In this case, he's entirely correct. There really wasn't another choice. They needed the tension, the occasional rebellion and its casualties. To preserve mankind on that train.
@@burntbiscuit898 That's a great way for everyone to starve. Equality is nice, and in normal times it's quite ideal. They're on a train after the apocalypse. Times aren't normal.
I love that Wilford immediately understands the one thing most seductive to Curtis. Not food, but solitude. Of course, the whole "it's noisy" mistake was an unnecessary one. Curtis hates himself so much, and he's come to believe that no one other than the children deserve to live. His people are all dead - he's got nothing to fight for. I'm assuming it was the revelation about how the children are being used that pushes him over the last edge.
@@EternalDawn They were being made to service the engine, from inside it - as a replacement for a part that "recently went extinct" in Wilbur's words. It's one of the arguments used in the idea that Snowpiercer is a sequel to Willy Wonka, and that the "parts" were actually Oompa Loompas.
Sometimes, when you put the "big picture" into a smaller canvas... it actually makes it even more terrifying. This movie is cursed. Leaves you with more questions than answers. And I love it.
It’s really not that complicated. The movie is an obvious metaphor for capitalism and the antagonistic relationship between the proletariats and the bourgeoisie. Him making his way to the front of the train with goal of confronting the conductor being a metaphor for a person who has experienced poverty rising through the social classes and becoming rich with the goal of changing society in mind. Once he reaches the top social class, the 1%, or the front of the train (whatever you want to call it), he is then really one faced with one remaining moral dilemma… That being… “do we continue the oppression and injustice of the status quo, or do we cast it aside and venture out into the unknown, taking a gamble on some new system of commerce.” He makes the obviously necessary decision when he derails the train and frees them all, only to find that the dangers of the outside world were greatly exaggerated…. Just like alternatives to poorly regulated capitalism.
The dangers of the world were not greatly exaggerated. People did freeze to death when they escaped the train in the past. It's the fact that the climate was warming up again. While a polar bear can survive out there, a human probably won't. Curtis, in my opinion, doomed everyone.
He might just be the best monologue deliverer I can think of, his voice and the way he stares right by the camera is amazing. This, A History of Violence, The Truman Show, Apollo 13.
I wish I could’ve seen Wilfred’s face when he realized the outside was habitable again. Then again, someone obsessed like him wouldn’t stop the train even if it it weren’t necessary anymore
Easy to say since you posses Meta knowledge, as for Wilford, he does not, stoping the train comes with a damn high risk, Wilford cannot grant total freedom to everyone, because the ressources on the train do not allow him to, now, he himself, could of course sit in first class and let some of his minions work on the Engine Eternal by his instructions, but he did not, he himself tends to the Engine, people like you exist in a world where ressources are plentiful, easy to point the finger and consider Wilford a tyrant and evil then. In reality, he did the best he could considering the circumstances.
@@1AshramLol the refrain of every tyrant ever my friend. The resources are scarce beyond the point where they needed to be scarce because those in power never committed the necessary resources to look for a better solution than what they had. They had no reason to, they were on top, they weren’t starving or dying of disease. So the risk of stopping the train for them is far higher than the people on the lower end of the train who have very little left to lose to begin with. That’s the point of the story. At one point the restrictions are necessary, but things continued long past the point where it was because people in power found it too comfortable to look for a better solution
@@ravenblood1954 Lmao, that’s some hardcore copium there my friend. Wilford is right. The planet IS NOT habitable. Not for humans anyways. They try and use the polar bear, an animal built to survive arctic temperatures, as an example that humans can survive outside. Spoiler alert: we can’t. It’s only possible with modern technology, electricity, and heat, the last of which just got destroyed with Snowpiercer. And that’s not even counting the temperature drop at night, which literally just a few days before showed is still cold enough to freeze human flesh solid. Even better question, what are they going to eat? What are they going to drink? Where are they going to find shelter? Yeah, turns out survival in a frozen wasteland isn’t so easy, is it? Cherry on the top is that there’s a freaking _polar bear_ roaming around, which if you didn’t know, absolutely will put humans on the menu. TL;DR: The planet’s not habitable, Wilford is right not to stop the train, and you’re reeeeeeeeeeally pulling at straws
He built the train before the world froze over, and he's reached the point where the train is as close to his god as his ego can allow. I think he'd rather freeze the world over again than stop the train.
Wrap your head around this concept. Curtis just eyeballs the plate in front of him. The man was a cannibal once himself, and has just traveled the full length of the train. No livestock... The movie hints at chickens on board with the egg trolley, and chickens would be plausible within the context of the train. No red meats though, and that steak is a red meat. Curtis already knows he's being served people...
@@BigDaddySlug oh for sure, there's 1001 cars in the series and novel, and even big alice, another perpetual train is 40, film train is also 60 cars according to sources, and those cars are also much larger than the cars of other versions.
@@whynot-tomorrow_1945 yea I liked as well. I thought it was a little obvious at the beginning of the movie when the woman did it, because I knew immediately it would call back to it later. The reveal of what it represented was pretty well done.
@@whynot-tomorrow_1945the people saying “we have to take Willard down every other scene, the Willard school, and the giant ass W’s everywhere were pretty subtle
@@bn-tc2tkthat's not true, the children come out when there is a malfunction and need to manually fix the issue. It was more like luck that a malfunction ovvured St the perfect moment to wake Curtis up otherwise he would have taken the position and had there been enough time before a malfunction Milford night have convinced Curtis using the children was a necessary evil to keep the train live which in turn keeps humanity alive. It's the classic train track thought experiment do you kill 1 person(the child) to save many or do you kill many(save the child but doom the train) honestly with how the film ends Curtis probably should have kept the train going.....after that derailment I doubt many survived the few that did don't know how to survive in an artic environment. If you know anything about the first explorers who tried to reach the artic circle you'll know how easy it is to die in such an environment.
@@thedoge9590 But then the other problem is, like he said, the engine last forever, but not so much all it's parts. And as more and more parts go extinct, how much worse is it gonna look when they have to consider what will have to be done to fix that? Sure, it's just a couple of kids now, but what's going to be needed next time? What if it basically becomes a human meat machine to keep it going at some point?
@@thedoge9590 At the end of the movie they see a Polar Bear, which means A) Probably a bad thing since Polar bears are apex predators haha but B) the more important thing is that it means life can survive outside the train which means human can too and possibly repopulate since it's the Asain child and small black boy left, so technically, they could reprodouce, plus there might of been other survivors, thats my take at least.
@@immie1709 This is... optimistic at best, sorry, 2 children repopulating is a fairy tale, you need 80 genetically diverse people at MINIMUM to try and repopulate, the chances of that from a train stock of apparently 3000 or so people that have since been interbreeding is even slimmer. Now to take it a step further, the people that adapted to arctic conditions are extremely rare and have thousands upon thousands of years of heritage and tradition to survive there, even further they don't compete with polar bears either. So to put it mildly those kids are DEAD and any chance of them even coming close to producing offspring would just mean EVEN MORE DEAD KIDS.
That Revelation that Gillian was working with Wilford THE ENTIRE TIME was truly shocking. And Curtiss didn't believe him until he mentioned this line. 4:10
@@pyerack This type of rhetoric happens every day man. Just saw a podcast where some zionist shill normalized the death of 19.000 people and dismissed criticism on the basis of people being 'naïve'
The message simply reading "Train" was powerful. While on the surface it represents Wildord's plans for Curtis, being the new steward, it also conveys a sense of entirety and completion. The Snowpiercer endlessly circles the frozen Earth, is forever sustained by the eternal engine, and is both humanity's last holdout and place of rebirth. Curtis has walked the train from beginning to end, and thus finally understands the world.
3:37 Nice parallel of them both standing in anger and desperation. As much Wilford likes to appear in control and mocks Curtis for getting emotional, he knows that the engine cannot be fixed and he’s only delaying the train’s inevitable demise by throwing people off the brink.
Very much like real life. Usually we wait around for some genius to be born and they invent a new technology or new way of thinking to create a new path for us. Sometimes they don't show up, like in the movie, and something has to fail.
Yeah the more I look at this the more I realize this was the best sequel to Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory to ever exist. The fact that the film shares a lot of the same style choices as the remake makes it even more interesting.
If i had a nickel for everytime Ed Harris has a played a god character who regulates the live of the protagonist, i'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that happened twice.
Also playing god as a sniper in "Enemy At the Gates". Systematically killing everyone around the protagonist to flush him out in a crazy game of cat and mouse.
@@karhu7581if I had to take a guess, it's because in the lore of Dark Souls, Gwyn and the gods all used the humanity of people to kindle the fire to keep the age of fire going, and thus prolong their reign. Humans paid the price, and thus Gwyn's rejection of the age of dark led to the curse that takes place, making people into undead hollows with no humanity left. On the other hand, Gwyn's age also might've prevented a calamity brought on by the dark, since if you look at Oolacile, the people there were tempted (most likely by Kaathe) to embrace darkness, and awoke a primal humanity known as Manus, which led to the spread of the abyss that transformed the people into monsters, driving them mad and in pain. So I imagine the similarity between Dark souls and Snowpiercer as this guy is implying, is that while the age of light requires the gods sacrificing people's humanity to the flame, failing to do so would mean failing to stave off the age of dark, which may or may not be better or worse for humans as a whole if we consider the fate of Oolacile. Similar to how Wilbur and the elites of the train front need to sacrifice the people at the tail to keep the engine going, even if it is scummy (Although in this case, it's weird none of them are really working together as a whole to keep the train going, don't really get why they made a class system in a train, but im not a bog Snowpiercer fan) (I'm sure that's the lore at least. Might be wrong)
The fact that this video has less than 1 million views after 4 years says alot. Very underated movie, one of the best movies showing the reality of our society, i would place it pretty close to legendary Matrix 1999.
Saw this while teaching in Vietnam. Profound film. Keep “speaking out against the madness.” Imagine a world where the machine is jailed, assets seized and used to begin undoing the damage they have inflicted and plan on humanity. Be kind. Always. This film should be studied in every high school in the 🌎.
It’s been tried before, repeatedly Each time has been a horrendous failure of famine and genocides Of course proponents of the idea invariably claim otherwise
@@lorentzcoffin4957 The wealthy nations of the world are only wealthy because of famine and genocide elsewhere. The history of empires is a history of extraction.
@@lorentzcoffin4957 the fact you reduce such tragedies to a singular causation to push your ideological agenda kinda spells out you have no clue what you're talking about. Take the communistic famines for example. A lot of people don't know the issue wasn't ideology but mostly due to a single scientist's flawed agricultural theory that was put in widespread practice without any trialling nor peer assessment and resulted in bad yield across the ussr for several years. This was not from ideological influence but a scientific mistake that cost the lives of millions. The same kind of mistake that has occurred countless times within all ideologies. Just cause something specific happens within an ideology doesn't say a thing about the ideology itself unless it's provably inherent to it.
2 level monologues are always entertaining. You hear both the message of the character, and the message of the film's creative team. Then you get to decide whether to accept both, just one, or neither.
The movie can only make it's point because it has a limited runtime. I haven't seen the series yet, but I imagine the need to keep the story going causes things to meander a bit.
@@John-Doe-Yo Nitpicky reasons that completely miss the point of the film. For example, saying the ending makes no sense because the surviving kids will most likely get eaten. Or that the metaphor is too obvious.
@@Mopark25 Well that's kinda the point, right? I thought the message of the film was that the system is flawed (capitalism/classism) but there's no good alternative. The system crashes and burns (the train) but the remaining survivors will likely die in the elements or from predators
What is this in reference to? Because the opposite is happening in our world and undeveloped countries like India, Nigeria, and Senegambia are the fastest growing while Japan, China, and most of Europe are slowing down.
I have a few things to say. 1. No, this is not the best part. The best part is the revelation of the true meaning of the hand gesture. 2. Ed Harris is a wonderful actor, but he did not appear to give himself to this role completely. I imagine that Jeremy Irons would have fit the role a little better, with maybe Christopher Walken as a second choice. The audience needs to see the logic and clarity of thought in the master plan, but they also need to feel revulsion at the implications. Ed's approach is far too flat. We don't get the depravity we need for that from him here. 3. The script is tip-top. Couldn't be better. Absolute mastery on display here.
I think the flat delivery is what it is needed it shows him as totally emotionless and disconnected from it all and the use of cold logic, train space and food is limited therefore people must die. The man kills people and puts kids into passages who will likely die in there he doesn't do it out of malice or some sick derangement or sadistic want to inflict pain on others , just a necessary function to keep the train running which is his only concern. It is the survivors in the lifeboat dilemma the lifeboat has only a certain weight it can hold and only so many seats, take too many on it and you all die what can you do in such a situation? Only take as many as possible that is the logical choice it is seen as cold cause it forces people to drown and ultimately die there is no best scenario here cannot save everyone.
"Real enemies"? My good man the "Real enemy" is the human condition, not the rich, not the powerful,(Although all of these can be evil) but instead the very humanity that brings us so much good. Is the same humanity that causes us so much suffering. The most terrifying thing? We can never change it, Ever. To change the human condition would be to become no longer human. There is no "Cure" to evil, we can only kill it as it appears. But even then we will still never be safe, because evil is self serving. And self serving ideologies will always appeal to the selfish human nature.
Except for your friends, and your family, and your food, and you house, and your water, and your life. But yeah, except for all those things, the only thing you have to lose is your chains.
Mr Wilson is for me the physical human embodiment of the abrahamic god, creator of divine machine but bellow the thetre of grloriousness there are it's creations working on it as starved children replacing lost pieces
Ed Harris is a singular talent with awesome technique, but I can't help feeling that his lines were written for a whole different kind of actor, one of those Shakespearean grey eminence types. Also I think Chris Evans really delivers here.
The thing that really bothered me about the whole idea of the train was that even if this balance had to be maintained why was the back basically just forced to languish? Some of them had jobs but most only had time to stew in their depression. If the back actually had something to work for they probably would of been more content
hes kinda an anti-traitor tbh he and wilfred had a very specific plan, and it did involve Curtis becoming the leader of the train through his revolution. and Curtis came damn close to going along with all of it
Well I see multiple reasons. Train was designed to upkeep a limited amount of passengers with food, water, necesessies etc. If I remember correctly, Curtis told that he and a lot of people forcefully entered the train. more that the train was designed for. So not enough food and water or space. Secondly people in the front were happier of what they had since they could compare to the people of back of the train. And so we see people happily killing and hunting people in the back to keep their positions and preaching basically "for the greater good". Aaaand of course child slavery metaphore. Which would not go so well if a child from the front of the train would be taken. Wilford is crazy, mad even, but he did the necessary evil to keep the population in balace. Even founding Curtis and showing all of the train just to step down from the position as he understands he cant continue due his age. Not something plain evil madman would do.
I have always hated the ending. Curtis could have taken over, and made changes. Spread the food etc. Instead, they decide to destroy the train, more than likely the rest of mankind. You know those kids were a polar bear snack.
That's the movie's point, though. If Curtis had taken over, the same brutal mechanisms that the train requires would result in him becoming another Wilford. Kids need to be taken to work the train: in an equal, just society, no one would be able to accept that. So Wilford/Curtis needs to create an underclass, a middle class to keep them in check, and the upperclass to direct things. The system on the train isn't broken: it's working exactly the way it was designed to. The only solution is to break the train.
He'd still have to rely on child labor through all of that. From there it would've just made a domino effect of one thing after another. It would just repeat the cycle. The message of the film is pretty nihilistic and cynical but I still find it very interesting.
I like how pretty much immediately in the show, the train gets hit by an avalanche that just destroyed the movie train and it barely even budges the show version.
What’s really uncomfortable is that if they planned to replace the front, they must of also have planned to replace the end too. Would make an interesting story for the “revolution” to be the front and back trading places over a cycle. It’s so interesting. That’s as Marxian as it gets.
lol i thought this was some scene i didnt see from the series and i flipped shit XD but its the movie lol. also, for anyone who hasnt seen the series of snowpiercer. it is GREAT its kinda slow paced in the very begining but its a great story and i LOVE how they expanded on everything the movie offered.
I liked the series better but maybe i am biased since its the first ive watched but as a prequel the series changed almost eveything about the movie like snow piercers size and design, the trains speed from 2.0++ revolutions (from what 1 remember) per year to 1 revolution per year, no guns on the train, wilfords ideology from total control to maintaining balance on the train. Maybe the series messed up the movies lore because of the many inconsistencies but i liked it better.
@@cardinal2921 it should be noted both the movie and series is based on a French graphic novel from the 80s. Bong Joon-ho made a lot of changes so that it fits better as a movie.
@@cardinal2921 lore wise, I don't think they are linked. that said, the graphic novel does have 2 "snowpiercers", and the ideas covered in their stories line up pretty well with the movie and series, assumign the movie takes place on the first, smaller, snowpiercer, and the series on its sister, Icebreaker
Malthusian philosophy, and a Marxist envisioning of the economy of the Train. The worldbuilding of this, well, world, is quite amazing. An excellent Dystopia
Wouldn’t people have been better off underground? UV lamps to grow food. Warmth from the earth. Could be close to an oil deposit or natural gas for extra heat and for generators. You could have far more space that way, and potentially be able to tunnel and expand, if you had a system to throw dirt and rock back to the surface.
who keeps train tracks clear and serviceable? Never quite understood that. Wouldn't that activity take a great deal of effort, energy, and workforce, which would imply a supportive community for those workers plus a logistical supply chain and just about all the other aspects of a healthy functioning society/economy?
No one keeps them clear the only thing going on the tracks is snow and it has a specialized cow catcher for that there's several scenes in the movie where they show how it clears the snow from the track
No one maintains the track. Supposedly the track was built to last longer than normal without maintenance and the train being named snow piercer can plow through just about anything.
@@DarianMusallah To identify it as a film like you do requires you to exert mental effort and to apply analytical reasoning. You have to know what the question is in order to answer. And the question was who maintains the seemingly endless lengths of track from the thousands of problems that normally afflict railway tracks, from immovable obstructions like serious rockfall to collapses bridges, to earthquakes tearing out sections of track. Hard to take any of it seriously evan as a metaphor when they blow chunks like that on the most basic aspects of believability.