The alleged benefits to the entertainment industry of 3D's latest incarnation are many, if they pan out: 3D supposedly justifies higher ticket prices, 3D projection foils pirates, 3D supposedly turns moviegoing at movie houses into an "event" again. On paper, it's a veritable Manhattan Project solution to all of showbiz's woes. The only people who stand to lose are audiences, who will be forced to dig even deeper into their wallets to shell out more for the up-to-this-point dubious advantage of seeing things float around just in front of the screen.

And there is no guarantee all this will work out. After all the hype, audiences might just decide that the cost of moviegoing has hit a tipping point and they are better off staying home or taking their kids to get messed up on malt liquor in a convenience store parking lot for a fraction the pricetag. If things go that way, a lot of people in Hollywood are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

But this isn't the first time we've been through this. From the dawn of cinema, audiences have had cockamamie inventions foisted on them that were supposed to keep their dollars in the theaters. Some have been wildly successful, most have been disasters. Here's a look back at some of the greats:

Invention: Narrative Film
First Introduced In: 1890's
Alleged Advantage: Instead of just showing pictures of horses running down a track, for instance, films sought to tell a story.
Biggest Drawback: Film pioneers failed to anticipate that by the 1980's, narrative would become obsolete, and viewed as a tactic of artistic imperialism, to be replaced by oblique forms which allow viewers to create their own meanings and rely on indirect referencing to achieve a mise en scene rather than actually telling a story.
Outcome: Had its moment but ultimately doomed by the forces of hipster cinema and post-modern criticism.

Invention: Sound
Introduced In: The Jazz Singer, 1927
Alleged Advantage: Audiences got to hear Jolson singing "Swanee" while they watched him gesticulating in blackface.
Biggest Drawback: Once we let actors start talking, Lindsay Lohan twittering was only a few steps away.
Outcome: Pray as you might for someone to tell them to put a cork in it, talkies are here to stay.

Invention: 3D 1.0
Introduced In: Made its first breakthrough in the 1950's with films such as Vincent Price's House of Wax.
Alleged Advantage: Extra scary to think the monsters were actually in the room with you.
Biggest Drawback: Once audiences realized, ten movies later, that the monsters weren't actually in the room, the massive headaches brought on by 3D glasses no longer seemed worth the price.
Outcome: The fire died out but a tiny ember remained smoldering and waiting...

Invention: The Tingler
First Introduced In: 1950's for the film The Tingler
Alleged Advantage: Devices placed in seats made audiences fell they were actually being felt up by the onscreen villain.
Biggest Drawback: Being felt up by a screen villain isn't necessarily what one wants in their moviegoing experience.
Outcome: Like most of the gimmicks brought to the movie house by schlock producer William Castle, The Tingler's moment was not to last.

Invention: Sensurround
First Introduced In: 1970's disaster films such as Earthquake.
Alleged Advantage: Massive sound effect would make seats and your bones shake with onscreen rumbling.
Biggest Drawback: No one really likes having their bones shake when they are not at a rock concert.
Outcome: Sensurround didn't make it but it's memory lives on in the vision of Michael Bay and the decades of annoyingly loud movies that have followed.

Invention: 3D 2.0
First Introduced In: The Stewardesses in 1970.
Alleged Advantage: A new processing innovation reinvigorated 3D for the zany 1970's. The number "3" was especially advantageous to filmmakers in underscoring the specialness of the third installments of franchises as it was thus used in Jaws 3D, Amityville 3D and Friday the 13th, Part 3D.
Biggest Drawback: Despite the "D" audiences were still stuck watching a third Amityville Horror film.
Outcome: Again the flame died, but the fire was never extinguished.

Invention: Web Driven Production
First Introduced In: Snakes on a Plane, 2006
Alleged Advantage: Popular netsroots outcry spurred filmmakers to tailor the film, then in progress to the needs of their audiences, inserting extra nudity and swearing.
Biggest Drawback: Once fanboys on the internet are given any actual power, the collapse of modern civilization can not be far behind.
Outcome: After all their noise, the fanboys tired of their plaything before it made it to market. Snakes grossed a mere $34 million giving it the most off-kilter hype to grosses ratio in film history.

"Our research showed it was soft in awareness," said Bruce Snyder, Fox's distribution chief.

Industry analysts could not recall a studio trimming the number of locations so sharply less than two weeks before a film's debut. [...]

The movie also could be suffering from what one executive called "Snakes on a Plane" syndrome — buzz that peaks too early. After a year of Internet hype, "Snakes" had a disappointing opening this summer for New Line Cinema. Still, that movie was being hyped sight unseen, whereas critics have raved about "Borat."

With the movie's months of online hyping and series of MySpace screenings, it's not surprising that the words Snakes on a Plane would eventually rear their flanked, hissing head, and possibly sink their fangs into Borat's Pringle-tube-thick chram as they pump him with deadly box office poison. Still, it's premature to assume the movie will tank, especially one with advance buzz as positive as this one. At the very least, the filmmaker can proudly say that he never caved in to the overwhelming audience demand for their hero to just once utter the line, "Attention she-serpents!!! You make shit outside. Or else I now make sexy time explosion in your mother. Yes?"

• Fox scales back 'Borat' movie's opening [LAT]

We thought we were through with the whole Snakes on a Plane thing, we really did, at least until the inevitable publicity assault accompanying the eventual DVD release forced us to relieve the summer's reptiles-on-aircrafts pop culture oversaturation. But now we've just watched this video of the USC marching band's stirring halftime reinterpretation of Cobra Starship's title track from the movie soundtrack, and our old, complicated feelings are stirring again. We suppose that our genuine disappointment that Samuel L. Jackson didn't burst through a paper gate adorned with an albino python, run to the middle of the field, and shout "I want these motherfucking snakes off my motherfucking tuba section" into a crimson megaphone is a sign that we still might have some issues to work through.

• USC Band Does "Snakes on a Plane" [AOL Sports Blog]

"If you put Samuel L. Jackson in it, and you have snakes on a plane, who is the star of the show? Is it Samuel L. Jackson, or is it the snake? If you want Samuel L. Jackson to be the hero, then the snakes weren't that important, because you knew at the end Samuel L. Jackson would save the day."

His big UNLESS: "If I'm allowed the creative freedom, then I'll do it a little differently with Samuel L. Jackson. I'll make him more of a surprise for the audience. ... He can be a cool guy, but kill off the cool guy, so people hate those snakes. Rather than have the normal hero come save the day, I think the audience wants to see something a little bit different, unpredictable. Of course, working with a studio you have to follow what they set down, what their rules are."

In the end, New Line found the right guy for the job, one who was secure enough in his craft to let some excited bloggers suggest reshoots and who understood that American test audiences would probably bitch if the guy who gets to say "motherfucker" the most didn't outlive some rubber snakes.

Bonus! Snakes on a Plane: The Probably Fake Reality Show

• Original "Snakes on a Plane" Director Wanted to KILL (OFF) SAM JACKSON!!! [The Slug]
• Previously: Snakes On Some Excuses About Unfair Expectations [Defamer]

Police say reports that rattlesnakes were let loose during a showing of Snakes on a Plane at a north Phoenix theater have taken moviegoers for a ride.

There is some shred of truth to the story, Phoenix police Sgt. Joel Tranter said. A 10-inch-long rattlesnake was found Friday in a hallway at AMC Desert Ridge 18, near Tatum Boulevard and Loop 101. But it likely slithered inside on its own, Tranter said.

A security guard swept the snake outside and held it in a Tupperware container until a member of the Arizona Herpetological Association could take it away. Snake handlers had been called earlier in the day to retrieve a rattler from outside the theater.

An AMC spokeswoman told the news organization Reuters that the rumors were true, but Tranter has been refuting the story to news outlets from across the U.S.

Our hats are off once again to New Line's innovative, boundary-transgressing marketing team; arranging for the attempted, in-theater snake attacks was inspired, but bribing both the police and AMC reps to offer buzz-perpetuating, conflicting stories to the media was a diabolical masterstroke.

• 'Snakes in a theater' turns out to be hoax [AZ Central.com]

• Live Rattlesnakes Released In 'Snakes On A Plane' Theater [Local6.com via Drudge]

"The expectations were so inflated that no matter what we had done we'd be having conversations about how it should have been better," said David Tuckerman, New Line's president of domestic distribution.

Tuckerman said the picture, which cost about $35 million to produce, would be profitable for New Line. More than 90% of audience members in studio surveys rated it "excellent" or "very good," he said, which bodes well for its box-office prospects in the coming weeks. And he predicted the movie would be a "huge" success on DVD thanks to its loyal following.

"We're going to make money — we're just disappointed that it's not as much money as we hoped," Tuckerman said.

If complaints about crushing expectations that could never be met (except, perhaps, by at least outgrossing the debut of J.Lo/Ice Cube vehicle Anaconda by a few million) or diminished profits don't tug at your heartstrings, consider that after Tuckerman hung up the phone with reporters, he had to arrange to return the tens of thousands of dollars in champagne and rubber snakes he'd purchased for this morning's abruptly canceled office party. If that thought doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you are clearly a soulless monster.

• Previously: Indian Burial Ground Booked, So K-Fed's Party Moves To Liberace's Penthouse [Defamer]

1./2. Snakes on a Plane—$13.85 million/$15.250 million (incl. Thursday night screenings)*
1./2. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby—$14.1 million
Late last night, our cellphone rang, and we listened somberly as the weary, disappointed pre-recorded voice of Samuel L. Jackson arrived to deliver another promotional greeting: "Hello, BLOGGER. Pardon me if my memory is bad, but didn't I remind you last week to put down the BLOGGING MACHINE, step away from your BLOG, and make some time to go see my new movie, Snakes on a Plane? Where the fuck were you? Do you have any idea how motherfucking silly it feels sitting in this recording booth, reading from a list of hundreds of names and occupations just so you can feel like this message was meant just for you? And then you don't even go see my new movie, Snakes on a Plane? Fifteen motherfucking million? Fuck you, motherfuckers. I'm done with you. See you in motherfucking hell."

Now that the value of a year of obsessive, overwhelmingly favorable internet hype buzz has been measured at a disappointing $15.25 million, or roughly the rate of return New Line could have expected if it had placed cartoon images of Samuel L. Jackson hugging pink pythons on the side of a Happy Meal box, the studios will spend this morning dismantling their Why Can't We Come Up With Our Own Funny Titles Around Which Bloggers Will Construct Loving YouTube Parodies? think-tanks and redistributing the personnel to their Dreaming Up Projects In Which Will Ferrell Can Run Around In Circles, Causing His Swollen, Pale Belly To Jiggle departments.

*If you're confused by the above weekend box office rankings, it's because there's some dispute about New Line's semi-face-saving inclusion of $1.4 million from Thursday night screenings in the three-day take, an amount which pushes it just ahead of Talladega Nights and affords SoaP the moral victory of finishing the weekend in first place. Yup, here it comes: Snakes on a Box Office Estimates Reporting Scandal.

3. World Trade Center—$10.8 million
Paramount's marketing department breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the smaller than expected SoaP results, proud that they abandoned at the last moment a viral, teen-targeted campaign in which all of WTC's MySpace friends would receive cryptic e-mail messages suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers were actually snakes.

4. Accepted—$10.112 million
Maybe we don't know anything about casting, but if you're going to get someone from an annoying series of computer commercials to star in your college comedy, don't you do whatever you can to sign the "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" guy?

5. Step Up—$9.867 million
Because Disney will be unwilling to meet the salary demands of rising dance movie superstar Channing Tatum, his part will be recast with Patrick Swayze in Step Up 2: Still Steppin' Up.

• August 4-6, 2006 Studio Estimates [Box Office Mojo]

· Our friends at the WOW Report are having way too much fun with some rubber reptiles, but their Snakes on Cocaine is pretty inspired. Andy Dick totally wants in on that party.
Collider.com's Mr. Beaks, the guy who introduced us to the magic that is Snakes on a Plane with his game-changing "You either you want to see that, or you don't" interview with Samuel L. Jackson, reviews the movie.
SoaP arts and crafts time! Make your own Snakes on a Paper Airplane.
The LAT's Richard Rushfield tells the uplifting tale of the MySpace blogger who overcame New Line's crushing discrimination against female SoaP fans without vanity URLs to finally get invited to the premiere at 10:30 p.m. the night before it occurred. There are happy endings in Hollywood after all.

· POSITIVE: "Naughty by nature or perhaps more by design, these snakes don't just dart out of toilets; they also slide up bare legs and under dresses, moving in and out of more bodily orifices than the adult-film star Ron Jeremy did in his prime." [NY Times]
· NEGATIVE: "Snakes on a Plane sounds like a title that Don Simpson, at 4 in the morning, scrawled in white powder on a glass table, or perhaps a pitch by Entourage's Ari Gold to his favorite client (''snakes on a plane — BOOM!'')." [EW]

· POSITIVE: "'Snakes' is a Bad Movie all right. It has '70s-style plot holes you could drive a Dodge Rambler through, plus can o' corn music..." [NY Post]
· POSITIVE: "The director, David R. Ellis, is not exactly Alfred Hitchcock — he's often messy in his stagings — but as his picture rattles along its thrill a minute flight plan he does manage to induce a certain amnesia about its preposterous premise." [Time]
· NEGATIVE: "Less campy than expected, a visual drag yet undeniably snake-filled, "Snakes on a Plane" comes with its own set of talking points on the subject of where its disposable and semi-anonymous characters get bitten. All anyone was talking about after the 10 p.m. Thursday screening I saw related to bite locations." [Chicago Tribune]
· POSITIVE: "This is one cheesy movie, bereft of logic and scornful of everything from the law of gravity to physiological fundamentals regarding how long a person can survive with a lethal dose of toxin running through their veins." [Toronto Star]

We begin our report about last night's Snakes on a Plane premiere at the Chinese Theatre, held back by New Line until the very last possible minute to prevent critics from having uncharitable opinions about a movie whose pre-release hype became so overwhelming that the mere mention of the title could induce grand mal seizures in anyone in possession of a valid press credential, with a disclaimer: After almost exactly a year of writing about this movie and its unstoppable march across the internets, our weariness of various combinations of the words "motherfucking," "snakes," and "plane" may have lowered our expectations to an absurdly low point. All we wanted from the 'Lil Airborne Reptilian Infestation Movie That Could was for at least one guy to have his genitals fanged-up while in the process of bodily waste elimination, and God bless their pandering little hearts, they delivered the mandatory junk-chomping scene with cynical aplomb. Once that lone condition was satisfied, we were more than happy to laugh at lines of dialogue both intentionally and accidentally hilarious, hurl ourselves forward in our seat with delight when the areola on a bare, surgically enhanced breast became a targeting mechanism for a mamba strike, and generally stop giving a shit about how someone might smuggle several hundred angry predators aboard a red-eye even with the aid of the most corrupt of airport security regimes. Motherfucking snakes were on the motherfucking plane (see how easy it is to fall back into it?), they were biting everything in sight, and that was enough for us, as we are constitutionally incapable of not enjoying a well-executed fake-titty attack. Call us easy to please or New Line Kool-Aid chuggers, but we can't see any reason why anyone who would be interested in the film based on the title alone shouldn't get a little drunk and watch Samuel L. Jackson shout expletives while he carries out his snake-elimination duties. That's all we can muster by way of a review.

Part The Second: After-Parties On A Rooftop [after the jump]

The after-party, as you might expect, was done up in an airport theme. Upon reaching the roof of the ArcLight parking structure where it was held, guests marched through a metal-detector and X-ray machine gauntlet just as unattended as the ones in the world of the film must have been, making it easy for one of the party's "passengers" to sneak in any Samsonite set jammed full of death-adders, shampoo-bomb, or low-grade nuclear device intended to reduce the world's population of free booze drinkers by three hundred or so. Servers of both sexes dressed in retro flight attendant gear either pushed around airline-style carts full of candy or gyrated atop platforms as go-go dancers. Boxed meals, possibly purloined from a poorly secured supply shed at LAX, were served. The aforementioned free booze, as it must, flowed. And in perhaps the event's most eerily airport-accurate touch, t-shirts upon which various SoaP-themed decals were ironed-to-order were handed out from behind replica ticket counters, causing interminably long waits and feelings of "we're all gonna die before we ever get to the front of this line" dread perfectly simulating those encountered by anyone who has ever needed a boarding pass printed by a human being. The New Line party planners were nothing if not psychotically dedicated to air-travel verisimilitude.

Among the celebrities we managed to see during the few moments we weren't standing on line were star Kenan Thompson (accompanied by a very hot, very gaudily bosomed date in a porn-appropriate evening gown), biggest-deal-within-two-square-miles Chris Rock, Kelly Osbourne, cast members Bobby Cannavale and Lin Shaye, various cast members whose names we can't recall without cheating on IMDb, and two guys from The Office (the one that Steve Carrell is secretly gay for and the one that Pam shouldn't be marrying). Rumors of Samuel L. Jackson's presence at the event were rampant, but we didn't personally lay eyes on him. We imagine he was quite busy politely pretending that each variation on his "motherfucking snakes" line was the first he'd heard. He seems like that kind of guy.

As we were headed to our car, we stumbled upon a clearly confused Rock and his date in the act of pretending they knew where they'd parked. After several seconds of spinning around and craning their necks in a search for the vehicle they'd left on a lower level, they passed us on the way down the stairs, and a Legitimate Journalist friend of ours asked Rock what he'd thought of the movie. "It was incredible," he said, noticing the reporter's pad and not breaking stride, "better than The Godfather." Because we must bring this full-circle: Dude, Snakes on a Motherfucking Mobster.

[Photo: Getty Images]

• Seemingly Endless 'Snakes on a Plane' Coverage [Defamer]

· Come on, you already know the words, so say it with us: "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking cake!"
Paris Hilton and the Wiggles turned out for People Who Amuse Those With The IQ Of A Five-Year-Old Day on the Today Show, inspiring the WOW Report to mash-up both appearances into a single segment.
"Kev-IN! How many times I gotta tell you that after I drop the baby, you can't wash off his head wound in the shark tank?!"
JonBenet Ramsey killer John Mark Karr has a MySpace page. Now why would a guy who likes to prey on children possibly want to hang around on MySpace?
· Finally, a Mel Gibson t-shirt with a pleasing design.
· Sweaty, potty-mouthed oil heir Brandon Davis is still dining out on the "firecrotch" thing. It's probably time for him to move on to slandering pubic hair of a different color and prove he's not just a one-hit wonder.

Say what you will about Samuel L. Jackson, but he's really committed himself to selling Snakes on a Plane. While many members of his trade would now have a dead-eyed, faraway look after weeks of being on the messy end of countless press junket bukkake sessions, Jackson brought what seemed like genuine enthusiasm to his Daily Show appearance last night in pimping his airborne reptilian wares, even inducing a giddy stream of "motherfuckers" from Jon Stewart. But easily our favorite part of the interview comes toward the end of the above clip, in which [SPOILER ALERT] Jackson, who's never met a paycheck he didn't like, reveals he doesn't die in the movie, then nearly defecates with glee at the thought of the negotiations for his sequel contract—he knows he's going to get paid when New Line comes calling on Sunday to sign him up for Snakes on Two Planes and Snakes on a Space Shuttle in 3D.

• Our Complete, Once-Breathless, Now-Weary, Snakes on a Plane Coverage [Defamer]

• German authorities watching Madonna [CNN.com]
• Poop on a plane [CNN.com]

• Snakes on a Dell
• Dell Will Recall Batteries in PC's [NY Times]

It's really comforting to know that even in these uncertain, pants-crappingly terrifying times, we can always rely on Samuel L. Jackson to ensure our skies are safe from even the most cutting-edge of airborne threats.

Our favorite scene is the one where Jackson discovers an unattended box full of Herbal Essences products underneath someone's seat, then realizing that his clean-shaven head is an inadequate testing ground, holds down a stewardess and lathers a liberal amount of shampoo into her hair to prove it's not from an explosive batch.

• Liquids on a Plane [Craphound.com via BoingBoing]

After Pulp Fiction made him famous in his mid-40s, Jackson settled into his current rhythm of mixing prestige projects with what might fondly be called exuberant crap. For both, his preparation is obsessive. He writes out full character biographies—"Educational background, who his parents were, what he did, where he came from, what kinds of friends he has," says Jackson—then memorizes everything and inserts notes into the script to mark the spots where he plans tiny, barometric moments of character revelation. "Doesn't matter if it's Sphere or Shakespeare," he says. "Acting is craft, and everybody's got to bring it if you don't want your movie to be a piece of s____."

We can only imagine the character bio Jackson compiled to help get ready for the Method rigors of his Snakes on a Plane role:

Educational background: Four years at Fucking Up Some Motherfucking Snakes University; graduated summa cum laude, major concentration in reptile extermination arts, minor in commercial aviation hospitality
Parents: Devoured by pythons
Occupation: Fucker-upper of motherfucking snakes, motherfucker
Friends: Also devoured by pythons

We'll spare you the description of how Jackson had the studio build him a replica airline cabin in his garage, where he would spend three to four hours a day brushing an assortment of rubber cobras and rattlesnakes off the laps of imperiled mannequin "passengers." Rest assured, Samuel L. showed up to set ready to tackle any acting challenge thrown his way.

• His Own Best Fan [Time.com]

The internet-enabled, reptile-riddled thrill ride of Snakes on a Plane buzz finally touches down on the runway of mainstream pop culture inevitability with this week's Entertainment Weekly cover story, featuring a greatest hits collection boasting all the "People either want to see that, or they don't," and "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" standards everyone sporting a $3,900 necklace have been humming to themselves over the past year. While we wait patiently for the coming In Touch Weekly spread about how Samuel L. Jackson carefully coordinated his diamond stud earrings with the collection of serpents featured in a particular scene, here are some highlights from the EW piece:

Jackson on his contractual inability to touch a real snake during the production of a movie about airline passengers screaming while covered in snakes:

Watching Jackson gently raise the snake's head with a finger, it's strange to think that this is the first time in his SoaP experience he has held a live serpent. ''I never even touched a snake while we were shooting. My agents put into the contract: 'No snakes within 25 feet of Mr. Jackson.' They were more scared of the snakes than I was.''

Jackson on reminding his agents that he enjoys taking the occasional role just for the paycheck:

New Line, stunned that a legitimate star would be interested, called his agents: Is this for real? Jackson's agents asked him the same question, but more incredulously. They didn't approve, just as they haven't approved of many of his choices, from The Man to The Long Kiss Goodnight. ''My agents have finally figured out that I'm going to do what I want,'' says Jackson. ''Every now and then, I want to do a movie that isn't 'stretching my abilities.' It's that simple.''

Jackson and co-star Julianna Margulies on whether or not it's a good idea to allow bloggers input into the creative process of the sacred moviemaking arts:

Which raises some provocative questions. Consider the ''motherf—-ing'' line, which was directly suggested by SoaP fan culture. Sure, it's something an R-rated Sam Jackson action hero would say. But should fans be allowed any input into the artistic process during the actual making of a film? Jackson offers a qualified yes: ''Films are a collaborative process, and this is the next step. If a film is vying for that mass teen dollar, then yes, they have every right to say: This is the kind of film we want to see. Films of social relevance — well, no.''

Adds Snakes costar Julianna Margulies: ''On one hand, it's fantastic, because it put our film on the map. But it's a slippery slope. If we have to rely on the public to tell us what great work is — I don't know if that's a great idea.''

Jackson on telling motherfucking critics to suck his motherfucking dick:

''Those motherf—-ers don't need to watch this. They need to send some 13-year-old kid with f—-ing pimples that goes to the mall every Friday to watch movies. I respect the people who are going to see this film, because they know what they like to see,'' he says. ''They like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hostel. Saw. They're not afraid to say they like it. I like those films too. I like seeing people getting f—-ed up in strange and funny situations. There's a lot of us out there!''

• Kicking Asp [EW.com]