I'd go further and say it is "literally" an allegory, in the sense that they're not trying to create a realistic setting in terms of whether or not these people could really survive on a train like this. I think that's a problem a lot of people had with it, since a lot of dystopian-future sci-fi is speculative.Callate said:I quite enjoyed Snowpiercer, but I think at a certain level you have to bow out of thinking of it in "realistic" terms and just accept that some of it is allegory.
It's no more complex a concept then Bioshock presented, whose plot Snowpiercer mostly replicates (but on a train instead of an underwater city.)Catface Meowmers said:I'd go further and say it is "literally" an allegory, in the sense that they're not trying to create a realistic setting in terms of whether or not these people could really survive on a train like this. I think that's a problem a lot of people had with it, since a lot of dystopian-future sci-fi is speculative.
Snowpiercer isn't asking, "What would happen to people on a train like this?", and I think that threw off some people who watched it.
In noticed the Bioshock similarity as well. Reading the films description, and watching the first half of it, I can pretty much summarize it as "Elysium on a train". Then, about halfway through, they switched everything and delved into Bioshock territory.bastardofmelbourne said:It's no more complex a concept then Bioshock presented, whose plot Snowpiercer mostly replicates (but on a train instead of an underwater city.)Catface Meowmers said:I'd go further and say it is "literally" an allegory, in the sense that they're not trying to create a realistic setting in terms of whether or not these people could really survive on a train like this. I think that's a problem a lot of people had with it, since a lot of dystopian-future sci-fi is speculative.
Snowpiercer isn't asking, "What would happen to people on a train like this?", and I think that threw off some people who watched it.
Then again, I guess not everyone played Bioshock. I know when I tried to explain it to my old college girlfriend, she couldn't get over the fact that it was an FPS. She was like "If this was a book, I would read it," and I was like "if it was a book, we wouldn't be able shoot bees at people out of our bee-hands." Maybe the same thing happened with the movie; people just got stuck on the idea of a train ecology, like a Roomba on a door stop.
Also, is it just me or did the comments on this thread from earlier get wiped by something? I know I posted a comment on this article earlier.
Mmm they mainly distributed (not produced) some good english films, 80% of their production/distribution is mainly trash in my opinion.008Zulu said:So has this Weinstein fellow ever done anything good?
Hard to describe exactly but the way they showed the blood made me immediately think it was poison. Glad to clear that up for youNaldan said:But I can't quite understand why it's so clear to you that the fishes were poisonous. It puzzled me until now, so thanks for the clarification.
When I was doing my research for the movie I was heading to various sites and the comments I addressed were the most common complaints I kept seeing. Its almost like some folks can't fill in the blanks. (like them passing through the rich people's sleeping quarters off camera) I'm also convinced that some folks will specifically look for things to call plot holes when really, its just something that was left out because a movie doesn't have to show you everything. For example, how awful would it be if in an action movie if they had to stop every time someone had to go to the bathroom?Gorrath said:I am a big fan of Snowpiercer but it is worth saying, as others have, that the film is not a science fiction film about people living on a train, it's allegory that sacrifices realism for imagery that makes a point. There's a ton in this film that requires studying its poetic symbolism rather than looking too hard at whether it makes sense in a realistic way. On its face, the poor, downtrodden slummers vs the elite is pretty basic but I think there's a lot more to what the film is saying than, "rich abuse poor and poor fight back for freedom."
Edit: Had to go back and watch again because I missed that post credits bit. Seriously? People complained about this stuff or were confused by it? The fish thing I could see maybe, but every other one of those "problems" or questions were either explained explicitly or seem really, really obvious.
Alao, Harvey "cut 20 min for the stupid people" Weinstein can go screw himself. I'm sick of movies having to be dumbed down to meet this "Americans are idiots and won't get it" nonsense. Chopping out all the character building and replacing it with some disembodied voice yacking at the beginning of the film is a terrible idea and I'm glad the test audiences said so. Yeah Harvey, you were so right about how the movie just couldn't work and yet also so right about how it would work great on VOD. The fuck kind of sense does that make?
There was nothing wrong with the comments, what happened was I completely goofed in the video and re-upped a new version. When the new one went up it generated a different link which wiped out the old one and killed the comments attached.bastardofmelbourne said:Also, is it just me or did the comments on this thread from earlier get wiped by something? I know I posted a comment on this article earlier.
He didn't meddle with Tarantino's films. I know there was a push to have Pulp Fiction put back in chronological order but thankfully, they left it as is.008Zulu said:So has this Weinstein fellow ever done anything good?
Bit ironic that, one the one hand, I complain about movies being dumbed down and on the other, I complain about people missing what I would think would be easy to understand stuff. So I guess I need to square that circle. I think it's worth saying that movies are better off leaving some questions unanswered, somethings left up to interpretation or misunderstanding. I think great art leaves us to fill in some of our own blanks as we impose our own thoughts and ideas on the work. Cutting out the difficult bits may make a movie easier to understand but I think it also, often, may make the movie worse. Obviously I don't mean to disparage tight editing - we don't want every film to be a sloppy mess after all - but chopping out important story or character elements to make the movie as easy to consume as a bland dinner roll just bores us all.CecilT said:When I was doing my research for the movie I was heading to various sites and the comments I addressed were the most common complaints I kept seeing. Its almost like some folks can't fill in the blanks. (like them passing through the rich people's sleeping quarters off camera) I'm also convinced that some folks will specifically look for things to call plot holes when really, its just something that was left out because a movie doesn't have to show you everything. For example, how awful would it be if in an action movie if they had to stop every time someone had to go to the bathroom?
I remember watching "Young Frankenstein," on TV while sitting in a laundry basket in the living room and thinking to myself that I needed to "publish" a weekly "magazine" about what movies my family needed to watch and why. I don't remember how old I was at the time but my "magazine" had several whole sentences devoted to each movie. If I could have become a film critic right then and there I would have. Then guys like Weinstein come along and make me remember that having a career in getting shot at for a living was a much better choice.CecilT said:Ol Harvey Scissorhands keeps popping up in these. For someone with the history in the industry he has, he has made amazingly bad decisions. He continues to miss the point of many films and seems intent on ruining them for the sake of appealing to a demo that may not even be interested. The thing is, if they did release the "dumbed down edition" there is a chance we may have never had the DC released in the US. So many people would have only seen that version and had no idea the movie was stripped of all its character development and what not. They would just know it as a bad movie.
It's intesting cattle should be brought up, because while I remember them going through the fridge car with the big sides of beef, I don't remember them passing through a cattle car at all(not to mention what would the cattle be eating?). I kept expecting that the big twist was going to be that the big "beef" slabs, the poor living in squalid conditions in the back and the lack of noticeable living was all evidence of "The poor become hamburgers for the rich".BarrelsOfDouche said:I always found it a little weird that everyone in the poor cars was shocked and disgusted to find out they were eating insects the whole time...namely after the confession that some of them had to eat children to survive. People- not even necessarily in just poor nations- eat insects. To a western society that might seem weird, but it's a whole lot less weird than cannibalism.
Even so it didn't make a lot of sense...the technology is there to manufacture stuff, and breeding insects to feed to people doesn't make a lot of sense when you can breed fish and cattle. I find it hard to believe somebody is running around collecting these roaches, either. Hell, with all the crap they can apparently make on board using child labor doesn't make a whole lot of sense either...
I guess that's my issue with the film: all of it's societal allegory comes off as either incredibly FORCED or unintentionally hilarious. That "babies taste best" sh** was hilarious when not one hour ago your were gagging at the thought of eating bugs.
I'm more for not dumbing things down as well. So many movies have been ruined by a studio worried about the lack of intelligence of the audience. Its incredibly frustrating to the directors who make the movie they want to make, only to be butchered by a studio who thinks everyone is a moron. Beyond that, its also because many of the producers themselves are morons and they need the film dumbed down so they can get it. (see the letter from the head of Universal who was insisting Back to the Future be named Spaceman from Pluto)Gorrath said:Bit ironic that, one the one hand, I complain about movies being dumbed down and on the other, I complain about people missing what I would think would be easy to understand stuff. So I guess I need to square that circle. I think it's worth saying that movies are better off leaving some questions unanswered, somethings left up to interpretation or misunderstanding. I think great art leaves us to fill in some of our own blanks as we impose our own thoughts and ideas on the work. Cutting out the difficult bits may make a movie easier to understand but I think it also, often, may make the movie worse. Obviously I don't mean to disparage tight editing - we don't want every film to be a sloppy mess after all - but chopping out important story or character elements to make the movie as easy to consume as a bland dinner roll just bores us all.
Ex Machina is one of the more interesting movies I've seen in a while and it still managed to get an 86% audience rating on RT. Not much hand-holding going on in that film and yet somehow our dumb American brains managed to not go into seizures as we vainly tried figure out what the mechano-girl was on about.
Thats pretty much one of the main reasons I started making these videos. I wanted to talk about movies and initially, I was sending the videos to my friends from around the country telling them movies they should check out. It kind of went from there. There is the pipe dream of getting large enough to eventually be able to crowdfund a movie or even be large enough that a studio would be interested in funding my idea themselves. I have a wonderful horror comedy that I hope one day will be able to be made.Gorrath said:I remember watching "Young Frankenstein," on TV while sitting in a laundry basket in the living room and thinking to myself that I needed to "publish" a weekly "magazine" about what movies my family needed to watch and why. I don't remember how old I was at the time but my "magazine" had several whole sentences devoted to each movie. If I could have become a film critic right then and there I would have. Then guys like Weinstein come along and make me remember that having a career in getting shot at for a living was a much better choice.
Anywho, I love how you engage your fans on here Cecil. I am living my childhood dreams of publishing weekly movie related content through you. Thanks for making great content and for being willing to talk about it with us.
The central theme here was about balance. People see the political theme of class warfare, but they forget that in the beginning the "liberals" tried to fix "global warming" and ending up making the world go to (frozen) hell. When Curtis (the "good guy") gets to the engine at the front, he briefly considers that maybe Wilford is right, especially after realizing that he was working with Gilliam all along.Cheesy Goodness said:I have mixed feelings about this movie. My wife and I were bored and began looking for whatever to rent on a rainy weekend. We obviously never heard of it and thought we'd give it a chance based on reviews. The political/economic commentary is way too on the nose and in your face. That was one of the main reasons why I disliked Elysium, and this was no different.
I kind of took it as a warning. They were trying to get the rebels to go back to their cars and "hey, if the axe doesn't kill you the poison will". Just my interpretation, I could be wrong.Wholesale Karma said:P.S. If everything must be carefully kept in balance, why would they gut a fish because its blood was poisonous? Granted I only recall them killing one fish (which didn't even look like the poisonous type), but you're using an ax. What do you need poison for? They should have just served botched fugu during the sushi scene.