Some good points.

The way I see it is this. Soap WILL GET THE No1 spot and make alot of money and other studios WILL want to jump on the bandwagon. Is this really that bad?

I actually think its going to be hillarious if studios try to copy. They simply won’t suceed just by giving it a silly title, no matter how silly they need to find a new way of getting attention. The funny thing is you just know there will be studios coming up with silly names with men in suits awaiting audiences to go ‘Omg…”Time traveling samuri bears, thats CRAZY!!” (I’m sure no studio would stoop as low as to do another blank on a blank)

I wouldn’t mind seeing “Time traveling samuri bears”…but ONLY (and I bet many studios don’t get this bit…) if the film is done seriously as is SoaP and not make it a full on comedy.

Who cares if studios want to waste their money making lame soap rip offs? Its not going to stop the likes of Memento coming out is it?

As it is, every movie’s just a rip-off of another one, anyway. There are no more original ideas. The main thing that makes SoaP stand out as a movie (not as a phenomenon) is the title. But people have done movies before where dangerous animals attack people. That’s not new.

No studio can ever copy SoaP’s stand-out qualities, like the title. There can never be another SoaP, not even from the same studio and director.

And honestly, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, anyway. Maybe SoaP will be included in the next Scary Movie. Personally, I’d like to see a good–mark that, good–spoof. I think it would need to have Bruce Campbell, of course. And one day, we’ll have exhausted all the jokes, all the “blanks on a blank”s, and we’ll move on to the next big thing.

There hasnt been a truly truly totally new idea since the time when we as humans started telling stories. Everything borrows/copys/homages/etc to something.

This is pretty silly. Confusing modifying a film to appeal to the lowest common denominator with modifying a film to include an inside joke shared by a handful of bloggers is an act of severe cluelessness.

The filmmaker didn’t give into anyone’s demands. No one demanded “I want these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane” be added to the movie. It was an entirely satirical concept that was incorperated into the film because the filmmakers liked it. Modifying one’s work based on inspirations one has had through contact with the outside world is like, one of the basic parts of making art. If more Hollywood movies were modified on behalf of random creative whims, Hollywood movies would be better, not worse. The article is written as if movies and other elements of the entertainment industry are about to hit rock bottom, which is essentially the equivilant of warning someone about Pearl Harbor in the mid-50s. 7 out of 10 movie previews are for unnessicary adaptations, sequels, and ripoffs, the other 3 are otherwise-procrustean repeats of the conventions of genres. If anything, Snakes on a Plane teaches is that audiences to Hollywood movies are so deprived of access to original, creative content that all you have to do is give your movie a creative title and it will get a cult following.

Klosterman isn’t even the first person to pick up on the possible phenomenon of internet-based audience influence, just the first to imperiously complain about it in a major magazine…another blog positively discussed the “Snakes on a Plane” effect in regard to the added-in “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” line in X-Men 3:
http://pop.wizbangblog.com/2006/05/26/the-snakes-on-a-plane-effect.php

Salon.com also wrote a rebuttal of sorts to Esquire’s article.

It’s been noted that films have always been re-edited based on preview audience tests. So this is in fact nothing new.

[...] I recently posted about Chuck Klosterman of Esquire Magazine discussing how the model set forth by Snakes on a Plane will be “terrible” if followed by other films. At the time his argument was picked apart by CrazyMonk and Church of the Consumer. This isn’t strictly snakes on a plane related, but Gawker has posted a Chuck Klosterman Opinion Generator (pictured below) and if you follow the flow chart, you’ll see that it accurately predicts Chuck’s opinions about Snakes on a Plane.  Well, sort of. [...]

[...] 9, 2006Snakes on Chuck Klosterman I recently posted about Chuck Klosterman of Esquire Magazine discussing how the model set forth by Snakes on a Plane [...]