Snowpiercer was simply bad. Even though it was obviously absurd, I didn't totally hate the premise as it made for an interesting setup that served as the basis for a decent metaphor. I actually think a TV show could do some justice to social commentary. But it either has to embrace the cheese fully (Robocop, Running Man, etc) and get us some proper over the top characters to enjoy or ditch the stupidity from the movie and go straight social commentary drama.
The problem with Snowpiercer is it couldn't keep from shitting all over itself by doing completely moronic shit. Like the magic traincar that allows a giant melee with axes and shit. Then the fucking dumbass shoot through the glass scene where the movie went out of its way to say something about the glass only for the scene to ignore that, meaning it just highlights its own stupidity which is insulting for a viewer. There was other stupidity but I've forgotten most of it by now. Which that type of stuff would've been fine if they'd ran with it instead of trying to take itself too seriously the rest of the time.
It really felt like they were trying to make Gangs of New York on a train. I'm not even a fan of Gangs of New York personally, but its far better.
I'm even sympathetic to the motives, to the message they seem to be including, to cutting slack for the art, all kinds of things that try to give them a break.
But it's just extraordinarily poor IMO. And this is from someone who accepts the premise of that recent movie about a prison with a food elevator, I think named The Platform. The Snowpiercer movie was bad enough. But now they're making a frickin series ALSO. There's something wrong with the studios and the viewers who reward this. They're giving a bad name to political art. The movie was so damned empty, vapid, clumsy.
What happened is modern Hollywood wanted to exploit the pretty awesome Korean film industry that is making the movies Hollywood used to, you know the ones that indelibly last on people's consciousness by being entertaining first and then using that as a vessel for social commentary even if it wasn't always great (or the reason you enjoyed it was because it was bad). And instead Hollywood just dulled it into a modern weakass Hollywood version, with stupid decisions and tepid social commentary that doesn't really say much of anything.
It's not supposed to be realistic it's supposed to be a metaphor. Duh.
We got the metaphor, the problem is it just simply isn't very good as a movie.
Realism isn't even exactly my issue, in that I'd be fine with it lacking it if it didn't do insultingly stupid things, while pitching between absurdity (that never really becomes fun, like other Korean movies from the past several years or the old cheesy Hollywood movies) and wanting to be taken seriously as that metaphor. It basically towed the milquetoast modern Hollywood line where it never commits to the absurdity, but neither can it take itself seriously enough for you to take its social commentary seriously. It can't be a badass action movie because it has to try and be social commentary, but it tries to do that through absurd premise that it can't even keep from highlighting its own stupidity.
