So Mira and I decided we were going to watch Snowpiercer the other night, as it looked somewhat interesting and had gotten decent reviews.
*****Warning: Spoiler Alert*****
Well, that was 2 hours and 6 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Okay, so it wasn’t all that bad. By the end of the movie I was cheering each time someone died. Didn’t matter what team they played for…
Honestly, the entire concept of the movie seemed to be something out of the imagination of a five year old. A train, powered by a ‘Divine Engine’ (I’ll talk more about that later) that drives around the world, with a bunch of people on it – like ‘Speed’ meets ‘The Neverending Story’. I think a classmate of mine wrote a similar story in 1st grade.
The movie raised a lot of questions, the most prominent one being, “What the hell am I watching?” That question may never be answered. However, I do want to discuss the following, which occur in the movie in no particular order:
We see Mason, who is some figurehead representing Mr. Wilford, speaking to the occupants of the back cars of the train. I noticed her teeth were really horrible. Then, at another point, we see her remove the top teeth (the most nasty ones) as a top set of dentures. Later, as Mason is leading the group through the nicer cars, we see they have a dental office. So why the hell does Mason have such shitty teeth?? Why, if she runs so much of the train, doesn’t she get the damned things fixed? It’s not like she’s going anywhere…
And let’s talk about Curtis for a moment, yeah? The people in the back of the train clearly don’t have access to showers and proper methods of personal hygiene, so why does he cover his nose up when he goes and meets the guy hiding under the…whatever that stuff is…to get the Kronole? By the looks of everyone on the train, I somehow doubt the place smelled like Bath and Body Works.
I’m also clearly convinced that Claude (the woman who gets nailed in the head with a shoe) and the guy who looks like Rush Limbaugh and Steven Segal’s lovechild are robots. I mean, why not? You’ve got a train that runs on what we assume is either the quashed hopes of the occupants of the rear cars or the negative energy generated by the bad acting, so why not throw a few robots in the mix. Those bastards just wouldn’t die. Mira seems to think they’re vampires, however. Again, that’s plausible.
Why is there a clarvoyant? Was it really necessary for Yona to be clarvoyant? As if they weren’t robbing enough parts from other movies. I felt like I was watching the cutting room floor rejects of The Hunger Games (one of the parents should have stepped up as a Tribute, clearly), Silent Hill (I was waiting for the rebels to realize the masked men in plastic trashbags with axes only responded to light), Waterworld (just put an eyepatch over Mr. Wilford), and Ice Age (although I honestly wanted to see that polar bear pull out a Coke and offer it to the two kids). I think if Yona really were a clarvoyant, however, she would have sensed how horrible this movie really was and jumped off the train.
Although I was rather fond of the zombie ravers in the one train car, but I could’t quite understand why the scene with them attacking was necessary. Hearing their angry shouts as the group ran through (“I’ll kill you man. Hey, give that back.”) added much needed comic relief, though.
Could someone please explain to me, also, why there was a train car full of half naked people wearing Ugs and Eskimo coats? Or was that purely to make the fact that the two kids at the end had clothing warm enough to brave the Polar Vortex make sense?
And who decided that a giant block of Kronole (which is essentially C4 explosive) wasn’t overkill when blowing the gate open? I don’t think it would have mattered when they opened the gate, with that much explosive they were bound to annihilate all of the train’s ‘humanity’.
If anyone saw a glimmer of hope at the end of the movie (other than the glimmer of hope that either everyone died or that there wouldn’t be a sequel) please let me know now so I can unfriend you on Facebook. Seriously, a seventeen year old crackhead, excuse me, Kronolehead and a five year old are supposed to be able to survive the arctic with a probably very hungry polar bear roaming around? I bet that bear took one look at those kids and thought, Daddy’s gonna eat good tonight!
I have to say, it was very fortunate there was a zombie raver the size of that five year old, so he had something warm to wear.
And as Mira pointed out, here was this train, this self-sustaining ecosystem, hurtling around the world, running on this supposedly divine engine, not needing any source of fuel, but when parts broke down they were only replacable by child labor? Again, no answer for this.
It really felt like everyone gave up halfway through the movie and did a few lines of coke (or Kronole?) and tried rewriting the script. Like the fact that Mr. Wilford was such a prophet he saw the horrible demise with the use of CW7 (which Mira also pointed out was a television station that played reruns of really crappy sitcoms) that he built this train, makes me wonder if he was the one who created the CW7 in the first place. If so, then he created the largest, most complicated system of oppression I’ve ever seen.
Though, the pregnant lady with the Uzi was a nice touch.
If you haven’t seen this movie yet, don’t. Unless you have to choose between a root canal and this movie. Even then, you’re more likely to get something out of the root canal than by watching Snowpiercer. Truth be told, no one ever even explains why the name of the movie is Snowpiercer, which really sounds like it could be the title of a bad porn.
If you have already seen this movie, I’m sorry. If you liked this movie, I’m going to have to ask that you not talk to me for a little while until I can figure out how to look at you without asking, “What the actual fuck?”
I might have to write more movie reviews. It makes up for the crummy experiences.
Uncloseted 