Snakes charm the blogosphere, but not the box office

I'm not much of a film buff, and actually I find the whole movie-going experience creepy and manipulative (That's a rant for a different blog), so the percentage of my income spent at the box office is probably much smaller than the average for the young, urban, 20-something demographic that the studios assiduously court. I am, however, a sucker for bad movies. Which is why on Friday night, I happily dished up my $9.50 and attended a crowded opening-night showing of Snakes on a Plane, the Samuel L. Jackson camp/horror vehicle that has enjoyed a lot of foreplay on the Internet.
    The movie was everything I had hoped for, and nothing more. There were snakes, there was a plane, there was absurdist, wooden dialogue, there were plot holes bigger than [warning: plot spoiler, not that it matters] the one they shot through the plane to suck out the titular snakes (but that somehow did not suck out passengers). I laughed, I cheered, I jumped out of my seat. It was stupendously, magnificently bad.

Apparently though, my contribution was not enough. Today's New York Times online (login required) features an article on how SoaP's opening weekend was disappointing to distributors, who (Kool Aid mustaches still visible on their upper lips) had expected the incredible Internet buzz to catapult the film to box office glory upwards of $30 million for the opening weekend. Instead, the movie respectably grossed about half that, which means that studio heads and box office analysts are left rending their garments over how the Internet and viral marketing won't be the savior of the movie industry after all. One source in the story blames the discrepancy on bloggers not wanting to get up from their computer screens. Lazy bloggers.
    I find this line of argument as ridiculous as the film it takes issue with. Internet marketing did not fail Snakes on a Plane. If anything, it ensured that no one in the audience felt tricked out of their admission price. (Those of you still bitter about paying to see Michael Crichton's Congo will appreciate this.) Snakes on a Plane is a bad movie, and under the best conventional marketing plan, it would still only appeal to a small, perverse audience that would probably not discover the film until it had long gone to video. Without that Internet buzz, this movie would have been lucky to gross $5 million on opening weekend, never mind $15 million. (For context, the J-horror remake, Pulse, is languishing at $14 million gross after two weeks, according to boxofficemojo.com.) I certainly wouldn't have shelled out. If online marketing can boost a movie this poor up to respectable box office levels, imagine what it could do for one with intelligent direction, compelling characters or *gasp* a plot.
    This seems to me like another case where an industry believes the Internet will be the magic bullet of cost savings and is shocked to discover that an online audience still has quality standards. (We in the publishing industry are familiar with this syndrome.) My advice to you, New Line Cinema, is to take your $15 million and be happy it doesn't bite you back.