I’ve a question, though it’s not really about the film (which I didn’t much care for) as about the potential reaction to the film. Spoiler mouseover gap follows:
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Okay, when the older flight attendant heard the baby crying and went back into coach to find it, I noted that the crying abruptly stopped. I was expecting, indeed hoping, that the attendant would see a boa constrictor with a baby-sized lump in it (thinking as I was of a similarly-themed Far Side cartoon of a post-snack snake unable to escape a playpen), but no dice. I mentioned this to my girlfriend later and she said test audiences would hated it and people would have walked out, etc. Would this really happen? Is an endangered baby a hook but a dead baby a deal-breaker?
The movie would’ve had to be even sillier to get away with it, like Airplane silly. While the movie didn’t take itself seriously, it did so enough that killing the baby would’ve been over the top. I don’t have (or want) kids either, and I would’ve been disturbed by that in this film.
I’m still surprised the dog got it, since the rules are: you don’t kill the kids or the dogs.
That’s pretty good, but it would have been better if they’d managed to get Holly Hunter to do the movie, so she could go after the snake with the axe while shouting, “You give me that baby! Give me back that baby!”
The dog getting it was kind of refreshing, but then the dog-killer instantly got it, too, which was the movie falling back on the clichés again. It would have been nice to see:[ul][li]At least one kid die[/li][li]At least one seriously unsympathetic character survive[/li][li]The self-centered rap star not have his moment of redemption and apology (thus making him unsympathetic)[/li][li]At least one character who, when told a rap star is one the plane, shrugs and say “rap is garbage.”[/li][li]Big fat black guy who isn’t comic relief[/li][li]Reptile scientist who says don’t suck the poison out - that it’s folklore crap likely to make the situation worse[/ul][/li]
Oh, well… the movie never really promised to be anything other than a vehicle for Samuel L anyway. I saw Beerfest the same night and found it more enjoyable.
That’s what Snakes on a Plane was, though: unapologetically cliché in almost every way it could manage. I wished it had gone in a slightly more self-aware direction (the depiction of the black guys, for example, would have been better with a wink and a nod). As it was, the movie could not have gotten away with the baby being eaten for the reason DeadlyAccurate gives. If it was Snakes on a Airplane!, the flight attendant could have seen the baby-shaped lump and just said “Oh, shit,” end of scene. Or she could have saved the baby, heard the mother’s moving dialogue about “you were here for a reason, you saved my baby,” and replied “I really would have rather not died,” then bit the big one.