I watched the TV adaptation of Snowpiercer out of surprise. I wasn’t that up to date with new TV series, so I was surprised when I saw it as a recommended title on Netflix (which is apparently where I do all my watching now). I loved the original Snowpiercer film by director Bong Joon-ho, so I was both intrigued and wary at the prospect of a long form narrative about an eternally running train that houses the last humans of the world.
When the world finally succumbs to the effects of climate change and a deep freeze is expected to kill all living things, the last remaining hope for humans is to get on Snowpiercer. The 1001 car long train owned by Mr. Wilford is designed to run eternally around the globe to keep its passengers from freezing. Inside is a balanced ecosystem designed to house and feed its occupants for an indefinite period of time, while its engineers work around the clock to ensure that the train just keeps running on the tracks. But not everybody belongs on Snowpiercer. Desperate to survive, a group of people boarded the train on departure without tickets, and were forced to be accepted as passengers since the train can’t stop once it starts running. For seven years, the group now known as the Tailies, live in the last cars of Snowpiercer, subjected to harsh conditions and even harsher punishments on top of discrimination. Headed by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), the Tailies plan a rebellion so that they could gain more resources for their people to survive. But their plans are hindered by the sudden summon for Layton to go uptrain, where train Hospitality head Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) tasks him to use his skills as a former police detective to solve a murder on Snowpiercer.
I will be upfront in saying that I didn’t fully get on board with the series until a couple of episodes in. I couldn’t help but compare the differences between the film and the TV series iterations, which I needed to stop in order to appreciate the adaptation for what it has to offer. There’s a more frenetic energy in the film, which adds to its overall appeal but is most likely due to the limited screen time of the film format. Once I limited (I couldn’t completely stop) my comparisons, however, I enjoyed the slower build of the series’s overall story. I was worried that the murder would turn the series into a procedural, but it would prove to be the opening needed for the different classes that lived on the train to find reason to be discontent with their lives on Snowpiercer. And with the longer buildup, the nature of their revolution is shaped by the involvement of the different classes on the train.
There is a significant twist in the story relating to who truly runs Snowpiercer, and while I was initially miffed at the idea and felt they were trying too hard to differentiate themselves from the source material, I appreciated that they were trying to turn the idea of the big bad on its head. Everybody depends on Snowpiercer to survive while the world remains dead outside, and while it’s easy enough to root for the downtrodden and discriminated, the series took advantage of the ten episode run to also shed light on the difficulties of those who are running the train and just trying to keep people alive until they can finally disembark from it.
It’s not always an easy show to watch, because there’s room for improvement in different areas, but deciding on giving season 2 a watch when it premieres isn’t that hard to make. It doesn’t hurt that Sean Bean is joining them next season in a very important role, so things should be fun…. as fun as a post-apocalyptic series can be, that is.
Happy viewing!
PEPS LIKES TO 