Sometimes, when the internet inserts itself into the filmmaking process, the results are decent — like when irate fans forced a redesign of Sonic the Hedgehog. More often, though, having a vocal online minority of people dictate the direction of a movie is a mistake. One of the early instances of the World Wide Web forcing itself in the director's chair came in 2006, when Snakes on a Plane became a viral sensation. With a silly concept and wonderfully, bluntly dumb name, the internet latched on to their vision for a joke movie, and the studio even went back under the hood to try to deliver on the hype. But when Snakes on a Plane came out 20 years ago, on August 18, 2006, it underwhelmed at the box office. It was more successful as a meme than it was as a movie, and while there's a valuable lesson to be learned here that Hollywood refuses to internalize, consider letting Snakes on a Plane slither into your heart. It's not a total disaster of a movie; it's a fun disaster movie.
The disaster genre is a broad one. You can have serious, gripping disaster films with grounded premises like Contagion, or ones that are surprisingly heavy, like the Gerard Butler movie Greenland. You could also have disaster films that are pure popcorn shlock, like Armageddon or the Gerard Butler movie Geostorm. Snakes on a Plane, of course, falls into the latter category, sinking its fangs into a bunch of familiar genre tropes in a way that feels like you're being comfortably constricted.
