Snowpiercer

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Movie
German title Snowpiercer
Original title Snowpiercer
설국 열차
Seolgugyeolcha
Country of production South Korea
USA
France
Czech Republic
original language English
Korean
Publishing year 2013
length 126 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Bong Joon-ho
script Bong Joon-ho
Kelly Masterson
production Park Chan-wook
Lee Tae-hun
Park Tae-jun
Dooho Choi
Robert Bernacchi
David Minkowski
Matthew Stillman
music Marco Beltrami
camera Hong Kyung-pyo
cut Steve M. Choe
occupation

Snowpiercer is a science fiction - action film from the year 2013 , which the French comics Snow Cruiser (Le Transperceneige) by Jacques Lob , Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette based. It is the first English-language film by the South Korean director and screenwriter Bong Joon-ho ( The Host ). The film premiered in South Korea on July 31, 2013. The German theatrical release was on April 3, 2014.

action

In 2014, 79 countries decided to stop global warming ( geoengineering ) by spraying chemical refrigerants called CW-7 in the upper atmosphere . The experiment failed, however, and instead resulted in a global ice age in which all life on earth froze to death. 17 years later, in 2031, the planet is still a lifeless ice desert. Only about a thousand people survived and are crammed into a very small space in the Snowpiercer , an over-long train that has been traveling around the planet as a rattling ark since the beginning of the Apocalypse and is powered by a perpetual motion machine . There is a two-class system on the train. The lower class is crammed into the end of the train and enslaved under poor conditions. The only food is gelatinous protein bars. Because of these conditions, there have already been revolutions in the past by the people behind the train, but they all failed because no one has yet managed to get "forward" and conquer the "machine". After children have again been kidnapped to the head of the train and one of the oppressed has again lost an arm to draconian punishment, the rebellious Curtis organizes a new uprising with the support of old Gilliam. He receives secret messages from an unknown informant in capsules that are hidden in the protein bars.

The oppressed begin to work their way forward through the individual train sections to the machine in order to take control of the train. Since the guards have already used up all of their ammunition in the past uprisings, people from the end of the train can initially break through the first guard compartments relatively easily, which shield the wagons further ahead. Eventually they end up in a car in which many people are held captive in sleeping coffins. Among them are the drug addict Namgoong, whose job it was to construct the locking mechanisms for the train doors, and his 17-year-old daughter Yona, who can gradually open the next bulkheads for the insurgents around Curtis and Gilliam. For the first time they discover windows to the outside, where a white world frozen in the ice without any life can be seen. You get to the water supply via the food production section. This is heavily guarded, however, and a fight ensues between Minister Mason's troops and the insurgents. When the Snowpiercer drives into a long tunnel, the guards with their night vision devices can kill many insurgents in the total darkness. Only when torches are brought forward by the end of the train can they gain the upper hand and Curtis finally capture Mason; Curtis' friend Edgar, however, dies in the fighting. The Minister gives them access to the compartments of the train further ahead, where they pass a greenhouse, an aquarium and a slaughterhouse. It is becoming increasingly clear what prosperity the people in front of the train live in. In the next compartment there is a school where children are taught. The kidnapped children cannot be found here, but one of the students shows them the way “further ahead”, where they have been taken. At school, an educational film for children shows the story of the Snowpiercer , which is based on the completely self-sufficient luxury train of the industrialist and train fool Mr. Wilford, who created a global railway line that could be used to travel around the world in a year. The Snowpiercer has been around here for 18 years now.

A servant is handing out boiled eggs as a New Year's present with a wagon when he and the teacher suddenly pull out submachine guns and shoot the insurgents. One of Mason's henchmen, Franco, kills Gilliam, in return Curtis executes Mason. The shrinking group flees further forward through the train and comes through additional luxury compartments with a library, bar and hairdressing salon. At a large curve, Curtis and Wilford's henchman engage in a firefight across the diameter of the arch. In a sauna wagon, Franco is finally defeated at great sacrifice. Only Curtis, Namgoong and Yona work their way forward through a discotheque on the train until they finally stand in front of the locked bulkhead to Wilford and the machine. Namgoong does not want to open it. In his frustration, Curtis hits Namgoong. When both calm down, Curtis tells his story: When the refugees boarded the train, they quickly ran out of water and food. After a short time cannibalism took hold. Curtis kidnapped the baby Edgar to eat him, killing his mother in the process when Gilliam sacrificed his arm to save the child. It wasn't until some time later that Wilford made protein blocks available. With the chaotic and pathetic conditions at the end of the train, Curtis was out for revenge and determined to kill Wilford.

Namgoong explains that every year the Snowpiercer passes an airplane wreck, which is covered by less snow with each sight. From this he concludes that the earth is slowly warming and that survival outside may be possible again. He suggests blasting the door outside, but is shot by Wilford's assistant, Claude, who takes Curtis out to dinner with Wilford. Wilford greets Curtis in a friendly manner and explains how he tries to keep the balance inside the train by maintaining the machine and decimating the residents again and again when they become too numerous. Wilford also claims that Gilliam was his secret ally and closest friend all along. Both had planned the uprising together to achieve a decimation of the train population. As evidence, Wilford reveals himself to be Curtis' secret informant and gives him one of the capsules that he had hidden in the protein blocks. Since the uprising had more casualties than expected, Wilford had no choice but to have Gilliam executed. Because he is getting old himself, he wants Curtis to be his successor and to take care of the last survivors of humanity in his place.

Meanwhile, Yona and Namgoong fight with other train residents and the returned Franco. When Yona opens the bottom of the machine, they discover that Wilford is using children to replace the failing parts of the machine. Curtis then knocks Wilford down and sacrifices his arm to free one of the children, Timmy. Yona detonates the device, and Namgoong and Curtis sacrifice themselves to protect Yona and Timmy from the fire in the explosion. The bang triggers an avalanche on the slope above the train, which hits the Snowpiercer, derails it and destroys it. Yona and Timmy leave the wrecked train. When they look around in the frozen mountains, they see a polar bear nearby. From this it can be concluded that Namgoong was right in his assumption and that survival outdoors is possible again.

background

  • Production costs were $ 40 million.
  • The shooting took place in Prague and on the Hintertux Glacier in Tyrol.
  • The owner of the North American rights, Harvey Weinstein , found the original version "too intelligent" for the US audience. But Bong refused to choose a version shortened by 20 minutes for the US release, especially since the shortened version had fared significantly worse than the original version in front of a test audience in New Jersey in July 2013. In the end, the full-length film was released in cinemas on June 27, 2014 - almost three months later than in Europe - Weinstein left the theatrical distribution to Radius-TWC at short notice, which means that Snowpiercer was initially only shown in eight selected cinemas and only two weeks later 356.
  • Snowpiercer was presented in the Forum section of the 64th Berlinale (2014).

Television series

In 2018, the American television broadcaster TNT originally wanted to release the first season of the television series Snowpiercer , an adaptation of the film and the French comic. In September 2018, the publication date was set for June 2019.

The broadcast finally started on May 17, 2020. Internationally, the first season of the series has been shown since May 25, 2020 on the streaming provider Netflix .

reception

Reviews

Rotten Tomatoes scored 95% positive ratings with an average of 8.1 out of 10 points. Metacritic calculated a value of 84 points based on 36 reviews.

"For his first international production, Bong transfers the dystopian material to a brilliantly staged action film plot [...] Strongly staged social parable, which with its glaring boldness gambled away the chance to go down as a classic in the sci-fi annals."

- Cinema

“But 'Snowpiercer' turns something else into a real masterpiece of action cinema: namely the synthesis of Western and Asian cinema traditions, which he has mastered like no other at the moment. [...] Even in the most violent combat, Bong slows down the pace, plays with light and shadow or shifts a fight scene completely into the dark in order to concentrate only on the dull soundtrack. A pretty crazy platforming spectacle, as if you had landed in a manic-depressive arcade game. "

- David Steinitz : Süddeutsche Zeitung

Grossing results

Snowpiercer grossed $ 86.8 million worldwide by November 2014. About two-thirds of them came from South Korea, where the film opened in theaters in August 2013 and, with over nine million viewers, ranks eleventh among the most successful films in South Korea. In Germany, the film was only shown in 88 cinemas on its opening weekend in April 2014 and landed at number 18 on the cinema charts with 12,640 visitors. In total, he made the equivalent of 530,987 US dollars there in its three weeks' duration. Snowpiercer was more successful in France, the country of origin of the authors of the comic book. There it brought in the equivalent of five million US dollars at the box office, even a little more than in the USA, where the film only opened at the end of June 2014.

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Snowpiercer . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2014 (PDF; test number: 143 819 K).
  2. ^ Film Music Reporter: Marco Beltrami to score "Snowpiercer" and "Warm Bodies" . In: Film Scoring Assignments . May 4, 2012. Retrieved May 7, 2012.
  3. ↑ Elite Home Entertainment
  4. ^ ScreenDaily.com, July 17, 2012
  5. ^ "Snowpiercer": US cinema audience too stupid for the film? Tagesspiegel from January 28, 2014.
  6. ↑ Snowpiercer, the series on imdb.com
  7. ↑ Background to the series on moviepilot.de
  8. ↑ The start date for the Snowpiercer series on Netflix has been set . In: moviepilot.de . September 11, 2018 ( moviepilot.de [accessed September 13, 2018]).
  9. ^ Snowpiercer on Cinema
  10. ↑ David Steinitz: Outside Ice Age, inside thick air. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . Süddeutscher Verlag , September 22, 2014, accessed on November 23, 2016 .
  11. ↑ box office results
  12. ↑ Cinema charts for the first week