Ruminations on a #$!@&%* Movie: A Snakes on a Plane Review

Snakes on an Introduction: I wish this article could be short and sweet. Condensed and poetically perfect—just like the high-concept title of this film. Snakes on a Plane: as Josh Friedman put it, “the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles.� Who’s Josh Friedman you ask? He’s the screenwriter who wrote a brilliant blog entry and inadvertently created the pop-culture groundswell that put this movie on the map, spawned a hyper-creative community of SoaP fans (even before the movie released), and made “Snakes on a Plane,� as a concept, an idea, into the latest and hippest Zen koan around.

Snakes on a Side-note: By the way, if you didn’t realize that Snakes was a pop-culture phenomenon, I’d suggest checking out the blog entry in question, and also two other sites (of many) that have become part of this whole thing: snakesonablog and blanksonablank. So, check those, get acclimated, and then we’ll be ready to get back to my not-nearly-as-concise-as-the-title-of-SoaP article, wherein we’ll presently open some windows on . . .

Snakes on a Mini-Review: Alright fanboys, here’s the truth: Snakes as a movie, without the accoutrements, wasn’t that good. It felt pieced together—probably due to the numerous pickups done to achieve an R rating. Consequently, the tone was uneven. It was supposed to be funny in places, but felt needlessly violent in others. Jackson’s famed line about those mother-blanking snakes on the mother-blanking plane is gold, truly, but doesn’t match the feelings evoked by young children in peril, innocent honeymooners meaninglessly developed and then killed, pseudo-love-stories.

This doesn’t mean that I didn’t, on the whole, like the movie. I did, in a way. I mean, Sam Jackson could read insurance convention literature and make it interesting, and the story was workable, of course. There were, after all, snakes on a plane. But the problem is that, with the expectations that fans had, SoaP took itself too seriously—likely a hangover from before the Internet buzz, before the pickups. What was needed, I think, was Evil Dead. You know, on-purpose kitsch. B-movie status all the way. One-liners every five minutes. Cardboard-cutout characters. Obviously self-conscious stereotyping. Not even a hint that you should actually, as a viewer, take it seriously or become invested.

Snakes on a Transition: But this is where the fascinating thing happens—the thing that makes Snakes on a Plane worth watching and talking about. I was slightly disappointed with the movie because I was caught up in the expectations. I knew what I wanted, what everyone wanted, and it didn’t really happen. The movie wasn’t bad-good, it was just "eh" and I was upset. But what do these collective expectations say about me and us? What does it say that a large number of people made Snakes into a phenomenon, months before release, and surrounded it with such an artifice of shoulds and coulds, hopes and anticipations? I think it says several things . . .

Snakes on a Discussion of This Movie’s Function as Culture-Window: First, it has to be said that Snakes became what it was, mainly, because of the title. As Friedman puts it, “It’s a title. It’s a concept. It’s a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It’s perfect.� Exactly. The high-concept, super-simple title started it all. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the total lack of euphemism and politicking. There are snakes. On a plane. That’s it. No explication needed. No hiding. No misdirection. Just the snakes and the plane. Whatever the case—whatever this en masse embracing of concision says about modern moviegoers—SoaP tapped into something with its moniker, and to great effects.

Second, the Samuel L. Jackson factor has to be taken into account. He helped make the movie what it became, and played a large part in the specific expectations that people had, because he is an icon in the purest sense of the word. However he did it, Sam Jackson has become the icon, the epitome of cool. We all know what it says on his wallet. No one else has a purple light saber. I mean, he’s Shaft, for crying out loud. And it is this icon that we wanted to see pitted against those snakes. “Who’s cooler?� became the implied question. Snakes are quiet and deadly and cold-blooded and heartless and they look cool being that way. Oh, but Sam is all those things too, and he’s on our side. Go Sam!

Unfortunately, Snakes let its audience down on this point. The expectations were there—the icon was ready to be painted and worshipped—but this film was far from Pulp Fiction. Jackson isn’t even in the movie as much as it feels like he should be, and when he is, there’s just something . . . missing. The reality just couldn’t, in this case, meet up with the glowing fantasy of our King of Cool going head-to-head with King Cobra. All I was left with, obviously (and gladly, compared to the movie), was a chance to consider Jackson’s status as an icon, and why we create such icons, why we need them, what it says about us.

Finally, there’s something deep going on with this movie—and all movies that are, or that we want to be, bad-good—that has to do with value assignment. I can’t tell if movies like this, or like Evil Dead, or whatever, sprout up legions of fanboys because of some bandwagon factor, or because of some desire to be seen as unique, or because of something that’s gained from just the act of value assigning, perhaps a feeling of ownership or participation in something bigger than oneself, or what.

If SoaP had done what it should’ve done and veered straight into a sort-of action movie satire, then you could legitimately give it aesthetic credence. But it didn’t. Nevertheless, the fanboys will remain fanboys. In fact, they may become more rabid. They may slay you on forums. You probably just don’t get it, can’t get it, they’ll say. It becomes a club, a cult of those in the know who are able to see the true value of the movie, the TV show, the comic, the whatever. And why does this happen? How could it have happened with Snakes on a Plane even before it released? Dunno. But I know it says something about us.

Snakes on a Fleeting Spiritual Connection and a Conclusion: And does what it says about us have some spiritual relevance? Probably. It’s probably relevant that a large group of people (including me) long for simplicity, for icons, for a sense that what we value counts beyond just ourselves. It’d also probably be pretty easy to seat those longings someplace spiritual. So, is the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon, then, transcendent? Does it make sense that people use the words as a koan? Again, probably. All I know is: this is one case among many where the movie is less important, less interesting as a movie, than as a window into the culture and people that created it. On a plane. And I, for one, am glad to have been along for the ride.