When I first heard about the movie Snow Piercer I thought it sounded like the sort of thing that would be right up my alley. I am a great lover of dystopia and post-apocalyptic settings, but then I started hearing all these terrible reviews about it and how it was the worst movie ever, and how bad it was.
I wasn’t going to let that completely discourage me from watching it. So I got it on Netflix, and while there were a lot of things about it that where to say the least rather stupid, or just didn’t make any kind of sense, perhaps because my expectations had been so low it was not as awful as I had thought. It was an entertaining movie to watch on a night when there is nothing else on TV and there where somethings about it that where kind of interesting.
The premiss of the movie was that the world was becoming inhabitable because of global warming and as a last ditch effort to try and fix the problem some chemical was shot up into the atmosphere to lower the global temperature, but as a result ended up causing the entire earth to freeze. But before all this happened there was this Walt Dinseyesque type of character (who even had a name which started with a W) Wilford and he was this visionary who had this idea for creating this ultimate luxury train that could circle around the entire world. And the last remaining survivors of the earth are living on this train that is endlessly circling.
In a way this movie reminded me a bit of the Titanic, mostly because there was the “steerage” section on the train which was called the tail, all the poor people where crammed into the back of the train, and then there was the “upper deck” section with all the rich people living in the front of the train, and like in the Titanic there where this really stark polarization between the different classes. The movie was also a bit of Noah’s Ark, and somewhat reminded me of this mini-series Ascension on the Syfy channel, and there was one character that made me think of Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games.
Now the first thing that popped into my mind was what does the train run on? It most require some kind of fuel or energy source of some kind, so if there is nothing left within the world and all of humanity is contained upon this train, where does the train get its power source from?
Any kind of coal or gas would eventually run out and it cannot be electric because it would eventually need to recharge. I suppose it could be solar powered, even if the world is frozen over there is still a sun in the sky presumably, or maybe it runs on some kind of ethanol type thing and they make fuel from whatever leftovers they have from the food they eat.
The whole food question is another problem. While there is this one scene in which the people are walking through a garden where they do grow their own food, and while to a certain extent you could create some kind of sustainable system. There is also a scene where they walk through this train car that is a big ole fish tank where they get fish from, but that also raises a whole wealth of questions as to how they maintain the fish tank, and feed the fish, I won’t try to get into those complications.
But one of the big things is the people in the tail talk about how the people at the head of the train get steak to eat, while the people in the tail are just given these protein bars to eat. Even on a very large, super train set in some futuristic world I think it would be difficult to keep and maintain sufficient cattle for an indefinite period of time.
Then the whole water thing is an issue to. Apparently these giant blocks of ice sometimes form on the train tracks and the nose of the train is designed to break through this ice (hence the name of the film) without damaging or derailing the train. At some point it is than explained that somehow the ice that the train breaks up is what is used and filtered for the water supply in the train. How exactly to they harvest, or collect, this ice the is outside of the train to somehow get int inside the train? The train never stops moving and it is not like someone could just walk outside and scrap the ice off and bring it inside because it is so cold that as soon as you go outside you freeze instantly.
The other issue is that the tail is plotting this revolt to take over the front of the train and to do that they want to break this guy out of prison who was like head of security so he knows how to get through all the doors, and as it happens the prison on the train is basically just these morgue box looking things. They open up this drawer and pull open this slab and the guy is lying on it. First of all, a person wouldn’t be able to survive in that condition for long, certainly not without some significant health issues. He wouldn’t be able to just pop back up and start running around on this train after that. Second of all he has an addiction to this type of futuristic drug, how does he have accesses to drugs if he is locked in this tiny metal box? The movie was based on a graphic novel so there most be some background information here that explains this better.
One thing that was interesting about the movie was the fact that Wilford is seen as being this Divine/God like person because this train is the whole world to these people and he designed the train, he was the “creator” and he keeps it running, he controls the engine. And he also has power of life and death over the people on the train. He creates his idea of the necessary balance to insure the continued survival of everyone. And there is this other character, this old man who lives in the tail who can be seen as a sort of Satan like figure in the way in which in a sense he is both adversary and friend to Wilford, they do work together to help keep this sort of balance.
Labyrinth of the Mind 