Snowpiercer: snow way to survive the apocalypse?
You were promised more thoughts on the Netflix Snowpiercer TV series when I finished the thing.
Well, dear reader, SPOILERS ON THE LINE, so only read on if you too have seen and completed Snowpiercer … or don’t give a stuff about seeing it in the first place (but then, that being the case, do you want to read this piece?).
I found the TV series quite entertaining and effectively produced. I might be biased, as when the movie version came out, fans kept on e-mailing me, asking if I had written the script? Possibly because of its OTT wonderland feel, which owes itself more to Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho than the original comic-book source material … and, yes, I agree, Bong would be a good match for directing a The Court of the Air show.
The TV series, being a series and not the short-form bonkers movie disco-explosion, had to find more of an arc & plot than the film needed, so it mixed in a murder mystery and a longer exploration of the class-based one-percenter themes. I like crime novels, too, so this was to my taste.
On the downside, I never entirely reconciled the logic of forting up on a train with a vulnerable track that requires maintenance. There were various hints of some perpetual motion tech on the locomotive which needs movement to work, but I didn’t quite understood that. So, if a new ice age strikes, I’d still rather find myself a nice underground city on the equator a la NORAD, with some reinforced agri-domes on the surface, thank you (although that scenario might end up as frostpunkgame.com)
If I wrote the series, I’d have rolled back the flashbacks in the ultimate episode to one of the mid-episodes, as dropping the recollections in the the last ep. foreshadowed the finale-surprise too much … you saw it coming, also, right?
Anyway, roll on the second season, Sean Bean as the enigmatic Wilford and all – King of the ^%$&*ing North and the Ice Age? Better look out for White Walkers on the horizon, although, to be fair, ice age zombies have already been done in the 2013 sci-fi film ‘The Colony’ with Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton.
All aboard the One-percenter Express?
