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Oh, it gets better.
Snakes On A Plane was never meant to be the final title. It was a working title, a log-line, something to slap on the front page of the screenplay until it was tweaked and massaged and packaged for mass consumption.
Then Sam Jackson sees the script, laughs at the title: why not? It's a great title, in a way. Truth in advertising. Does what it says on the tin, as our British cousins would have it. So Sam gets on board, knowing damn well that this shit wasn't Shakespeare—but hey, the man's got to make rent, right? Figures it'll be a hoot.
And it is. He has a good time making the picture. And then the studio gets ready to release it under the final title Pacific Air 121.
But Sam is not going for that. Sam understands the marketplace.
Jackson: Snakes on a Plane, man! ... We’re totally changing that [title] back. That’s the only reason I took the job: I read the title.
Interviewer: Snakes on a Plane! That’s everything!
Jackson: You either want to see that, or you don’t.
Words to live by.
You know, there's this tradition that, when films get released in foreign markets, their titles get changed—not just literally translated, but actually retitled, usually to something simple and descriptive. Brokeback Mountain was famously pirated in Turkey as faggot Cowboys, for instance. It happens with films coming to the english-speaking market, too: though its original title in Mandarin translates as "The Lovers," the distributors felt that House Of Flying Daggers would be an easier sell to Anglophones.
The genius of Snakes On A Plane is that it's irreducible. There's no way to mistranslate, misrepresent, or obfuscate. It's snakes. On a plane. And you either want to see that, or you don't.
As the sage Nigel Tufnel once said, there's a fine line between clever and stupid. Snakes On A Plane is a title that rides that line to glory.
And look at the last shots of that trailer: motherfucking snake is reaching for the controls. Snakes are flying the motherfucking plane, man. It gets no better.
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