Angus Kidman25 August 2006, 8:00 AM
Action/horror/rubbish movie Snakes on a Plane infamously built a pre-release hype frenzy online, but the film turns out to be awash with technology product placement. Oh no! It's ads in a movie!
WARNING: Spoilers below. If you haven't seen Snakes on a Plane and want to, don't read any further!
Action/horror/rubbish movie Snakes on a Plane infamously built much of its pre-release hype via the internet, but the film also turns out to be awash with ill-conceived technology product placement.
Given that there isn't nearly enough swearing from Samuel L Jackson and that, in truth, once you've seen one bad American actor savaged by a CGI snake, you've seen 'em all, spotting the tech references is one way to make the 105 minutes in the cinema pass more tolerably. (Snakes on a Plane opened yesterday in Australia.)
Pre-release rumours suggested that a credited minor bimbo victim, 'iPod Girl', was actually using a Dell MP3 player. She's credited as 'Dell Girl', however, so obviously a few wrists were slapped pre-release. After all, it's important to know what kind of digital music player you're using at the moment of death.
The most preposterous product placement comes from Sony. One possible scenario: Sony executives had a psychic vision of the company's current battery woes, and decided the best way to successfully counter-promote the brand was to get frequent mentions in a movie that features exotic snakes ludicrously attacking babies, children, chihuahuas, ageing stewardesses, and newly-minted members of the mile-high club.
As a result, one character, obese bodyguard Troy, spends much of the movie occupied in playing a PSP game. In what passes for the film's climax, Troy successfully lands the plane (both pilots, naturally, having succumbed to snakebite), despite having only ever used a flight simulator. Asked which console he learnt on -- XBox or PS2 -- he naturally picks the PlayStation, even though the flight simulator market is overwhelmingly dominated by PCs.
Later in the movie, this man will land a plane using only console gaming skills, but right now he has to deal with a snake on a plane.
In another amusingly stupid technology diversion, a Paris Hilton-like bimbo allows her mobile phone to be used to send pictures of the snake back to a ophiologist, so he can order the correct anti-venom for the dozen or so passengers who aren't already dead. This scenario is explained with the priceless dialogue: "Ever heard of email, dickwad?"
As it happens, we weren't aware of a massive mobile network distribution over the entirely unpopulated Pacific Ocean to enable MMS. But then again, we don't know why the villains in the movie didn't just smuggle a bomb on board, rather than ordering a smorgasbord of 450 poisonous reptiles either.
The film appears to be serving as an object lesson for Hollywood that Internet hype doesn't necessarily translate into healthy chunks of moolah. Despite endless parody videos on YouTube, tribute Web sites and a 4,700 word Wikipedia entry, the film made just $US15 million on its opening weekend, around half of what analysts were expecting. Of course, with no preview screenings, the analysts had no way of knowing just how bad the finished product would be.
Snakes on a plane has inspired a plethora of fan artwork, though apparently none with any graphic design experience.