Hissed Opportunity
By Joe Lozito
I'll assume you already know what I thought about
"Snakes on a Plane" (Great movie? No. Great snakes-on-a-plane movie? Sure). And while I don't have the urge to see multiple "
Animal on a
Vehicle" rip-offs, I do feel as though I need to speak out against the obvious double-standard at work here. How can one $30 million movie be a success while an equally-grossing equally-budgeted movie is dubbed a failure? Surprisingly enough, it wasn't greed. There's a lot more at work here than just the bottom line.
"Invincible" is a fine film which emerged fully-formed from the cookie-cutter, feel-good sports movie factory. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily, as long as it's done well. And "Invincible" is; the script is good, the performances are great and the uplifting ending is as comfy as a warm blanket adorned with an NFL logo. In other words: "Invincible" is safe. It's the kind of movie Hollywood's been making (and re-making) for years. "Snakes" on the other hand, is little more than a silly B-movie, but it also represents something different, something scary and new: a film supposedly created by and for the audience.
As popular lore tells us, "Snakes" started as a low-budget - almost throw-away - thriller, but the ridiculous title alone was enough to get the blogosphere buzzing ("is this film for real?"). Then when Samuel L. Jackson not only climbed aboard but threw his support behind the film, "Snakes" turned into a genuine phenomenon. So much so that the studio invested additional dollars in the film to amp-up the effects, the violence and the R-rating. Most famously, the film's crowd-pleasing tag-line ("I've had it with these
expletive snakes on this
same expletive plane") came straight from the fans.
Held up against those criteria, "Snakes" was a success. It featured plenty of the titular beasties (both real and CGI), lots of gory killings and Samuel L. Jackson in all his vein-busting glory. But "Snakes" represented something else to Hollywood: a new kind of film generated by committee, outside their control.
Over the last decade, it's no secret that Hollywood has been trying with limited success to combat the internet in all its forms: first script leaks, then full-on piracy, and now the influence of the fans over the finished product. So, in a conspiracy worthy of a Michael Moore documentary, they had to make sure "Snakes" failed. Pundits set opening estimates at a ridiculous $20-30 million. These are Will Ferrell numbers not the budget projections for a B-horror-movie. But it didn't matter; they might as well have set the bar at $90 million because Hollywood was never going to call "Snakes" a success. To do so would have been admitting that the fans know best - that the internet community may actually have a voice worth listening to. And that's not how Hollywood works.
No sooner had opening night passed than "Snakes" was dubbed a failure. "The nerds just didn't come out", they said. "You can't trust internet buzz". The vehemence behind the denouncement of the film made it clear something else was going on.
In reality, opening night for "Snakes" may not have been packed, but it was crowded. And the people who were there started applauding as soon as the titles rolled. It was the most animated crowd I've seen since "Revenge of the Sith". They cheered, they cackled, they flinched and, unlike that last George Lucas disappointment, they didn't boo. They actually enjoyed themselves. Is Hollywood's radar so askew that a movie with that reaction gets called a failure?
Well, naturally, the powers-that-be aren't interested in the pleasure of its audience (how else do you explain films like "Little Man" and "Material Girls" getting green-lit so quickly?). What makes Hollywood happy is the comfortable status quo. So "Snakes" had to die.
Of course it didn't make $30 million in its opening weekend. When all is said and done it's still a snakes-on-a-plane movie; it's not "Gone with the freakin' Wind". No, the most frightening thing about "Snakes on a Plane", it turns out, wasn't the serpents. It was what else slithered to the surface.
