(All the good titles are gone – Snakes on a Blog, taken. Twists on the title are so April.) 
Kristen and I saw the much hyped Snakes on a Plane Saturday night. Expecting huge crowds, we stopped by the theater early to grab tickets, so imagine my surprise when we arrive and the show is not even close to a sellout. The entertainment media is already calling the movie a flop – only taking in $15.2 million dollars – about have the cost to make the movie.
A lot of the stories are claiming that this is an indictment of the blogosphere, buzz marketing, and internet marketing in general. My take is this – New Line Cinema made a mistake in relying soley on the internet and word of mouth marketing to market this movie – yes it’s cheaper, but if they wanted really huge numbers, it would have helped to build on the buzz with a wider broadcast campaign.
That said, this movie is a success because they were able to viably launch a movie without a huge media spend – that really hadn’t been done before. This movie doesn’t even get made without the internet. Media stories stating that SOAP isn’t successful are in part self-serving because they’re the ones that have lost out on ad dollars.
On to the movie – if for some reason you’re expecting this to be an Oscar level film you’ll be dissappointed. SOAP is a summer escapism – think Speed with less IQ. Lot’s of Samuel L., snakes, and laugh out loud lines (intentional and unintentional). Not a good movie, but it lives up to my expectations, and I’m fine with that. If you can’t laugh at yourself, and have an inability to do something totally silly – don’t go.
My sister said it was awesome:) How could it not be?
I don’t think I want to see it. I’ve seen the movie trailer, it just looks so fake.
Fake? Of course, it’s fake! It’s supposed to be a joke. Anyway, I enjoyed the hell out of it and laughed through the entire thing cracking jokes with my friend, Leslie. It was a hoot!
I want to start a list of things you have to say during movie when it reaches its cult status (already there? with only $15 mil. Hell, I wish I were a flop then). For example, when the rap star and the male stewart shake hands and make up, you have to start singing, “Ebony & Ivory”. You know, things like that.
You just have to be willing to accept the badness.
I don’t get why people are surprised. It’s shocking to me. If I could wager on things like “Snakes-on-a-plane
” will be a dissappointment at the box office, lets just say I’d be rich.
The whole reason for the buzz, the whole reason for the jokes was that the movie looked dumb as hell. Snakes on a plane. Wow. Fun. I don’t need to pay $10 to see Congo at 30,000 feet.
Yes, there is a market for people who like to watch things done so poorly they almost become entertaining, and that market is precisly $15.2 million or whatever it opened at.
There\’s a difference between done poorly and not taking ones self seriously. Most movies are made with this belief that they are meant to do something more than entertain – SOAP understands that\’s all it\’s meant to do. If it weren\’t for movies like this there wouldn\’t be any Bruce Lee, Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts, Robocop, etc. movies.
There\’s a market for people who aren\’t so stuck on themselves that they can go to a movie and enjoy it for what it is and most movies are – mindless entertainment.
I saw this movie twice. I agree with your comments. It’s not supposed to be a master piece. It’s supposed to be cheesy – and it is. But it’s still a fun movie. I’d have to say if anyone other than Samuel L. was the leading role – it would have been incredibly bad. He cracks me up.
A great quote from the Daily show is that with the proposed title Pacific Flight 121 that the movie stars Meredith Baxter Birney.