near and dear. So unlike "X-Men 3" or "Superman Returns," I had nothing invested in "Snakes on a Plane," so there was no way this Summer movie could disappoint. It wasn't about the film; it was about the "experience." As you know, when you're really passionate about movies, many times the anticipation outweighs the enjoyment of the film. We had such a fun time getting excited for it - it was like waiting in line for the new Star Wars movie, but without the sinking feeling that you know you'll be disappointed.

Because of that, for the first time since we were kids, we really bought into the marketing. In fact, we had a "Snakes on a Plane" party before the opening. It was an excuse to act really juvenile and scream like Samuel L. Jackson and toss around toy snakes and drink. And now that I've admitted that, nobody will ever believe that my favorite films are by really by Woody Allen and Kubrick...

So we saw the midnight show downtown, and of course, the movie wasn't great. It wasn't even good. I suppose I've seen worse, but I really couldn't judge it the way I judge most films, because it was just the experience that was important. Honestly, I have no urge to ever see it again, and I'll never buy it on DVD. I may see it at the Vic's Brew and View if I have a free weekend evening, but that's about it. But like it or not, this film has contributed to an enormous amount of laughs, eye-rolling, and just general good times this Summer for some 30 year olds who have become numb by the Summer movie humdrum.

A man is walking along a path when he sees a rattlesnake. The rattlesnake asks the guy to take him a ways along the path. The man says, "I'm not going to do that. You're a rattlesnake. You'll bite me." And the rattlesnake says, "No, I won't." So the man picks up the snake and carries it however far the version of the story says. Then when he puts the snake down, it bites him. "You said you weren't going to bite me!" the man says. And the snake says, "You knew what I was when you picked me up."

I'm not going to see Snakes on a Plane. I'll probably try not to see it ever. Why? Cause it's a bad movie. I don't have to see it in order to know that. I can simply tell. The evidence is everywhere. Is it a mainstream horror film? Yes. Is it backed by a propoganda campaign? Yes. Propoganda is always a turnoff. Does it ask us to be afraid of an animal? Yes. Is there a lot of hype surrounding it? Yes. These things alone don't mean a movie is bad, but they add up. Is the very premise stupid and pointless? Yes. Is it directed by someone who has brought us previous disposable action horror films? Yes. Is its intended audience mainstream Americans who treat movies like fads? You bet your ass. Are mainstream Americans known for their superb taste in movies? I think we both know that answer. (Face it: they have bad taste. That's just how it is. They try to whine and call critics elitists, but the truth is that they simply have bad taste. You could probably quantify the sophistication of their taste using actual scholar-recognized scales.) Is it attracting the so-bad-it's-good crowd, who tend to confuse so-bad-it's-good with just plain bad? Yes. Does the title alone tell us what kind of cheesy and pointless movie we've got here? Yes. Is the movie fun? Maybe. But aren't a lot of other movies fun, too? And aren't some of them fun in the exact same way, only moreso? Is this movie special? No, don't think so. And I also think that a lot of the people who watch it now won't much care about it in five years.

So to everyone planning to see this movie, if it turns out to suck, you knew what it was when you picked it up.

Seek not to make bad movies. Neither desire to watch them. Because their minds studieth formulas and their lips speak clichés. Proverbs 24:1-2.

"But go see it if you've convinced yourself that you must. Help pad Mr. Jackson's bank account. Reaffirm the studios' assumption that marketing is more important than creativity. Then come up with some funny titles for the sequel. And if that doesn't sound fun, you could always go see a real movie. " ~ Chris Vognar

I think it was an overestimation of the internet "buzz." Anyone who reads any kind of entertainment news site or blog, knew about the movie, knew about the jokes, but to the majority of the moviegoing public it was just a ridiculous looking movie with a shlocky title.

I'm constantly suprised about the studios, and the marketing deparments assuming that internet buzz will translate to profits. I saw the movie, and it's a fun B movie, with a funny title, and some enjoyably silly snake enduced deaths. The "Rocky Horror" aspect of the the screening I went to I could have done without, if only because those hissing and yelling certain lines from the movie, didn't seem prepared to take any of it seriously. There's a point where loud 18-25 year old males laughing at nearly every scene in a movie that does attempt to build some kind of suspence and terror, gets grating. During the screening I kind of wished they reverted back to the bland "Pacific Air Flight 231" title. It wouldn't be as enjoyable a movie most likely though because they wouldn't have gone back and bumped it up to the 'R' where it appears they shot most of the stuff that made the movie that enjoyable.

I use my parents as guides for the general public's opinion and awareness of certain things. (They think myspace is 75% sexual predators, and 25% impressionable and willing 12 year old girls.) They were barely aware of the movie, and most of that awareness came from Samuel L. Jackson's "Daily Show" apperance. They were expecting something completly terrible, and wrote the movie off as they do with the rest of the crappy looking horror movies whose advertising floods tv for a week before the release.

I think that besides very excited internet users who have been following the movie since it became a small pop culture phenomenon, and the even smaller number of David R. Ellis fans, there isn't a huge audience for the movie. It'll be big on dvd, and make back it's budget during the theatrical release, but it's not going to be a massive hit because most movie goers don't have interest in seeing something that they perceive as being intentionally bad.

On a side note, I was kind of worried when the movie opened on a helicopter shot of a city, to what I believe was a Jack Johnson sound a like pop song. I have a theory that with the exception of certain films (Rosemary's Baby, Psycho, Playtime), that any movie that opens with a helicopter shot of a city or a body of water, will be terrible. Recent examples: Bewitched, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (Dinsney Lindsay Lohan movie), Bridget Jones' Diary: The Edge of Reason, all of which I've unfortunately happened upon on cable. (I didn't make it through any of them.)

(If anyone has any recent examples of movies that have opened in that genereic, non descript way, and don't suck, please let me know.)

I don't know exactly why the numbers weren't that high, but personally I'd like to think that it was just a case of being over-exaggerated amongst the internet-savvy crowd. It pulled the same numbers that an average horror movie coming out these days would, because it appeals to the same crowd. It's also the same crowd that spends far too much time on the internet (myself included.) The people that saw it are the same people that would've gone to see it anyway, regardless of the amount of hype. We just got more excited about it than usual.

Snakes on a Plane was just another movie to me. It never struck me as very intriguing, the names attached to the film didn't garner anything more than mild interest, so I'd written SOAP off as a DVD rental early on. I largely ignored the hype, so the net-buzz and shameless plugging didn't affect me one way or the other.

Jim: Isn't it a phenomenon that's played out before, where pre-release Internet enthusiasm didn't make the proper translation into actual box-office numbers? Maybe New Line and all the Hollywood number mavens just haven't figured out yet what X number of hits on Snakes on a Blog means in terms of actual people who will stop surfing the Web long enough to actually go out and see a movie, even one like this.

It was very surprising, though, to see how many seats were available at Grauman's Chinese for the 7:40 pm show Saturday night. We walked in at 7:15 to an auditorium that was 1/3 full and had no problem getting our pick of seats. By 7:35 the place was about 3/4 full, certainly a nice enough-sized crowd, but nowhere near the crushing throng we were expecting.

As for the movie itself, it was, I think, a perfect case of truth in advertising. The movie would reveal nothing else beyond what the title said it was, and if you didn't want a see it, at least you knew what you were missing. But it turned out that Snakes on a Plane was not, in the Michael Bay tradition, an overinflated blockbuster full of B-movie allusions, but a bona fide cheapie (sort of-- what $40 million doesn't buy these days, eh?), a real exploitation movie in the best sense of the word-- this movie felt, and often looked, like it could have come straight from the disaster movie movement of the early to mid 70s. It started off a little wobbly, as these things often do, and got consistently better, more solid, as it played out. It's not director David R. Ellis's sleekest work, but it's economical and it delivers the thrills with humor that never tips too far in the wink-wink, nudge-nudge direction. I had a genuine good time watching this movie, and I didn't feel unclean afterward, like I'd been duped by some cynical marketing campaign. It may have been marketed as though it was intended to be all things to all people, but thankfully it has fun simply running with its goofy high concept, with all the gore and nudity and tough, nasty talk one would expect from a movie like this. I felt afterward like, somewhere in heaven or in hell, the likes of Irwin Allen and Jennings Lang, final box office numbers be damned, were looking down (or up), smiling and saying to themselves, "Damn, I wish we'd thought of that!"

I really enjoy your blog. I tried to post a comment on your post about the Snakes On A Plane box office numbers but it failed saying I wasn't allowed to comment. I figured I would email the comment instead since I've found the whole phenomenon surrounding this movie so interesting:

I saw SoaP Friday night. My friend and I had been planning the trip since the release date was announced. The theater was packed (mostly with high-school students). From the response of the crowd it was clear that everyone there was familiar with the internet phenomenon surrounding the movie.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised - the movie itself was far more entertaining than I expected and the crowd response was incredible. I wonder if more people didn't see it because the hype had them expecting it to be unspeakably awful and not campy and fun as it turned out to be.

I do think that anyone who decided to wait for reviews or word-of-mouth really missed out. I doubt the second weekend crowd will be anywhere near as enthusiastic.

Mr. Emerson I dont know if you might be aware that the movie Snakes on a Plane (SOaP) had opened wide not only in your country, the United States of America (USoA) but it also had -what I assume was- a worldwide release since it opened in the country where I live, Venezuela, on the very same date. I should add that it did so with a huge fanfare (from the local newspaper ads that were announcing it since the Sunday before the premiere) But there was no hint that the movie was satire in those ads---STOP THAT!!!- I just checked the imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/releaseinfo) and it seems that it might have not been literally a worldwide opening. But actually a simultaneous release in 6 different countries, and even though I know that entries on the imdb can be added by regular folks without being audited and therefore this list might not be without mistakes, it still puzzles me the apparently chosen countries for its opening: Israel, Iceland, Thailand, UK, USA and Venezuela.
While Im not knowledgeable at all about what goes on in Israel, Iceland or Thailand in terms of their Internet habits I can assure you that most of my country's Internet users (let alone its inhabitants) are frequent visitors of EW's popwatch blog. Or say blogs, or even more exactly Cinema related blogs in English.
And I dont know if it might surprise you that in a country with really high rate of crimes (and I doubt any particular love for cheesy movies)there's not much a tradition of midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show populated with Venezuelans in drag.
This leads me to the big question , how in hell is (or was/is going to, before the lacklustre opening in the US) New Line Cinema planning to market the movie in territories where the concept of "so bad that is good" is not as widespread as in some other countries, like the US or the UK?
To me the newspaper ads printed in Venezuelan newspapers (which i can link to, if I scan them, if you have any particular interest on that- I dont have that particular interest, actually I wasnt thinking of even commenting about the movie, but your posts about it led me to do so)seemed like they were for any of the usual Straight to DVD (pirated or not) movies that open commonly in my country in mainstream Cinemas (like Van Damme flicks, forgettable sequels of classic Disney films and the like).
The thing that ads indicate is that its being "released at the same time in NYC, L.A and London", as if indicating that would mean that one's being part of something bigf you assist.
They (the printed ads) were trying to appeal the horror factor of the movie/concept, without any indication of the non-existant local hype about the movie, that for most Venezuelans stars the "guy from Blade/XXX: State of the Union/Lethal Weapon/Training Day/Boat Trip/Pulp Fiction" I stress this not because Im trying to make a cheap unPC remark. It is because for most of the audiences in Venezuela, there's no extra "OH the B*das* Motha*c*a Sam Jackson is saying mothaf*c*ing snakes" factor, its basically any familiar African Amercian actor saying subtitled profanites and I have the feeling that it might not be THAT different in Thailand or Ecuador, but I could be wrong.
So what you have left is a plain bad planned plane movie. The movie is totally stripped off its toungue in cheek (aspired) value, and I dont think that we're going to get the explanaiton of its campy factor from Hugo Chávez' weekly Sunday TV show either.mothaf*c*ing snakes" factor, and I have the feeling that it might not be that different in Thailand or Ecuador.
So what you have left is a plain bad planned plane movie. The movie is totally stripped off its toungue in cheek (aspired) value, and I dont think that we're going to get the explanaiton of its campy factor from Hugo Chávez' Sunday tv show either.
BTW: Im planning to see it. And I will see it in the one cinema closest to the Caraca’s downtown, where I could be almost certain that no one would be poluted by theE! Latinamerica globalized hype machine

Fear of snakes is a common phobia. Why would these people want to see a movie that's obviously full of them?

According to IMDB:

Daily Variety, which was among those predicting a $30-million take, said that the results revealed "that what's important to the Internet crowd is not necessarily of interest to the general population."

How does Daily Variety, or indeed anyone else know that the $15 mill came from the so-called "Internet crowd"? Sure, some of it certainly did.

But I'm part of said crowd, and while the idea seemed like a fair amount of fun back in March or whenever, by the middle of August I simply no longer cared enough to hit it opening weekend - the novelty had long since gone stale. And if there's one of me, then there's probably a thousand of me.

Perhaps part of the misguesstimation here was the failure to take into account that news on the Internet travels ~really~ quickly. We don't need six months of buildup. I suspect SoaP would've fared far better as a May release than waiting 'til the very last profitable weekend gasp.

As a critic for a prominent online entertainment outlet whose readership was voraciously anticipating SOaP, I saw first hand the sort of fervor that a few vociferous fans can create for a movie that is otherwise ignored or disregarded by the general populace. But the bigger problem (detailed in the attached article) is the mismanagement of the picture by New Line, starting with the decision to delay its release until the end of the 'summer' season. This is a movie whose buzz peaked early, and the studio didn't get it into theaters when it really had a chance to succeed as intentionally-stupid counterprogramming for the A-list blockbusters (instead relegating it to first-tier programming position that it couldn't sustain). Additionally, there's the fact that the people who were most excited about it - internet users - are the ones MOST savvy to the studios' decisions whether or not to screen something (knowing that a criticless environment is a virtual minefield). And then of course there's New Line's little-publicized efforts to get reporters and journalists (who were not invited to watch the film) to downplay the camp angle, because the studio had so much confidence in SOaP as a genuinely scary movie (yeah, right - that's why you called it Snakes On a Plane).

I consider myself Internet savvy, as do most of my peers. I think it's hard to be under the age of, say, 35, and NOT be Internet savvy. In the breakdown of people I know who saw SOAP opening weekend, age mattered much more than exposure to Internet hype.

I asked everyone I know who saw it... which was a greater number of people than I'd like to admit.

Generalization: If you were under 25, you liked it. You perhaps even responded with verbal violence at the suggestion that SOAP was 99% marketing and 1% product. (One guy even checked out the reviews and said, with a straight face, that it looked as if critics were "trying to find any reason not to like it"... as if the reasons were not clear and abundant.) If you were over 25, you responded to the question "how was it?" with something like "it's what you expect," in an noncommital, "what was I thinking?" tone of voice. And whenever I saw the trailer in front of a "normal" film with a "normal" audience, it would be safe to say the reaction was "nonplussed." Rightfully so. The trailer made the film, name aside, look unbelievably predictable and pedestrian. SLJ's presence adds nothing. No one was beating down doors to see The Man, were they?

I probably won't see it. It's a gimmick that made me grin for about 2 minutes, and then the joke was done for me. The following 98 years (it was that long, right? it felt that long) of hype, from all corners, only deadened the movie further for me. Why, then, would I want to sit in a theatre for 90 minutes with people who had psyched themselves to like it no matter WHAT they saw? Marketing made this film a foregone conclusion, both for those who couldn't care less and those who decided they'd like it. I'd rather spend my time with.. absolutely anything else that came out, excepting perhaps the Duff sisters movie.

Hi JE. This is my first time posting, so bear with me if I don't make complete sense right away.

You’ve said before that a critic shouldn’t try to speak for others; he should only speak for himself. I think I might just be able to give an explanation for why Snakes didn’t do quite so well by telling you my own “history� with it. I'm 19 years old, in University, and relatively internet savvy.

A friend first told me about the movie in March (or possibly April). He had read about it online. I was amused by its silly and improbable high-concept, and Samuel L. Jackson’s insistance to that the title not be changed. The internet buzz, and the backstory, and the interviews, suggested that this would be a very silly and stupid and exploitive movie. Hollywood makes plenty of those; what was novel about this was how plain everyone was about it. Usually there is some effort to disguise trash, but the title was practically a neon sign pointing to the film and announcing, “Smell me!� (It’s a strained metaphor I suppose, but you get the point.)

And the internet jokes that sprang up were actually often quite funny, banking on Samuel L’s image and the absurdity of the premise. My favourites? One was a T-shirt tweaking his line from Jackie Brown: “Snakes on a Plane: For when you absolutely, positively, have to kill every mother---er on the plane.� Another was a flash video which pushed the cartoon nature of the premise to giddy excesses, ending with stick-figureish drawings of Samuel L. in a fro and a snake on top of a plane flying through the clouds. The latter also paraodied the hype intrinsic to silly Hollywood trailers by announcing in large, looming text that “Only Once in a Millenia Is SomeThing Created That Will Change the Course of History.� There is something freeing about an embrace of this type of utter silliness. My friends and I laughed and laughed (and of course Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert got a few good jokes out of it too), and it seemed as if the movie might be worth a watch for a silly, stupid time.

What worked against the film was its trailer, which honestly made it seem like any other shlocky horror movie. The trailer’s focusing more on gore than on action turned me off. I had wanted to see silly-stupid; the trailer promised stupid without the free-spiritedness of silly. That, and the fact that the initial joke had more or less worn off after a little while, made me lose interest.

Then a friend of mine, who still thought “the joke� of the hype was funny, suggested a few of us go to see it. It was for his birtdhay, so the rest of us agreed, even though I think the joke had worn off for the rest of us. Then something happened: I started to like it. It turned out that the movie was not stupid (not silly), but silly (not stupid). The only parts of the movie that felt like the bad, exploitive movie I had been expecting were the more graphic parts, which did feel out of place (and were almost certainly the sequences added after the fans started clamouring). The rest felt like a cross between Airplane! and Die Hard: comically exaggerated, stock characters are thrown into a life-or-death situation and then have to think their way out. There wasn’t exactly much dramatic tension, and the movie wasn’t a classic by any means, but there was some sense of urgency in the later scenes that worked, and the movie clearly knew it was at least partly a comedy. And there was even an acknowledgment from a character at the stupidity of the snakes plan. Both myself and my friend who hadn’t wanted to see the movie enjoyed it. My other friend, who had wanted to and still bought into the “joke,� didn’t. I can’t speak for his thought process, but throughout the movie he seemed to be trying to find things to mock. I think he was too stuck in the initial joke—that the movie is so absurd that you must laugh at it—that he never allowed himself to get into the movie enough to laugh with it.

As a result I think the hype has backfired. I know my circle of friends is a small sample set, but I think that it’s telling. The joke got old for me a long time ago; I didn’t want to see an “event,� I wanted to see a movie—not necessarily a masterpiece in this case, but some moving pictures that set out to do something (even just to be a silly bit of fun), and to do it. So I wouldn’t have gone to see Snakes on a Plane—although I’d argue that it meets that criterion, having seen it. And the person who still bought into that hype was disappointed because it wasn’t the Z-movie it was supposed to be.

Sorry if that was on the lengthy side. I'm young; I'll learn brevity eventually. :)

JE: That's a really illuminating story, William. It made me think of how, before home video, the appeal of movie-related tie-ins like soundtrack albums and novelizations was that they rekindled the experience of seeing the movie. Of course, if the movie you could still go see it again, but sometimes you just liked the feeling of being home (or wherever) and evoking your memories of the movie. Now, you can actually own a copy of the movie within a few months. In the case of "Snakes on a Plane," as you describe it, the movie may have been the equivalent of the soundtrack album or novelization -- just a souvenir to remind people of how much fun they had during the viral Internet marketing campaign!

Soemthign similar happened last fall with Serenity. It was getting huge buzz ont eh interenet (somewhat planted with a lot of showings brinign in bloggers to spread word of mouth). In the end it too end up doing blah numbers. The interent is still very limited in its reach, especially the parts of the internet that generate such buzz (messageboards, blogs). Keep in mind all the big internet sites are the ones who still get th traffic.

The only thing I can figure here is this, and I'll try to put it simply.

After Austin Powers came out everyone started throwing around its various catch phrases with the care and precision of a fingerpainting one-year old. To those who hadn't seen the movie, didn't have the context, someone rolling their mouth around "Groovy, baby!" seemed rather retro, instead of funny. When their boss told them to "Zip it," with an odd kind of lisp, that made everyone laugh, they leaned back in their chair and boggled. Of course this kind of confusion led to a lot of friends urgings: "You've got to go see it man." So out they came, week after week, to get the primer to all those half-jokes and references that were bouncing off the walls around them.

The primer to the joke of "Snakes on a Plane" is that there's a movie called "Snakes on a Plane." The endless possibility of that outrageous title, esspecially with Mr. Jackson involved...that is the joke. Seeing the movie doesn't help you get it, doesn't let you into the club. The hype of the movie was about the hype of the movie, not the flick itself. The movie itself pretty much demoted to the denoument after an action film. (Our hero's won, and now they're gonna start a family. Awwww...) Basically purposeless and devoid of drama.

Simply put, with the amount of enjoyment to be had simply knowing there's a movie out there called "Snakes on a Plane" with Sam Jackson in it, there's really no reason to see the movie itself.

Just like knowing Arnold Swartzenager's first movie was a badly dubbed over movie called "Hercules in New York." You don't need to see the movie, just the five seconds where someone punches him ineffectually, and he looks down, smiles, and then in a odd high pitched slightly midwestern sounding dub says, "You have struck Hercules."

Once you've seen that. You're done.

I agree with what has been said about internet hype not reaching as many people as the studio thinks. For the movie itself, I didn't think it was clever/entertaining enough to be a good B-movie (like Tremors or Gremlins), but I didn't think it was hideously awful enough to be campy (Mommie Dearest). It felt like a focus-group created attempt at manufacturing B-movie thrills and/or camp.

I think that it is a case of the internet making something seem bigger than it is.

Example: if you have 100,000 people in a stadium, that is a huge number. But 100,000 people, spread out across the Earth, or even just the US, is not that anywhere near as impressive.

Say there are 1 million people highly anticipating SoaP, in the entire world. On the internet, they are all able to communicate and work together, so the large number makes a difference. But in the "real" world, 1 million people out of 5+ billion is a drop in the bucket.

I have almost 100 people that I have communicated with about SoaP over the internet. But in my hometown, I considered myself lucky to find 3 people who were equally excited.

I'd have to agree with many of the other people who have shared their opinions. I think "Snakes on a Plane" was a simple little joke that had already been played out. It was funny for a few minutes, just because of that title and rediculous premise. You had a few laughs, and there were some spirited parodies on YouTube. After that, it was over, and you moved on with your life.

I think it's as though Hollywood made a summer blockbuster based on "All Your Base Are Belong to Us." Hmm...actually, I'm surprised that hasn't actually happened.

Thank goodness for Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which embodied the spirit of Saint Pauline's dictum that you can have a lot of fun rummaging through the trash. Who knows, maybe we'll just have to sit up front and start riffing and heckling the movie. But, then, we're too busy heckling all the other bad Hollywood movies pitched at dumb teenagers.

As for myself, I don't plan on seeing Snakes on a Plane. Life's too short, and I'd rather catch a local midnight showing of Clue of Big Lebowski. I've got the rest of the Heidi series to watch. I have several books to read, and one to finish writing. In other words, I have a life.