Introduction
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Let’s face it. Most movies nowadays are crap. They are mass produced, mindless works that regurgitate the same story lines told in a slightly different way. They hold the viewers hand and walk them through fast moving actions scenes of color and anger and bombard them with dim witted humor that isn’t all that funny. Often they have no real depth and they produce about as much thought in the viewer as watching an old man mowing the lawn in his pajamas on a Sunday morning.
High concept – low brain films.
These movies act as a cheap form of single serving entertainment and they are often forgotten almost immediately after watching them.
OK, that was a bit of a rant and probably vastly exaggerated, but you get the idea that most movies today are crap and needless to say, it’s hard to find good movies these days that are thought provoking and which have relevant messages to the viewer about the world we live in today.
One movie that is a seemingly unlikely exception to this, is the movie Snowpiercer.
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I will admit that the movie is a bit cheesy at times due to its low budget and some of the dialogue a bit lacking. It also walks the viewer through the story so it doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking to understand what is going on in the moment. However, overall the film is very thought provoking and it contains many messages that not always obvious to the viewer and which are relevant to today’s world.
With that being said, this post is a multi-part article that first reviews the movie Snowpiercer and then discusses its overall themes and messages.
Synopsis
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Snowpiercer is a low budget film that was produced in 2013 that is based on a French graphic novel that goes by a similar name. Though it was produced and directed by South Korean’s, it was marketed for an American audience and has a predominantly English speaking, American cast (with some exceptions).
The movie takes place in a future world in which a human experiment in climate change sends the world into extremely cold temperatures and creates a new ice age. The event inadvertently kills off all life on the planet with the exception of the last remaining people who have managed to survive on a massive train known as the Snowpiercer.
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The train was designed by an engineer named Wilford, who is a mysterious figure of legend and basically who is worshipped like a sort of biblical prophet. The passengers of the train have been divided into a class system with the low status individuals living in the filth of the back of the train, economy class living in the middle and the upper class individuals live in opulence at the front. The three classes of people are heavily divided by physical and psychological barriers within the train’s environment.
This self-contained ecosystem known as Snowpiercer, continuously travels around the planet while the movie periodically hints at the notion that if the train stops “we all freeze and die.”
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Since this article ended up being quite lengthy, I decided to break it into several parts. Part II will discuss the films plot and part III will discuss some of the major themes and messages of the movie and how they relate to our world today.
Thanks for reading
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Thank you!
Decent movie, would even say good given the budget. It's kind of the formulaic class warfare style flic but it worked. Looking forward to your further analysis.
Yeah the class warfare is definitely a major theme with several subtle nuances strewn throughout. Thanks for the support
Im sure you're not talking about Jumanji? I had not one, but multiple epiphanies from watching it. lol
I think people are tired these days, both writers and the audience, we just want to be entertained most times. I remember how hard it was to watch Hidden Figure but once I did, I had to watch it like 5 more times. These days, they just churn out remakes of old movies but once in a while, a well thought out movie comes along.
I will just go read the story of the snow piercer on a movie site while waiting for your opinion. I hate suspense. lol
I haven't seen Jumanji lol. I'll have to check it out. I agree that people typically just want to be entertained which is completely fair. I think a lot of stuff is just produced for the money as well, which is also fair.
Yeah there are some really rare gems which are amazing.
Yeah my full article is over 2500 words which is too much for one sit down. I don't think people typically want to read a huge essay all at once.
yeah, producing for money is fair and wanting to be entertained is good too but it's always great to make something reasonable once in a while. By the way, Jumaji is just entertaining, "no single thought was provoked" while I watched.
I prefer how you make most posts in parts, it makes it nice to read, otherwise we will all be leaving the "Thanks for this post, it's really informative" type of comment.
oh haha. I thought you were being serious lol.
well, I'm glad to hear that you prefer the posts broken into parts. Its nice getting the feedback. I agree though, sometimes there are posts that I know will be interesting to me but then I scroll through them and see that they are massive, so I don't even bother reading them haha.
I wasn't. Lol. I believe people don't realize long form content don't engage a lot of people except those with patience and time. Looking forward to the next part.
I'll let you know what I think of Jumanji once I watch it. Maybe we can exchange epiphany's :)
I'll be surprised if you have any while you watch. lol.