Klosterman on Snakes on a Plane
Chuck Klosterman writes in Esquire on the "tragedy" of Snakes on a Plane. He seems to fear that the film will encourage awful copycat attempts by studios to make blog-inspired movies, and that the movie will be too self-conscious to be "so bad it's good." He's wrong for several reasons:
- Hollywood's copycat obsession is a symptom that has dominated modern cinema for years, and Snakes on a Plane can be hardly blamed for it. You can't pinpoint what's wrong with the horror/action genre on one film, especially when the genre is already in dire straits. (Incidentally, I saw Jaws yesterday for the first time. It was good.)
- Over 95% of the movie was written and filmed before the Internet phenomenon became fully defined, meaning that the studio was never fully enslaved to the whims of the blogosphere. They did 5 mere days of reshooting -- hardly a choose-your-own adventure, or a wiki for that matter.
- "[P]eople now say 'Snakes on a plane' in place of 'It is what it is.'" The only people that use the phrase that way are stodgy NPR cultural analysts and people outside the phenomenon looking in.
- Whether or not the movie is bad enough to be good is somewhat irrelevant. Everyone in the audience (at least when I see the movie) will be there with a shared connection, familiar with the Internet phenomenon, and not just the Keith Olbermann or New York Times coverage. We'll be there to see Snakes on a Plane, and not to witness the harbinger of a new "wikifilm" genre.
His cultural commentary here seems to be much ado about nothing, or more accurately, much ado about the wrong thing. (via soab)
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[...] The Church of the Customer Blog has a well reasoned rebuttal. So does crazymonk. [...]
i've got four words for you: snake on a train
http://tinyurl.com/p4ueg
That doesn't exactly count, since it's not a Hollwood copycat. Calling a movie "Terrorists vs. Good Guys" and email blasting a bunch of bloggers to write about it and asking them to come up with ideas for it would be more like it.
Your argument gets Klosterman's logic completely wrong, writing, "Hollywood’s copycat obsession is a symptom that has dominated modern cinema for years, and Snakes on a Plane can be hardly blamed for it." Klosterman's argument relies on the logic of event A (Hollywood loves to recycle ideas and concepts) leading to action B (Hollywood will make more Snakes on the Plain variety). Indeed, your comment re-enforces Klosterman's argument.
In other words, in your attempt to castigate Klosterman, you actually prove Klosterman's argument.
Rather, the better argument against Klosterman with logical support is necessary but not sufficient. In other words, Hollywood recycles successful concepts. If Snakes on the Plane bombs in terms of international box office recepts and DVD sales, then it is doubtful Hollywood will attempt to recycle the concept. Hollywood, however, will continue to recycle ideas and concepts. A is not sufficient to explain B.
As to the 5 day reshoot, if this movie were on par with Superman Returns, the third installment of Spiderman, or even Eyes Wide Shut, which had much of the movie reshot, then the 5 day reshoot would not be unusual. For a low budget action film (except for marketing costs, did it even cost $50 million to make?), a 5 day reshoot is extremely unusual. Reshoots are prohibitively expensive and, unless your director is Kubrick or your film represents a tent pole for the studio, good luck on getting a reshoot. Hence, the additional shooting and reshooting for this type of film is unusual.
As to the final point, for a sequel or a copycat to occur, Snakes on the Plane will need strong DVD sales. The movie is patently bad. But is it truly so bad it is good? That reflects Klosterman's second argument. He argues against this idea. Unfortunately, your post does not argue for this point because it dismisses that discussion.
"The movie is patently bad."
It might very well be, but how could you know that yet?
look guys, for those who actually support soap, none of this really matters all that much. whether one person says they like the movie or not won't change too many opinions, huh? milevin, we get that you think it will be stupid. with incidents like klosterman's review, some people might think they're "higher" than such a movie as soap. for the rest of us, i'll be counting down until midnight of august 17th.
you only saw Jaws for the first time the other night? and your reaction is, "it was good?" dude, Jaws fucking owns you.
by the way, i just read klosterman's article and i find absolutely no merit in it, whatsoever. it's an inexplicably sophist piece with nary a valid point to be found. so what? it's a movie with a large internet fan base because of its goofy title. he's naive if he thinks hollywood studios are going to start "giving the internet what it wants," and reshoot a movie just because some internet geeks want the vampires to have pompadours. hollywood studios may try to recreate the SoaP buzz, but the internet is finicky. just ask mahir, hamsterdance, all your base, etc etc etc.
besides, even if klosterman is right, and the movie's terrible (it will be), and successful (it will be), and there are lots of ridiclous copycat films and promotions (there may be), so the fuck what? is chuck klosterman seriously sitting around in a panic that hollywood might make shitty movies someday?
i'm not done. he says new line reshot the movie to give the audience "whatever it wanted." really? really. we're all sitting around believing that new line saw the comments of some schmuck on a blog and said "hey! yeah! let's put that in the movie!"
this reeks of general ignorance and a lack of research. didn't SoaB's original interview with David Ellis include something about a back-and-forth ratings battle with NL, who wanted the movie to be PG-13, while DE wanted it to be rated R? if we apply some common sense, we can interpret the whole thing to be a case of the studio wanting a younger rating for the broadest audience possible, and the director pointing to the promising internet buzz as a reason to make the film the way he had wanted, without worrying about the R rating, and successfully lobbying to get a re-shoot. it has very little to do with "the internet getting what it wants," and very much to do with "the director getting what he wants."
now i'm riled up. christ, klosterman, forget the film criticism and go back to deifying thom yorke.
two things:
1) jaws was more than good -- i was acting deliberately unhyperbolic.
2) your mocking of klosterman was spot on, but i do think you downplay the effect of the internet. the phrase "motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane" was indeed added because of the internet chatter. the violence you're probably right about.
1) good. one of my many favorite things about Jaws is spielberg's ability to shoot... water... as in, just the horizon line of water meeting sky, and make us watch it. and it's awesome.
2) agreed that they put that one line in due to fandom's want. but c'mon... that's about it. see x-men 3's "i'm the juggernaut, bitch" as a reference. that line was in there as a nod to the internet -- but if significant chunks of the movie had been based on what the internet wanted, storm would have fought mystique with her super vagina powers, only to find herself locked in a winner-take-all titty-grab-a-thon with the phoenix.
3) to be honest, i usually like klosterman's rock criticism. but sometimes he gives me a headache. OCD music assholes like all of us shouldn't be encouraged.
[...] UPDATE: Crazymonk has a better and more concise review of the article. [...]
I think you guys are dissing Klosterman too much. The whole article looks like a straight-up tongue-in-cheek piece. And nobody's addressed his second reason about irony.
Snakes on a Plane isn't the film equivalent of Wikipedia. It's the equivalent to All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
Yes, some of us love the film for the sheer kitsch and camp. So Klosterman is wrong on the point that SoAP can't be satire, rather like the Chuck Norris phenomenon. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing, but certainly a lot internet people like you and me talking and raving about the film are the sort of types that the film will "make its audience feel smarter than what it's seeing".
This film is so deconstructed it's not funny anymore. Oh, wait, it is now.
[...] I recently posted about Chuck Klosterman of Esquire Magazine discussing how the model set forth by Snakes on a Plane will be “terrible” if followed by other films. At the time his argument was picked apart by CrazyMonk and Church of the Consumer. This isn’t strictly snakes on a plane related, but Gawker has posted a Chuck Klosterman Opinion Generator (pictured below) and if you follow the flow chart, you’ll see that it accurately predicts Chuck’s opinions about Snakes on a Plane. Well, sort of. [...]
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