Slithering Heights

Action Jackson: Samuel L. Jackson moves to higher ground in Snakes on a Plane. Photo James Dittiger/ New Line Productions.

Here are five of the greatest lines Samuel L. Jackson delivers in Snakes on a Plane:

1. “Do as I say if you want to live!”
2. “Snakes on crack?”
3. “I am not a zoologist, man!”
4. “S---, now what?”
5. Clutching a familiar eating utensil: “Sporks?”

The winner and still champion, however, is: “I have had it with these motherf---ing snakes on this motherf---ing plane!” That line is a big reason a Hollywood thriller with a low-concept title and even lower aspirations somehow became the only movie anyone seems to care about this summer.

Already infamous, Jackson’s quip was conceived not by screenwriters John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez or ad-libbed by Jackson but cooked up by Chris Rohan, a 19-year-old in Germantown, Md., who was sufficiently excited by the prospect of Samuel L. Jackson in a movie called Snakes on a Plane that he created his own audio trailer for the film, full of lines he wanted to hear. The tribute helped galvanize the online SoaP community, which has shaped the nature of not just the movie’s marketing but — in the weirdest Hollywood story of 2006 — its content.

Director David Ellis got Jackson to utter Rohan’s line in one of several scenes added after the studio, New Line, decided — upon the urging of Ellis, Jackson and bloggers — to go for a Restricted rating in the U.S. rather than the more teen-inclusive PG-13. Jackson and SoaP’s online fans also lobbied to prevent the studio from changing its title to the obviously lame Pacific Air Flight 121. New Line later explained that the name substitution was only temporary so actors would not be put off by the cheese factor inherent in the original title. (The name was conceived during an after-hours pitch session by several Hollywood executives competing to see who could come up with the worst — and therefore best — movie title.)

The advance buzz was amplified by New Line’s savvy marketing campaign, which included a website feature that allowed fans to receive an urgent, electronically generated phone message from Jackson himself (“Snakes on a Plane just might be the greatest motion picture ever made – it’s that good!”). The speculation has been so entertaining that the movie itself almost didn’t need to be good. That Snakes on a Plane is an efficiently staged and enjoyably nasty thriller is icing on the whole gonzo phenomenon.

Dropping in for a bite: Troy (Kenan Thompson) makes some new friends in Snakes on a Plane. Photo James Dittiger/ New Line Productions.

Jackson plays Neville Flynn, an FBI agent escorting a murder witness on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. Jackson’s now-trademark line lands exactly where it should: when Flynn decides he’s finally had enough with all the inexplicably snaky shenanigans and opens a can of whup ass. In case you’ve been wondering all this time how those snakes even got on the plane, they were smuggled aboard by a crime lord trying to kill Flynn’s witness. Before this assortment of mambas, cobras and other species is released from the cargo hold, viewers get more than enough time to meet the plane’s other occupants, a roster that includes a flight attendant on her last trip (ER’s Julianna Margulies); a toy-dog-toting prima donna (Toronto native Rachel Blanchard); a germ-phobic hip-hop star (Flex Alexander); a lewd co-pilot (Anchorman’s Todd Louiso); and two unaccompanied children, in case Jackson’s serpentine co-stars start looking for appetizers.

Mostly digitally generated, the snakes slither through their early appearances in a convincingly menacing manner. Their first victims are a couple in the midst of joining the Mile High Club in the bathroom, an enjoyably lurid scene that combines sex and violence in a way a PG-13 movie never could. Soon, the plane is full of dead passengers, their faces and limbs purple and swollen from multiple bites. Ellis wisely keeps the camera low to the ground, occasionally indulging in hilarious but appropriate “snake cam” shots that simulate the reptiles’ green, smudgy perspective.

Some viewers will find the gory attacks less disturbing than the sight of the passengers being tossed through the air, which happens frequently once the snakes visit the men in the cockpit. In the tradition of plane thrillers from Airport to Red Eye, Snakes on a Plane exploits the many discomforts suffered by air travellers, from claustrophobic compartments to stomach-churning turbulence.

As the nouns in the film’s glorious title compete to become the biggest fear factor, Ellis and his screenwriters successfully contrive ways to escalate the action without allowing the enterprise to collapse into nonsense. Aware of its own silliness but not too knowingly cheeky about it, Snakes on a Plane is a throwback to an era when B-movies had (some) honour, a time before Hollywood colonized territory that traditionally belonged to low-budget filmmakers (horror, action, sex farces) and replaced the lurid sensationalism with a more conservative, corporate sensibility. Ellis’s movie has less in common with any of the more expensive blockbusters this summer (Superman, Mission: Impossible 3) that it’s likely to out-perform than with the most memorable movies of Roger Corman (Death Race 2000) and Larry Cohen (It’s Alive). These intrepid filmmakers understood that a catchy title, some B&B (blood and breasts), a few clever twists and enthusiasm for the task was all their audiences craved.

The fact that there’s a movie called Snakes on a Plane is a small miracle. The bigger miracle is that Ellis’s hugely engaging popcorn flick is nearly as much fun as the movie that was already running in our heads.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.

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