Most Buzzworthy of the Summer Films

Can anyone guess which summer film seems to be getting the most buzz?
Could it be the Da Vinci Code? Sorry, no.

How about Superman? It’s got some people talking, but no try again.

What about this summer’s sequels like Mission Impossible 3, X-Men: the Last Stand or the new Pirates of the Caribbean? All legitimate answers, but none are correct.

Would have guessed that it is a move called Snakes on a Plane?

That’s right. You heard me. Snakes on a Plane.

The title says it all. It pretty much gives away the entire plot of the film. And based on this title alone it has been generating Internet buzz for months. There are people out there creating their own merchandise, writing pages upon pages about the upcoming release, and even creating their own movie trailers and parodies. No movie in recent memory has generating such buzz, especially when you consider that it is all based solely on the movie’s title.

The film stars actor Samuel L. Jackson. I am one who believes that Jackson does not need to make every film script that comes across his desk (xXx anyone?) and I thought the same thing when I read that he was staring in Snakes on a Plane. But the key point is that Jackson agreed to make the film based on the title. He even threatened to quit when producers wanted to change the title to something a bit less obvious.

The film also co-stars Julianna Margulies (of ER fame), Bobby Cannavale (from Third Watch and Will & Grace), and Kenan Thompson (pictured at left, from Saturday Night Live).

Does anyone really need to know the plot of the film? Or are people going to go just because it’s called Snakes on a Plane? For those of you wanting a brief synopsis of the plot, there is a witness to a major crime on the plane and an assassin sets free a crate of poisonous snakes onboard so to kill the witness. (Am I wrong to ask why the pilots don’t just make an emergency landing when they find out there are poisonous snakes loose on the flight?)

Fan interest has been so great for this film that filmmakers decided that they wanted to add additional scenes to the movie to move it from a PG-13 rating to an R rating. All this needed was a few additional scenes of Jackson swearing incessantly, which many have come to expect from his R rated films.

It just seems strange that a film could become so popular so far in advance of its release date based on such a silly title. But I do have to admit that I’ve been sucked in. I’ll be there on or around August 18, opening day, to see if the anticipation for Snakes on a Plane has been worth it.