Snakes on a plane
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Snakes on a plane |
| Original title | Snakes on a plane |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | approx. 101 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 16 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | David R. Ellis |
| script |
John Heffernan Sebastian Gutierrez David Dalessandro |
| production |
Craig Berenson Don Granger Gary Levinsohn |
| music | Trevor Rabin |
| camera | Adam Greenberg |
| cut | Howard E. Smith |
| occupation | |
| |
Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American feature film that became a topic on blogs and web forums even before its release due to its title . The film was released in Great Britain and the United States on August 18, 2006, and in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on September 7.
action
Sean Jones witnesses the murder of a prosecutor in Hawaii by gang boss Eddie Kim. When he tries to have him killed, Jones is rescued by FBI agent Neville Flynn and brought for questioning. There he and his colleague John Sanders persuaded him to testify against Kim. The agents want to transfer Jones by plane from Honolulu to Los Angeles and block the first class of the plane with him. Despite increased security measures, Kim manages to smuggle a container with poisonous snakes into the hold of the aircraft. The passengers' leis were also sprayed with pheromones to make the snakes aggressive.
During the flight, the container with the snakes opens and they soon get into the passenger cabin and the cockpit of the aircraft. Several passengers, the pilot and Agent Sanders fall victim to the first snake attacks. Panic breaks out among the other passengers. Under the leadership of Agent Flynn, the surviving passengers barricade themselves in the front area of the aircraft. When the snakes break through the barricade, the group retreats to the higher-lying first class. Flynn contacts Agent Hank Harris, his colleague in Los Angeles, and assigns him to find a snake expert. Harris prepares the emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport and contacts the herpetologist Price so that he can identify the snakes. Harris manages to arrest Kraitler, who got the snakes. With his help and the information provided by the herpetologist, Harris procures the appropriate antisera .
Meanwhile, the air supply in the aircraft fails. To avoid death by suffocation, Flynn goes into the hold of the aircraft and repairs the damage there. On his return he discovers that the co-pilot has also fallen victim to a snake attack. He then instructs the passengers to buckle up. He shoots a window with his pistol. The sudden drop in pressure sucks all the snakes out of the cabin. Flynn and Troy, a passenger who is familiar with flight simulations , take control of the aircraft and can land it safely at the LA airport.
The film ends with Jones and Flynn on a surf trip.
background
Emergence
The idea for the plot of the film comes from David Dalessandro, the Associate Vice Chancellor ( Vice Chancellor ) of the University of Pittsburgh . He was inspired by an article from 1992 about night tree snakes that crawled into military vehicles and planes during the Pacific War . In the first version of his script , under the working title "Venom" (poison), it was just a brown night tree snake on an airplane. However, he changed it and used instead of the illusion snake finally another Giftschlangenart.
The third revision of the script finally became the basic idea for the finished film: "Lots of them loose in the fuselage of a plane." He was inspired to the idea by the film Aliens , in which a group of marines confronts a multitude of extraterrestrial creatures.
In 1995 he sent the finished script to 30 Hollywood studios - and each received a rejection: “Now that's scary. My big foray into Hollywood. They put it on a shelf. ”It wasn't until 1999 that Dalessandro received a call from a film producer from MTV / Paramount who remembered the script and wanted to turn it into a film. The script came from Paramount to New Line Cinema , where two other scriptwriters worked on Dalessandro's version. Above all, the beginning and the end of the film have been changed, the middle part is largely based on Dalessandro's original version.
Hype
The film title drew a lot of attention to the production even before its release. This goes back, among other things, to a blog entry by the scriptwriter Josh Friedman , who had been offered to work on the script. In his entry he praises the title of the film: “It's a title. It's a concept. It's a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It's perfect. Perfect. It's the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles. "
The main actor Samuel L. Jackson also contributed to the popularity of the title , who emphasized in interviews that he only took on the role because of the title.
Soon, Snakes on a Plane spread through blogs, web forums, and websites. Fans shot their own film trailers , drew comics or film posters. This viral marketing was used by the studio through competitions on the official website of the film, where original videos / trailers for the film were awarded. Another competition gave musicians the opportunity to bring their musical ideas into the film.
Protests erupted when the studio decided to change the working title to Pacific Air Flight 121 . The studio was eventually forced to abandon this plan and keep the original title Snakes on a Plane .
In March 2006, New Line Cinema ordered a re- shoot . While re-shoots usually indicate problems with the finished film, this re-shoot was done to give the film a higher age rating (from PG-13 to R-rated) by adding more scenes. The film was supplemented with a sex scene and the sentence spoken by Samuel L. Jackson: "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" This line had its origin in blogs, where it was created as a parody of Jackson's typical language in other films.
In July 2006, New Line announced that this film would not, as usual, be shown to critics prior to its release in selected cinemas. Usually this is done to avoid bad movie reviews before it hits theaters, as this can have a negative impact on the commercial success of a film production. According to director David R. Ellis, however, the decision was made in this case to take the step in order to continue the hype that had already developed . One bad review could have ruined it. In addition, the film belongs to the fans and not to the critics.
The film production company The Asylum had the low-budget film Snakes on a Train shot in order to benefit from the hype themselves. In 2007 another B-movie with the title Ants on a Plane - Death in Hand Luggage also tried to build on the success, but did not make it to the cinemas and was only shown as a television film.
The title of the scientific paper Snaxels on a Plane is an allusion to the film title. Snaxels are a generalized form of snakes , which in this case move over a plane ( plane ).
success
At $ 35 million in production costs, the film fell short of the studio's expectations with grossing around $ 13.5 million on the first weekend. Even large-scale advertising measures (such as large billboards in the Paris metro ) did not lead to the original Internet hype being able to be built on. In Germany, the film only had 73,000 visitors and disappeared from the cinemas after just under a week.
Secondary use in DVD rental and sales also made slow progress.
Reviews
"Less horror than disaster film, whose gags, which are always on the verge of tastelessness, are staged with so much disarming carelessness that you can't bite your laugh."
“The work, which gave rise to wildest speculations on the Internet for months, is particularly shocking because of the miserable actors. They serve as snakes for the trash film. "
“The action is standardized, you look in vain for staging surprises, and the characters, as is typical for a B-movie, have to subordinate themselves to the necessities of the outrageous plot. After the passengers have fled the hissing horror in First Class, this turns into a straightforward disaster film in which the snakes are nothing but decorative accessories. "
Web links
- Snakes on a Plane at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Snakes on a Plane in the German dubbing index
- Official website (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Snakes on a Plane . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2006 (PDF; test number: 107 084 K).
- ↑ Age rating for Snakes on a Plane . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Interview with David Dalessandro ( Memento April 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) August 16, 2006, accessed August 19, 2006
- ↑ Hucksblog, Josh Freidman : I find your lack of faith disturbing , August 17, 2005, accessed August 19, 2006
- ↑ Hollywood Reporter: Fan frenzy for 'Snakes' is on a different plane ( January 15, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ), March 23, 2006, accessed August 19, 2006
- ↑ Interview with David R. Ellis from August 16, 2006, accessed August 19, 2006
- ↑ IMDB: Ants on a Plane
- ↑ Snaxels on a Plane website ( memento of the original from October 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. K. Karsch, JC Hart: Snaxels on a Plane . In Proceedings: Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering , 2011, accessed January 9, 2017
- ^ Snakes on a Plane in the Lexicon of International Films
- ↑ Luftschlangen , Jürg Zbinden, NZZ online, September 8, 2006
- ^ Filmkritik , Marcus Wessel, Critic.de, August 31, 2006
