I’m a sucker for a terrible movie on cable. I’m not sure if there’s a better feeling than sinking into your couch on a Sunday afternoon and flipping through the channels to find a mediocre movie on TNT or FX. This feeling is why I refuse to cut the cord — at least until I can’t afford it anymore.
“Snakes on a Plane” is a bad movie, but it’s not a typical bad movie. I like watching “Snakes on a Plane” because it's unapologetically ridiculous and wickedly entertaining. It’s a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s not going to win any Oscars, and it shouldn’t. It’s not going to be in someone’s four favorites on Letterboxd.
However, it is a movie I love to revisit for its laughs and charm. Plus, there’s no better time to watch it than this month, as "Snakes on a Plane" celebrates its 20th anniversary.
A simple yet insane premise
I imagine the pitch for “Snakes on a Plane” lasted no more than 30 seconds.
Writer: “I want to make a movie with snakes on a plane.”
Studio: “That’s it?"
Writer: “They’re poisonous snakes.” Studio: “Done. What’s the title?”
Writer: “Snakes on a Plane.”
Studio: “Here’s millions of dollars.”
It’s the easiest high-concept pitch to understand. The title explains everything you need to know. It’s a perfect title, which makes it all the more confusing that New Line Cinema wanted to change the title to “Pacific Flight 121.” You can thank Samuel L. Jackson for keeping the “Snakes on a Plane” title because he threatened to quit if they stuck with “Pacific Flight 121.”
There is a reason the snakes are on a plane, something I completely forgot when I sat down to rewatch the movie to write this article. While out on his dirt bike in Hawaii, Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) witnesses gangster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) murder a prosecutor. Kim sends his men to kill Sean, but FBI agent Neville Flynn (Jackson) intervenes and saves him.
Sean agrees to testify at the trial against Kim, so Flynn agrees to escort him on a 747 flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. When Kim gets word of the plan, he has his goons smuggle a crate of poisonous snakes into the plane's cargo hold. If that wasn’t dangerous enough, the passengers’ leis are sprayed with a special pheromone to make the snakes more aggressive and violent.
Did we need the FBI subplot for this movie? Absolutely not. This is a 106-minute movie about poisonous snakes on a plane, and it takes over 30 minutes for these slithery creatures to start wreaking havoc on the passengers and crew. 30 minutes! You could’ve set up the premise in less than 10 minutes.
Ridiculous is an understatement
I’m not sure if the word “ridiculous” does “Snakes on a Plane” justice. What is beyond ridiculous? Is it absurd, preposterous, ludicrous, or all of the above? You catch my drift, though. Once the snakes come out of hiding in the cabin, the movie flies into the left lane on the highway and never presses the brake again. Then again, I don’t want “Snakes on a Plane” to live in reality. The more unrealistic the scene, the better.
To explain how ridiculous the movie is, I’m going to spotlight the five most absurd moments in “Snakes on a Plane,” in descending order, from ridiculous to absolutely bonkers.
No. 5 is when Elsa Pataky sucks snake venom out of a boy’s arm after swishing olive oil in her mouth. I’m unfamiliar with snakebites, so I always believed you could suck certain snake venom out with your mouth. It was a solution used in medieval times. I’m not one to give medical advice, but it probably shouldn’t be attempted today. Pataky is married to Chris Hemsworth, so I’ll suspend my disbelief for Thor’s wife.
No. 4 is a tie between the mile-high couple (with Taylor Kitsch playing the male) and the man taking a pee break. Stealing a page from a horror playbook, the movie kills the sexually promiscuous people first. I audibly laughed at the man who went to pee, unbuttoned his pants, and said, “How’s my big boy?” before a snake came through the toilet to kill him. It’s a 10/10 scene with no notes from me.
No. 3 is the moment when the flight attendants, played by Julianna Margulies and Sunny Mabrey, ask for the doctor and locate his seat. The camera pans to reveal the dead doctor lying in his seat with a snake slithering out of his mouth. Does it get any more cinematic than that?
No. 2 is when Flynn shoots the cabin windows open, and the snakes get sucked out of the plane into the sky. During the pandemonium, a snake gets wrapped around a woman’s neck. Thankfully, a professional kickboxer grabs the snake with his bare hands (!) and throws it out the window (!!). Somehow, I draw the line there and not the fact that the entire scene is preposterous, and every single person on the plane would likely die.
No. 1 is when Troy, played by Kenan Thompson, lands the plane. When in doubt, let the man with zero flying experience in the real world pull off an emergency landing because he has more than 2,000 hours on a flight simulator. This was a win for the gamers. Unrealistic, sure, but it did allow Thompson to give an A+ intro for Flynn, “my brother from another mother, the biggest pimp that I know, Superfly Agent Flynn.”
God bless this dialogue
The real reason “Snakes on a Plane” remains charming to this day is the dialogue. I would love to sit down with screenwriters John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez and discuss the film’s one-liners. The movie is not a comedy, but its use of punchlines is hilarious.
Here are some favorites:
- When Flynn learns the snakes are aggressive because of the pheromones, he goes, “Well, that’s good news. Snakes on crack.”
- After Troy lands the plane, Flynn screams, “All praises to the PlayStation.”
- When Ken throws a snake in a microwave, he says, “Who’s your daddy, bi—?”
- When Rick the pilot gets injured, he says, “You’d be surprised at what a man can do with one hand.”
Obviously, I’m saving the best line for last. Before Flynn decides to shoot the plane’s windows, he says, “Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf—ing snakes on this motherf—ing plane.” To think, this iconic line almost never happened due to the studio wanting a PG-13 rating. Thankfully, Jackson fought to curse in this scene, so they added it during reshoots.
Audiences need to embrace the “so bad it’s good” movie again. Although maybe it’s not a bad movie after all, considering it has a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. We need more “Snakes on a Plane” in this ecosystem. Here’s to someone making “Lions on a train.”
Watch "Snakes on a Plane" with purchase on Prime Video or Apple.
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