Before viral marketing and internet buzz became one of Hollywood’s favored methods of generating interest among the online community, only a select few titles were deemed lucky or worthy enough to capture the internet’s attention and be hoisted up on its shoulders as a paragon of awesomeness.
Based on nothing but the title and the rampant desire to see Samuel L. Jackson say one line of dialogue in particular, Snakes on a Plane was everywhere you looked when you fired up a painfully slow mid-2000s browser tab and updated your Myspace, before ruining your computer with some questionable methods of attaining new music.
It was nothing short of a phenomenon, dominating forum chatter and leading to several fan sites being created in honor of Snakes on a Plane, long before a shred of footage had even been seen. Jackson even threatened to quit when the studio tried to change the title, while fan support led to five days of reshoots that bumped up the rating from PG-13 to R, just so the leading man could get creatively foul-mouthed.
Snakes on a Plane infiltrated popular culture and then surprised everyone when it flopped at the box office. Nobody expected it to be an all-time great, but $62 million on a $33 million budget proved that the people who hyped it online didn’t make the trip to the theater. If you missed it fifteen years ago and wonder what all the fuss is about, then you can find out for yourself when it comes to Netflix on November 1st.
