Screenshot from the film. This is not mine, studios
To start off, the premise really makes no sense. I didn't have a problem with the world being frozen in an effort to stop global warming. I kept my suspension of disbelief for that. But why in the world is the only refuge a train of all things. But I can get behind that if you believe that the only guy who saw this coming was Wilford. But why is the train still moving? Why are we wasting energy on operating the train even if the mystical engine apparently is a perpetual motion device of some sort? Maybe they could've used that energy to somehow manufacture something better than roaches for the tail people to eat? Maybe? Somehow? Like how they make Bud Light or Ice from the leftovers of Bud? I don't know, I have no idea.
But anyway, this movie is fantastic aside from my small issue with the premise. As a liberal doofus who is behind every people's revolution I've ever heard of, this movie spoke to me. All the talk of everyone having their pre-ordained place reeks of the kind of stuff rich people legitimately think, whether they're stuck on a death train hurdling toward snow banks or not. So Chris Evans and Gilliam and Edgar are sick of this crap and want to get control of the engine.
Except Gilliam is in cahoots with Wilford himself and the revolution is planned to only get to the water car. There, Gilliam thinks Evans will be satisfied with controlling the water. Except, that Evans figures out that the water is really controlled in the front of the train and it means nothing. They're still stuck eating protein bars while the front train people have Gatsby parties with their bi-annual sushi.
The little kids' school is amazing because it's a cult. What reason is there for actual knowledge when you're stuck on a death train? All they need to know is how often fish should be farmed basically. If everything is pre-ordained, it's just a giant trade school so let's indoctrinate them to prevent actual privileged people from revolting.
And then the pregnant Leave It to Beaver teacher has a gun and shoots up the joint. The silent guy who's with Evans is tomahawking people. The mother who had her kid stolen by Wilford is wrecking stuff. Eventually, though, Wilford is sick of this and unleashes the guns on the tail people and reduces their population to where he wants it to be. Then it's basically just Evans and the two he freed to help him unlock the door.
I was all in on Evans or Curtis or whatever you wanna call him taking over and wrecking the place up, but when a revolution is just 3 people at the end plus Timmy, what's the point? Nam or whatever his name is was getting overwhelmed and it was just a matter of the time and numbers before Evans was done.
But Wilford wants him to take over the train for reasons I couldn't understand. He knows nothing about balancing and maintaining the environment. He doesn't know anyone up there and of course he's smart enough to know that the tail people are being treated like garbage. Of course he's gonna side with them. He was one of them. He ate babies for god's sake. Why in the world would he want *him* to take over? It makes no sense.
And of course he betrays Wilford and the entire place blows up and then the Asian woman and Timmy have to repopulate the place as the earth is now inhabitable. How a polar bear just spontaneously grew into existence, I have no idea, but it apparently survived underground I guess and came out to enjoy the slightly more hospitable weather.
The thing that threw me for a loop though was how balanced the scarce resources on the train were. It was a huge train and people had to be trained to keep things in the perfect balance or things would fall apart and the entire ecosystem could collapse, leaving nobody with anything. If the revolution succeeded, how would the tail people know how to do any of this? Would there have been a new society where the front people kept things going but distributed things more equally? Would things have just gone to hell when everyone was more concerned with their own place than the well-being of the train?
Evans didn't know anything about anything besides leading and who knows if he could have kept the society growing. It was clearly very planned out and had to be operated very strictly. If you place less qualified people in charge, the whole thing could collapse in on itself, leaving it just a giant tail. Once those things were gone, you can't get them back. The tail people obviously should have revolted because that was sickening, but I'm not sure the rich people would have cooperated enough to make them any better off in the end.
This is all very stream of consciousness and probably doesn't make sense but this movie was fantastic and I regret waiting this long to watch it. I didn't really get much personally out of it though, so it still will be 2nd to Frank. It'll be hard to dislodge it from #2, however.
***
So power rankings this far:
1. Frank
2. Snowpiercer
3. The Guest
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