When news first broke that a new Anaconda movie was in the works, I was… a little baffled. How do you recapture the specific, late-90s energy of Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and Owen Wilson fighting an oversized snake in the Amazon rainforest?
As it turns out, that dilemma is exactly at the heart of the new movie itself, in the most fun way possible. On Wednesday, Sony Pictures released the first official trailer for their “reboot” of Anaconda, which stars Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Thandiwe Newton, and Steve Zahn. As the footage shows, there’s a reason why I put reboot in quotes: Rudd and Black’s characters are childhood best friends who set out to remake Anaconda, only for things to go hilariously (and violently) wrong.
In one gag later on in the trailer, it appears as if Black’s character is very much dead (a twist I would’ve been shocked to see in a first teaser trailer) and repurposed as bait for the gigantic snake, only for that to not be the case. The trailer is even set to Nicki Minaj’s 2014 hit “Anaconda”, which is an opportunity that they definitely needed to take.
According to Sony Pictures’ official description for the film, “Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) have been best friends since they were kids, and have always dreamed of remaking their all-time favorite movie: the cinematic “classic” Anaconda. When a midlife crisis pushes them to finally go for it, they head deep into the Amazon to start filming. But things get real when an actual giant anaconda appears, turning their comically chaotic movie set into a deadly situation. The movie they’re dying to make? It might just get them killed……”
I’ve missed this kind of monster movie
In a media landscape where kaiju stories seem more popular than ever, from Legendary’s Monsterverse of Godzilla and Kong movies to even standalone stories like The Suicide Squad, it is wild to me that we’ve lost the specific art of the ’90s gigantic monster movies. Sure, the Anaconda franchise has technically spawned sequels, but they’ve largely been made-for-TV movies, with the most recent being 2015’s baffling crossover Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
But like the romantic comedy and the erotic thriller, Anaconda‘s specific breed of monster movie has been fewer and further between on the big screen. Instead, we seemed to have shifted to disaster movies, action-adventure fare, or existing franchises that everyone already knows. But there is something fun to the idea of watching A-list actors attempt to do nothing more than outrun a gigantic snake, which this first trailer seems to understand wholeheartedly.
The meta angle of this new Anaconda is fun as well, especially in a pop culture that has become so enamored with nostalgia and remaking things. The self-awareness of this being a passion project between two friends, as opposed to some shiny star-studded remake, does immediately add a sort of charm. It feels very reminiscent of Our Time, the long-gestating TV “remake” of The Goonies that’s about a substitute teacher and her students making a shot-for-shot recreation of the film (which I really hope becomes a reality, at some point).
Anaconda is set to be released exclusively in theaters on Thursday, December 25th.
(featured image: Sony Pictures)
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