Snowpiercer or Why, God, Hast Tho Forsaken Me?

I expect a few things from my fiction. Fairly basic things, really.

1) That the premise be entertaining in some fashion, be it humorous, exciting, inspiring, educational, frightening, etc.. In other words - am I interested in what is happening?

2) That the characters, antagonist and protagonist, be such that I can invest in them for the duration of the story. Do I care what happens to them?

3) That the world presented is internally consistent, both on it's own, but also within the larger subset of it's genre. Does the snapshot of the fictional world stand up well enough to serve as the backdrop to the story being played out by the characters?

Am I going to sit down for a fun night of watching torture porn? Or a supposed romance between a sparkling vampire and a plank of wood? No. That doesn't sound interesting at all. Actually, I'm starting to feel ill just thinking about it.

If I am watching a romantic comedy, and the two leads clearly have no chemistry despite the movie trying to tell me that they really, really do, how invested am I going to be in those leads getting together at the end? Not much.

If every single premise put forth in a science fiction tale not only doesn't make sense if placed against reality, but actually is self-contradicting within it's own narrative, am I going to be able to suspend my disbelief to the extent necessary in order to accept the story being presented by the characters, no matter how interesting that story might be on its face or how well disposed towards those characters I might initially feel? Sigh. No. No, Snowpiercer. I am not.

I could go down a list of everything about the film that so overwhelmed my suspension of disbelief I actually heard it snap wetly like a compound fracture, but I won't.

I could go into an excruciatingly long, punctuation-less, nerd rage-fueled, hyperbolic, late-night internet rant about just how stupid every single moment of this film was, but I won't.

I could try to detail plot point by plot point, character by character, line by line, how it all could have been done better, as only a true netwarrior, in the comfort of my own home, can armchair general "important" fiction, but I won't.

I've been down that road. I've seen where those tracks lead. And this film already stole two hours of my life, like a thief in the night - a hobo thief that hopped the rail and skipped town with my time wallet.

I'll leave the heaping of praise and the wringing of hands, the heaping of scorn and gnashing of teeth to other, no doubt better netwarriors than I.

If you have seen Snowpiercer, I am genuinely interested in reading what you thought of it. If you haven't, I would suggest that, perhaps, your time would be better spent elsewhere. However, if you are bound and determined to lay down on those tracks in the belief you can get off before the crazy train runs over your brain, I would leave you with one final point:

By the end, the perpetual motion machine driving the train was the only thing in the entire film I was actually able to accept as reasonable and well thought out.

PS - Only now, at the end, do I understand ... that I misspelled "thou" in the thread title. Sigh. No, wait! It has deeper meaning, you just have to think about it really hard.

 

It was actually impressive how little sense the movie made. Still, it had some hilarious imagery and action scenes. Not a great movie by any means, but to me it's a lot more interesting than shit like Transformers.

This movie could potentially make for the greatest Rifftrax ever. That's got to be worth something, right?

 

sure the premise was absurd but it was a damn good movie.

The premise is no more absurd than a guy in a metal suit teaming up with a Norse god and a guy that turns into a monster when he is angry.

 

The director is called Bong -- no need to ask what he was smoking...

 

I saw Snowpiercer last week and I have to say I do not regret seeing it at all. I consider it to be one of the best dystopian films of all time. Dark and emotionally powerful yet strangely comedic in certain areas. The entire cast did a great job including Chris Evans who pulls off his best performance yet as the outwardly heroic but inwardly troubled Curtis and Tilda Swinton whose performance I once described as a transformative delight. I found the ending to be gusty and slightly hopeful. I honestly want to see the entire movie again.

 

Snowpiercer prequel
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGW944czgzc[/yt]

 

So, BDZ, that's a no?

 

Why, God, Hast Thor Forsaken Me?

 

I enjoyed it and thought they did an excellent job at world-building.

I think that any scifi fan should see this movie. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't but it's well worth a look.

 

I'm interested in seeing it despite the wacky premise, but it's no stupider than getting godlike powers because you're using "more than 10% of your brain".

 

So, it blew? j/k

 

Oh God yes, that was the least appealing commercial for a movie I've seen in years. Even worse they seem to be counting up the percentage to 100% over the course of the movie. God help us when it reaches 100%! Who knows what will happen then! *barf*

 

Morgan Freeman seems to have contracted Bruce Willis Syndrome, i.e. the inability to distinguish between good scripts and bad.

 

Didn't like it either personally. It's a little too depressing for my taste.

 

I had a thread on Snowpiercer up earlier. I loved it.

First, it was a B-movie in every sense of the word. The special effects were good, quite good actually, but they were never great... they certainly felt of a piece with the rest of the film and kept the film's B-movie look. The film is like Mad Max on a train. For a B-movie it was suprising thoughtful. I also found the brutality of it to be refreshing, as oddly as that might sound. I'm no fan of the Saw films, or the films just use gore to sell to sell tickets, and But Snowpiercer was not that film.. instead it was thoughtful and had a lot to say about the human condition, and the fact that it was brutal at times helped give it an edge that is direly lacking in the monotony of PG-13 science fiction and comic-book style films. For once, I just felt that the level of brutality served the story.. and it was story that was more insightful that the one-paragraph summaries of the film would lead on.

 

I think Freeman, like Willis, has figured out that the paychecks are the same no matter what the movie is. Both could make dreck for the rest of their careers and their Hollywood legacies would still be secure (and, notably, both still take parts in scripts they care about).

 

Thor was the deeper meaning, yes. And this would definitely make an epic Rifftrax. It would be the only reason I'd watch this again. Either a Rifftrax or a Plinkett commentary could very well turn this around into a must see.

Dystopian fiction is particularly fascinating to me, which probably goes some way to explaining my disappointment in Snowpiercer. Dashed expectations.

Why the percentage of brain usage = superpowers plot continues to appear is baffling to me, as is Bruce Willis's recent career choices.

 

Wow, I'm surprised to see someone hating this so much. <ost of the critics on the sci-fi sites I go to have loved it.

 

You have to go in to this film knowing that it is a Korean director and that he is not beholden to conventional Western-style story structures.

All the stuff the OP posted that (s)he expects are generally found in standard American cinema. But, things like people behaving believably, a logical internally consistent world, comprehensible motivations, et al. are not always de rigueur in world cinema.

This film breaks all of those rules because its director's priorities apparently lie elsewhere. Other than this film being sci-fi, I don't know why it'd wind up being discussed on a Star Trek board. It's really not that type of movie.

 

I laughed out loud when they started counting up the percentages in the commercial. I'd be all for a ScarJo gets X-Men powers movie, but this one just looks ridiculous.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXlHS8Nucx4[/yt]