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Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda (2025). (Courtesy Sony)
CAN THE ORIGINAL ANACONDA explain the state of Hollywood? An absurd question on its face, yet . . . perhaps?
In theory, there’s nothing particularly special about this 1997 feature film from auteur Luis Llosa. It’s a fairly straightforward studio programmer, a low-budget creature feature about an intrepid crew of explorers and documentarians trying to find a lost tribe in the Amazon only to get picked off one by one by a massive snake and a deranged snake hunter. The dodgy effects meant it was never going to reach Jurassic Park highs. It even has a relatively formulaic cast: a past-his-prime awards winner, a never-quite-made it lead, a couple solid character actors, and a handful of up-and-comers.
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A formulaic cast, yes, but a brilliantly assembled one, as it turns out. The character actors are Danny Trejo (you know him) and Jonathan Hyde (the gruff father/hunter from Jumanji, among dozens of other roles). The up-and-comers are Owen Wilson, Ice Cube, and Jennifer Lopez, all of whom would turn into viable A-listers in the very near future. Eric Stoltz¹ is the never-quite-made-it leading man, riding high off his small but brilliant turn in Pulp Fiction a few years prior. And the past-his-prime Oscar winner is none other than Jon Voight, who earned every penny of his paycheck with one of the most bizarre performances of all time as the snake-hunting Paul Serone.
It’s Voight who turns what should have been a fun-but-disposable movie into a cult classic, a sort of camp masterpiece. You simply haven’t lived until you hear Voight discuss “the privilege of hearing your bones break before the power of [the snake’s] embrace causes your veins to explode” in his lisping Paraguayan affect. The movie is beloved because it’s ridiculous, and you can’t really capture that sort of accidental brilliance.
But this is Hollywood in 2025, so you knew someone would try. Because, after all, Anaconda is a recognizable piece of intellectual property, something people have heard of, something you might have to advertise slightly less to create “awareness” in the public imagination. There is, in fact, a meta-joke about IP in this film—failing actor Ron (Paul Rudd) claims to have secured the rights to Anaconda’s source material in an effort to recruit friends Doug (Jack Black), Kenny (Steve Zahn), and Claire (Thandiwe Newton)—that is intended on some level to excuse the cash-grab nature of this endeavor, but does not. (Spoiler in the footnote here.²)
Jon Voight in Anaconda (1997). (Courtesy Columbia Pictures)
The new Anaconda is not good, precisely, but it is a tribute to the power of star-driven charisma. If you like Jack Black’s goofy energy, Paul Rudd’s aw-shucks everyguy persona, and Steve Zahn operating in his bumbling idiot mode (which is separate from his also-funny befuddled straight man role, most recently seen on the delightful Chad Powers) while Thandiwe Newton plays the inexplicably single beauty, you’ll be tempted to give Anaconda a passing grade: I know I was. There aren’t many “jokes” here, precisely, but there is a lot of good energy, plenty of fun vibes. The quartet really does capture the energy of middle-aged friends desperate for one last adventure, one final bite at the pie of their dreams. I’ll admit to laughing during the discussion of what it means to be “Buffalo Sober.”
