Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for a movie that if you haven’t seen by now, you’re not going to, so read it anyway.

You are bearing witness to what might just be the very last thing written about that internet sensation and box office dud, Snakes on a Plane. This film, one that so typifies the disposable nature of internet-based pop culture, in fact contains the most evocative cultural moments in recent cinematic history.

So first let me just get one thing out of the way before I regain my focus and actually talk about what I wanted to talk about. If you want to skip it, please check down to the paragraph after the paragraph after the next one, thanks.

I don’t write a movie column so this will probably the only chance I get to air this out, but the most useless piece of information that can ever be reported by anyone about anything are the weekend box office receipts. It puzzles me to no end that this is always a big story on Mondays, and how it is breathlessly reported on both the national and local level. This is information that is ONLY useful for a microscopic percentage of the general population, none of which are EVER going to turn to even a complementary hotel copy of USA Today to get it.

I have shared this fact with hundreds of people in my time and I always get the same response, “But Mr. Robison, sir, if I like a movie and it does well, they might make a sequel!” Look, I know that money is the only motivator behind the film industry, but your having that information is not going to be the deciding factor. I am all about spreading knowledge and information, but there is a difference between learning something you need to know and being told something you don’t.

Rant over. Now Snakes on a Plane at its core is another airliner disaster movie. Diverse characters are imperiled by a threat and universally face a gruesome death by crash. A fate that strikes at the core of a civilization that is still nervous about not only modern air travel, but about the basic “would-have-given-us-wings” thing which triggers a primal, evolution-tested, survival instinct to avoid situations where severe and terminal plummeting is a possibility.

Common in this type of movie is the removal of most visible sign of both leadership and the one who also embodies the passenger’s best chance at survival, the pilots. Whether it is by a mid air crash in Airport ’75, murder in Air Force One, or poisoned by spoiled fish in Airplane! this action heightened the film’s tension as the viewer wonders how the helpless passengers will survive without their uniformed leader.

Typically this is resolved in one of two ways; either another man is found who can land the plane if only he gets over the aero-trauma of his past or the plucky, well-proportioned flight attendant is able to listen to control tower flight instructions well enough to put the bird on the ground.

Thankfully for the paying audience, and for society in total, that did not happen in Snakes on a Plane. After Samuel L. Jackson’s climatic verbal denouement of the situation and his unconventional disposal of the offending reptiles, there is only one man who can land that accursed plane and save the survivors. A gamer.

Yes, an individual derided by political blowhards and media airheads has developed not a murderous, insatiable blood-lust, but life saving skills through the pursuit of his favorite hobby. It has given him the confidence to not only quiet the skeptical air traffic controller but convince The Man Himself that he has the skills to save all their lives. And he does. Sure it’s just a movie, but it contains something hereunto unheard-of: a massively positive portrayal of a gamer in a mainstream film. That is by itself nothing short of groundbreaking.

Look, I don’t want someone who’s only played Trauma Center operating on me, but it is way past time that the useful skills one develops while engaged in gaming are recognized. Problem solving, manual dexterity, leadership capability and crisis management are handy abilities to have in a crisis situation and they are not going to be developed by stamp collectors! Positive portals like the one described are only going to help to get the idea in people’s heads that gamers are useful, capable individuals, and if I’m ever trapped in a plane full of snakes, fallen through a book into a strange, static world, or just need to find a bathroom in a foreign city, I’ll be glad that I’m a gamer, because my collection of souvenir spoons will be absolutely no help.

THE RIDE BOARD:

Your Mail:   I just want to send a word of thanks to all you of who have contacted me about my time of 4 days 23 hours and 56 minutes in Dead Rising’s Infinite Mode. All of the XBL messages have been supportive and understanding. I wonder how much flak I would have taken if I had posted it onto a game “forum” and if there is connection between typing speed and human compassion. Anyway, next time I’ll save one cabbage for the end.

This is my stop.

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Comments? Questions? E-mail me at seth410@gamertransit.com. Complaints? ? I’m tried of these MF complaints about my MF column! Back of the Bus is © 2006 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.