Genuine love of a disaster flick is a hard thing to explain to someone. How do you tell someone you embrace cliché and plot device like you would hold to your bosom your own child? And how would you put into words the joy you feel when someone in a movie says “DON’T YOU DIE ON ME!”? The love of something so familiar, like a worn teddy bear from your childhood. And you love it completely, without irony.
That, gentle reader, is exactly how I feel about a story like SNAKES ON A PLANE. The Internet phenomenon surrounding the film has generated so much buzz, based pretty much on the title alone and the fact that star Samuel L. Jackson yells expletives at a python. If you’re anything like me, that’s a magical sight to behold.
When I picked up Christa Faust’s novelization, I was apprehensive. Mainly because I was pretty sure it would spoil the movie. I then realized I already had a pretty good idea how the saga would end, so I might as well dig in. Immediately, I was rewarded with a protagonist: the young, carefree surfer guy, living in Hawaii. Of course, our man has a conflicted past, and you know that means later he will no doubt rise up and realize he’s more emotionally mature than he or anyone else thought.
The short version of what leads up to the plane ride is pretty well-known thanks to online hysteria: Surfer kid witnesses a Mafia murder of a federal prosecutor, complete with every Asian gang’s token spiky-haired goon. Faust seems to embrace these clichés as much as I do. In fact, she often points out that they are clichés, and personally, I love that. Anyway, murder is witnessed, mob boss finds kid, sends goons, FBI shows up just in time.
The FBI agent in question happens to be a tall, bald, black, cool-as-ice but bad-as-hell witness-protecting machine. Agent convinces kid to testify against mob boss in Los Angeles, traveling in his protective custody on a plane to LAX. Of course, our crafty crime syndicate finds out what flight the kid is on and, rather than hide a hitman or suicide bomber or guy with a box cutter into business class, they place several crates of deadly exotic snakes aboard and tell the airline they’re orchids.
Oh, but these aren’t your everyday deadly exotic snakes. Hell, no – these are snakes that have been somehow genetically and/or chemically modified to make them want to bite the hell out of everything in a five-mile radius. The plane is crammed with a smorgasbord of stereotypes. In this case, the best thing about the little introductions to passengers is you can easily spot the assholes and know that pretty soon, those jerks are getting a faceful of hot venom. There’s the Paris Hilton-esque heiress, the superdouche businessman who hates babies who happens to get stuck sitting behind the new mom, the fat lady, a superstar rapper with OCD and his bodyguards in tow (no doubt they’ll eventually become the comic relief), the martial arts guy (at which point you begin to pray he won’t die first and he’ll roundhouse-kick a rattlesnake), the yuppie couple, the children flying without parents, even the slutty flight attendant.
Everything seems pretty much business as usual on the flight until the snakes get loose. Faust excels at graphic descriptions of snakebite deaths; I’m pretty sure I actually said “Eeeeewwww” out loud a couple times. What develops is a surprisingly fun and gory ride. And a pretty damn scary one at that. The best thing about reading this novelization is that you can hear Jackson saying the dialogue in your head. Faust definitely knew the best way to capitalize on that, inserting several deliciously catchphrase-worthy lines.
I really don’t want to ruin the last half, but I hope the movie is just like the book, with the FBI agent killing reptiles in elaborate and creative ways. He’s like MacGyver when it comes to slaying those bastards. He also comes up with an insane plan to get the motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane for good, while still in the air. After all is said and done, it’s pretty much the biggest suspension of disbelief you’ll ever have to make, but the payoff is worth it.
Finish it up with the Hollywood slice of pie that is a happy ending with a tacked-on love interest, and the FBI agent somehow winding up friends for life with the witness he was assigned to protect, and you’ve got yourself an amazing buffet of everything a great, over-the-top action/horror/disaster story should be, and Faust handles the task exactly as I’d hoped: without cynicism, accepting the completely unbelievable story with a reverence for the human characters, no matter how stereotypical, and the snakes themselves. It’s no doubt a tricky task, writing something so completely ridiculous without treating it like a comedy, but she does the genre proud. –Danielle Wegelin
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