/Threaded/ Snakes on the brain
15/10/2006 | Filed under Discover > Threaded
It’s one of the summer’s most anticipated films. Its cult status wasn’t created by its cracking plot, though – it’s because of the net.
If the entire online community goes absolutely bonkers months and months before a certain film actually hits the cinemas, it’s a sure sign that the end of civilisation is nigh.
The flick in question is the Samuel L Jackson-starring Snakes on a Plane (www.snakesonaplane.com), potentially the worst movie mankind has ever produced. The plot is simple enough: an assassin has sneaked hundreds of snakes on board a plane in order to try and kill a former Mafia member, now a witness in protective custody. It’s not the story that’s given Snakes on a Plane (SOAP) a life of its own, though. It all started around a year ago when screenwriter Josh Friedman became weirdly obsessed with the working title, and blogged about having been offered work on the script (tinyurl.com/cgfdz).
Little did he know that he would send a shock through cyberspace and provide inspiration for thousands of people around the world. Take Snakes on a Blog (www.snakesonablog.com), for example. It’s written by a guy who wants to blag his way to the Hollywood premiere. The site gathers fan art, clothing, videos, songs, tons of excellent stick figure animations (tinyurl.com/f2wxw) and other nonsense vaguely related to SOAP. There are even more than 50 translations of the phrase ‘snakes on a plane’, including sign language. To date, the site has attracted more than 600,000 visitors, and people have even coerced children into producing Snakes on a Plane drawings (tinyurl.com/jplyf).
Snakey insanity
There’s also all kinds of time-wasting entertainment like a role-playing game (tinyurl.com/ng9b9), Snakes on a Sudoku (tinyurl.com/ppoxf), and a board game called Cobras in the Cockpit (www.cobrasinthecockpit.com), which prompts you to “hiss, rattle, squeeze, and bite your way through the plane, earning points for each section you throw into chaos”.
Not surprisingly, YouTube is also crammed with tributes (tinyurl.com/gjdog), and it’s amazing how far Snakes on a Plane actually permeates. There are numerous blogs (community.livejournal.com/snakesonablog and www.snakesonstuff.com), Photoshop competitions by the usual suspects at Fark (tinyurl.com/qoqcw) and fan fiction galore (snakes_in_a_fic.livejournal.com). It’s unsurprising that SOAP has also been mashed up with other online legends, giving us ‘All your snakes are belong to us’ (www.allyoursnakesbelongtous.com).
However, you know that you’ve got something unique if an internet meme suddenly pops up at sophisticated literary journal McSweeny’s, which recently ran a post featuring several surprise endings for Snakes on a Plane (www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/4/10keinathnuske.html). And brilliant blog Overheard in New York (www.overheardinnewyork.com) recently eavesdropped on this conversation:
Woman: Hey, when’s that movie Snakes on a Plane ever gonna come out?
Old man: What? What’s that?
Woman: Maybe it’s just a joke. Like the ‘L’ in Samuel ‘el’ Jackson’s name. I think that’s a joke too, like, what is he? Samuel ‘the’ Jackson?
Old man: Who’s that?
Woman: Just eat your hot dog, Dad.
The biggest proof of SOAP’s bizarre buzz must be the inclusion of the phrase ‘snakes on a plane’ in the Urban Dictionary. There are 19 definitions, the most common of which puts the title on the same level as ‘c’est la vie’ and ‘shit happens’.
Meanwhile, New Line, the Hollywood studio behind this celluloid masterpiece, has realised that it’s onto something here. When it tried to change the film’s working title to Pacific Air Flight 121, there was outrage online, with Samuel L Jackson leading the fight, and forcing the title to be changed back to Snakes on a Plane. Now New Line hopes to benefit from the online madness and has ordered some additional shooting to add a line for Samuel L Jackson that started off in a fake trailer on the web created by a devoted fan: “I want these motherf***ing snakes off this motherf***ing plane.” Surely, this is the end of civilisation?
