'Snakes on a Plane'? I can't see no snakes...

'SOAP' isn't screening for critics, and Nick Roddick asks if this is a signal of a worrying new trend.

Aug 17 2006

Six new films open in London this week. You will find reviews of five of them in most newspapers and magazines (including this one). The sixth is called 'Snakes on a Plane'. Go on: see if you can guess what it's about. You'll have to, in any case, because there are no reviews to tell you.

The reason is that UK distributor Entertainment – following the lead of US mini-studio New Line, which produced the film and will open it in America on 2,500 screens – opted not to show 'Snakes' to the media.

'Understanding that [the fans] would be the driving force behind the film,' said New Line, 'we decided early on that they should be the first to see it.'

Well, almost. There's a darkly non-specific trailer (Tagline: 'Sit Back, Relax. And Enjoy the Fright'). And New Line did show ten minutes of the movie to delegates at San Diego's Comic-Con convention earlier this month, to apparently triumphant effect: the assembled southern California geeks lapped – and blogged – it up like it was this summer's 'Titanic'. Not that that proves anything: even 'Waterworld' probably had ten good minutes in it.

But, as with a lot of genre movies, a number of which distributors have recently shielded from the press, New Line and Entertainment can be forgiven for thinking that they don't have much to gain by showing 'Snakes' to the media. For one thing, it has a completely descriptive, Ronseal-style title: anyone buying a ticket for a film called 'Snakes on a Plane' knows exactly what they're getting. For another, potential patrons are going to make their decision on the basis of whether they want to see a film about a plane full of snakes, rather than whether it's a good snakes-on-a-plane movie (there are others?).

Of course, both Entertainment and New Line are perfectly at liberty not to screen the film: it's their movie and their job to market it in the most effective way possible. But, in an age when studio marketing departments hold the whip-hand, it does indicate the increasingly fractious relationship between reviewers and the business.

Why, the marketing departments must sometimes ask themselves, do we spend months developing taglines, key visuals and finely honed trailers, only to let a bunch of dyspeptic, over-the-hill movie buffs loose on our baby? The answer, of course, is that there is gold to be mined in the enthusiastic soundbites and, above all, those instant-value stars that have pride of place on the poster of (almost) every film.

Given the importance of soundbites, industrial-strength spinning is rife. Quotes can be trimmed to change the meaning: 'I laughed so much I nearly wet myself [at the ludicrously shallow characterisation in this unwatchable film].' And, if that won't do, you can always make them up, as Sony did for its turgid 2001 Mel Gibson epic, 'The Patriot'. 'Another winner!' trumpeted David Manning of the Ridgefield Press. Ridgefield, Connecticut (pop 20,900), does indeed have a paper called the Press, but it doesn't employ anyone called David Manning. Likewise, two of the 'fans' caught coming out of a screening and featured in a TV ad for the film turned out to work in Sony's marketing department.

Sony was rumbled that time, apologising for the TV ad and settling out of court (without admitting liability) in the Manning case. But cheating is rare. There's no need: journalists who come up with good quotes know they will get favoured treatment from the distributors next time. Just as worryingly, a number of UK papers are alleged to have bumped up the star ratings for 'The Da Vinci Code' from the ones and zeros they were getting from critics at Cannes, presumably on the grounds that the editor knew better what the punters wanted to hear.

What makes 'Snakes on a Plane' unusual, however, is that the straight-to-the-fans approach has, in this case, gone a lot further than just the marketing campaign. New Line threw the film's concept open to selected comic-heads and other online geeks during pre-production, adjusting the content accordingly (mainly, it is said, to include more sex and more gore). One helpful cybernaut reportedly even came up with the generic line that kicks off the film's climax. 'That's it!' snarls Samuel L Jackson. 'I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!'

Indeed, Jackson – who has inherited Michael Caine's mantle of adding apparent gravitas to a series of clunky movies – told an audience at Comic-Con that 'the pre-release feedback which shaped "Snakes" is the future of the movie business'.

Not only does Hollywood no longer need critics, in other words: it doesn't need screenwriters either.

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