2013 • R • 2hs 6mins • Watch trailer • Stream on Netflix • Rent it
💎 Streaming Gems: You’re paying for Netflix but what’s good on there?
You’re reading Pizza & A Movie. You walk into your pizza joint and the windows are fogged up with pizza oven steam. You pick up your pie and ask the guy at the counter, “Hey, what should I rent from Blockbuster next door to go with this?” Tonight, he says, “You know, it’s the bleak midwinter. You ever see that one where Captain America is on an evil Polar Express?” I think he means Bong Joon-ho’s enigmatic civilization-on-a-train movie, Snowpiercer. Let’s get to it.
Here’s the plot. It’s 2031 and we’re on a train. A couple decades earlier, humans froze the earth on accident. Now everyone left lives on a train called Snowpiercer that never stops looping our frosty blue marble. It’s like this: Poor at the back of the train, rich at the front. Armed guards keep ‘em in their place. Father figure of the tail section, Gilliam (John Hurt), helps make the terrible conditions somewhat livable. Uneasy peace holds. Until the day Curtis (Chris Evans) and his right-hand man Edgar (Jamie Bell) lead a coup, that is.
Their plan? To bust through as many train cars as it takes to get to the front. Doing a little quick math—that would be all of them. Up front is the mythical Wilford (Ed Harris), inventor and caretaker of the train’s eternal engine. In their way are Wilford’s deputy, Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton), and a whole lotta heavies. Curtis and company need the help of Namgoong Minsoo (Song Kang-ho), the guy who knows how to unlock any door, or they’re going nowhere. And he’s not going without his his daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung). Jailbreaking the pair is step one for Team Curtis. But can Curtis survive the fight to the front? And what’ll he find up there if he does? And is the true Snowpiercer just the friends he made along the way?
So that’s the setup. Just an average, chill movie. Probably nothing to discu—okay, surprising, I’m seeing some hands. Questions? Alright, I’ll take ‘em one at a time.
You there, with big Hermione energy, what’s on your mind?
Was there a real train?
Sadly, no. The sets were on a soundstage in Prague. But Bong shot with four train cars on set, so sort of yes.
Wait, Prague?
Yep, Snowpiercer was a Czech-South Korean collab.
Huh, were they trying to save a few bucks?
Nope. It cost $40M, making it the most expensive South Korean movie maybe ever. Its price tag made Snowpiercer a mid-budget movie, an all but extinct creature. The criteria that led to shooting in the Prague studio was dimensional. Remember those four train cars Bong wanted to fit on set? He figured it’d take 75-100 meters to do it. In feet, that’s about 300. Or 100 yards. Yeah. Bong essentially wanted to shoot on a football field. His production folks found exactly two viable candidates—Prague won.
Why did it have to fit four train cars?
The simple answer is to get those long shots down open compartments. The interesting answer? Because Bong wrote the story from scratch. The graphic novels had the benefit of zillions of pages to get the story out. A movie didn’t. “I had to capture that long story in a two-hour film, so rather than cut out some scenes from the comic, I just rewrote the whole story,” Bong said. His version tidily partitions social strata into discreet cars, making it critical he be able to shoot a few at once so you get the contrast between them.
You said this was a graphic novel?
It’s kinda based on some, yes. Three in the French series came before the movie, one after it. That final volume, Snowpiercer: Terminus, which hit shelves in ‘19, was a sequel to the movie. Means the graphic novels consider the silver screen entry part of the canon, which is the greatest compliment I can think of.
Got it: Graphic novel to screenplay to four train cars on a football field set. Did it go smoothly?
Pal, you knew the answer before you asked the question. And that’s what I love about you. You get it. You see all the angles. You’re playing four-dimensional chess with me, you beautiful genius. But, to provide the (to you, inevitable) answer to your question: No. It was about as smooth as a cowboy’s chin o’ gristle bristle. Production had to do science for this one. They built a gyroscopic gimbal that could hold a hundred tons and do stuff like tilt in literally any direction. That’s what it took to make train cars on a set look like they were actually moving. In case you were wondering where that $40M budget went? It went to stuff like that.
What You Know Them From
⭐️ Chris Evans (Curtis Everett)
Captain America found it hard to hide that all-American beef under big poor person clothes and malnourishment makeup. Evans made Snowpiercer to show his sensitive side. A success, I guess? Bong didn’t want to cast him, but then he met him. Evans, like even the baddest on-screen boys, is a sensitive theater kid at heart. He’s not bad in this, but better in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (’10).
⭐️ Song Kang-ho (Namgoong Minsoo)
He’d worked with Bong on two previous flicks, Memories of Murder (’03) and The Host (’06). But you’d probably know him from Bong’s most recent movie, Parasite (’19), which won Best Picture. The NYT slotted him in at #6 on their 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century. Not too shabby.
⭐️ Go Ah-sung (Namgoong Yona)
Her first movie was Bong’s joint The Host. She’s made a lot of TV shows in Korea, include a Korean remake of Life on Mars.
⭐️ Ed Harris (Wilford)
Those icy baby blues suggest maybe Harris was Sinatra’s bad dad in a prior life. You saw him in The Rock (’96), The Truman Show (’98), last year in Top Gun: Maverick (’22) and a bunch of Westworld episodes (’16-’22).
⭐️ John Hurt (Gilliam)
I first saw him in Alien (’78)—on our schedule to be covered soon. For folks my age he’s Olivander the wand-maker from the Harry Potter movies. For comics fiends, Professor Broom in del Toro’s Hellboy movies and a dictator in V for Vendetta (’05). He acted since the sixties and was in 214 projects before that big director in the sky called picture wrap for him in ’17.
⭐️ Tilda Swinton (Minister Mason)
She doesn’t want to make any more movies. Says each one is her last and that she’ll only make another on one condition. “And that one (and only) condition in which I will make another film is that I will have some fun.” Seems like she’s having fun here. She was also in Michael Clayton (’07), We Need to Talk About Kevin (’11), Only Lovers Left Alive (’13) with John Hurt, and recently Three Thousand Years of Longing (’22) and The Killer (’23). Iconic in every one. Remember that Greatest Actors list? She was #13.
⭐️ Jamie Bell (Edgar)
Billy Elliott (’00) is where it started. His boyishness did the work ever since in the likes of Defiance (’08), The Adventures of Tintin (’11)—which is a masterpiece and I won’t hear otherwise—and Fantastic Four (’15). He’s rarely the person you really like in whatever he’s in, but only because he’s so committed to the material that he becomes the movie. Bell is one of our greatest working character actors.
Snow + Piercer
The LA Review of Books wrote a demented brain-blaster of a piece on the Snowpiercer graphic novel. They pointed out it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopia story. And, know what? They’re right. We get from the jump that somebody left the fridge open. That’s the snow—and the post-apocalyptic—part. But the dystopia? That’s society baby.
As Curtis and company pierce their way through car after car of social strata, they uncover an ugly truth. While they’ve been living like refugees at the kiester-end of Snowpiercer, civilization in the rest of the train kept moving forward to the zenith of opulence, culminating in an engine-adjacent club fueled by drugs and fur coats. The dystopian view is that society, with no rules or observers, would split down the middle with a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the haves and the have-nots.
The train itself gets pierced at the end, cracked open like a shaken-up can of Mountain Dew. Because oppression always leads to revolution. And then, everyone who’s left is back in the snow, equals again.
Snowing on the Box Office
Did people like this in ’14? Unexpected answer incoming: We didn’t really get it over here. Snowpiercer only played in something like 150 US theaters. More on that in a minute. But in Korea and China it killed, raking in $70M combined. It was the highest-grossing Korean movie ever at the time. Audiences were into it.
Critics were too. They saw it for the high-concept blockbuster it was. Writing for Time Out New York, Joshua Rothkopf said, “Snowpiercer is a headlong rush into conceptual lunacy—but you'll love it anyway.” It’s technically a sci-fi picture, but it’s so bonkers that genre doesn’t really register. Variety called it “enormously ambitious, visually stunning and richly satisfying”.
I think it’s cut from the same cloth as Sin City and 300. But in a good way. Though those two are smack in the middle of the Quality-o-Meter, they play like epic poetry. They deal in ridiculous specifics to get to enormous themes, nay moods, nay vibes. Similarly, Snowpiercer leaves your brain with scores of questions—how does water filtration work?—but with a full tummy too. Even at a two hour runtime it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Harvey It Your Way
Here’s why Snowpiercer didn’t get more than an art house release in the States. Two years earlier in ’12, when it was nothing more than a script and a few minutes of footage, distribution rights got bought by a character you mighta heard of by the name of Harvey Weinstein. Guy owned a movie studio with his brother called The Weinstein Company. That’s the studio’s name, not his brother’s. You already know about his criminal behavior but maybe you don’t know about Weinstein’s industry behavior. Surprise! He was a bully. He might be a bully for you or against you, but he was always a bully.
After buying the distribution rights to Snowpiercer, Weinstein told Bong to cut the movie down. By a lot. Wanted 25 minutes gone. Also wanted less talking, more action. And a voice-over to spoon feed you the ending. Sounds like Weinstein wanted to slice out what makes Snowpiercer different than every other actioner—it doesn’t care about your comfort. Bong said no, but Weinstein cut it anyway.
Weinstein’s version went before a test audience of 250 folks. They hated it. Instead of saying, “I was wrong,” or “Oops, I forgot, I’m not a director,” Weinstein cut it even more. They screened Bong’s unedited version for another test audience who scored the director’s cut way high.
Bong won—his version of Snowpiercer is the one you watched.
But bullies are sore losers. Instead of putting Snowpiercer in a bunch of theaters via The Weinstein Company, Harvey passed it off to Radius, a subsidiary of TWC that focused on niche movies. The likes of Only God Forgives (’13) and It Follows (’14). I dunno if Weinstein lost faith in the commercial viability of Snowpiercer or if he just wanted to be mean about it. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life it’s that it can be both. It can always be both.
Snowpiercer premiered in the US on June 27, 2014. In only eight theaters.
Thankfully, fans and critics took over from there. Snowpiercer’s reputation spread as that rarest of things—a critical and cult classic. It was a lot of folks’ movie of the year in ’14. I rented it as soon as I could. Didn’t know what to make of it then but I knew I liked it. After seeing it a few more times over the years, I’ve stopped trying to get everything about it.
I just enjoy the train ride.
Hope you enjoyed this one too! I had a good time researching Snowpiercer last week while temps were in the teens. Felt very on-theme for a frigid January, a month that is already an annual dystopia. That wraps our month of using the streaming services you’re already paying for. Next time we’re in Valentine’s mode for one of my favorite recent movies. See you then.
And, hey, if you enjoyed this one, share it with a pal who would too! It really does help me out. Don’t let ‘em off the train.
Notes:
They shot Snowpiercer on 35mm film. Stills have that desaturated HDR quality that looks funny in a frame but plays really well as a movie. Overall, looks incredible.
What inspired Minister Mason’s fervor? Why is Franco the Elder such a devoted henchman? Who put a bun in the teacher’s oven? Pretty sure sex with Wilford is the answer to all those questions.
Snowpiercer was adapted as a TV show starting in ’20. It’s got Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly. Never seen it.
I dunno what your deal is, but I’m a Hermione trying to be more of a Ron but praying I don’t turn into a Harry.
You beautiful genius.