Snowpiercer sci fi train movie

I like trains.....and film....and Sci Fi.....but will admit there has been no buzz on this one. And as the trailer lists the film as coming Summer 2013 I have a feeling there were 'issues' with the film.

But I'd like to see it....but doubt it will hit theaters in my neck of the woods.....wait for the DVD.

I'd like to have some Sci-Fi trains on the layout......

And one I did build although in HO scale for now.....maybe O someday....

 If you liked the comic you will love the movie.. very interesting and different...a solid fantasy/ sci-fi movie...great job by director Bong Joon-Ho

yes the movie did came out in the summer of 2013 in South Korea (it's a Korean-French- US co-production, filmed in the Czech Republic and some scenery footage in the Austrian Alps) and end of october in France.

Did came out in Switzerland in mid January.

Seem the US distributor wanted to cut about 25 minutes out, wich was not welcomed by Bong and the cast...seem now the uncut version will be show but in very limited release..yes too bad.

As for the train, well I guess a kitbash of a TGV/ Shinkansen could be possible.

Hope at least that the US poster is as good as the French version

The poster looks like the Pennsy S1 duplex with wings.

We'll I saw this last night and LOVED it. It was very long but really fun. The beginning got off on a slow foot, a bit Mad Max and I started to worry it would just be a standard summer blockbuster that stayed purely skin deep but it slowly picked up with Tilda Swindon's outrageous scenery chewing. She stole every scene she was in.  It picked up and had a great ending that most Hollywood movies would never touch because they have test audiences their soul away.

The high comedy mixed with real ultra violence was a real roller coaster for the audience And I appreciated the elaborate sets and scenery that were run through at full bore. Putting such effort into sets that were just glimpsed is great fun. The entire movie is filmed in the close confines of the futuristic speeding train. The driver/ builder of the train is a legend and near religious figure to the train riders. There is a fun history of the driver with an emphasis on his love of trains and toys from an early age. Maybe this movie is all a parable on a despotic model railroader.

As a big Sci-fi novel fan this is the best example of the " generational starship" fiction trope that I have ever seen in a film. A traveling vehicle that has been going so long that new generations have never not been traveling in it and cannot imagine not doing so. 

Very fun fun movie. I will definitely seek it out again. It will be overshadowed by other summer movies in the theaters. I hope it finds an audience. The performances of Tilda Swindon and the Korean Actor who played the burn out engineer ( and starred in Ban Ho's movie "The Host") are worth the ticket price alone. The characters were all flawed and compromised and the exposition was mostly allowed to reveal over time and not based over the audiences head From the get go. A trait that I really appreciate.

I do really like the comic this is based on. The movie expands and alters the story while staying in the general area of the story.

A good fun escape. I recommend it. 

Thanks for the review!!! I want to see it but doubt it will get this far back in the woods.....wait for the DVD......

Ah, Geez. I have to say i thought it was terrible.  I didn't make it through it.  Just, well, . . . bad.

I don't like hearing that......we seem to agree on a number of other things.....so this makes me wonder. Is it on DVD yet??

Looking forward to seeing it.  Sometimes I need to bend my mind a bit. 

Well, go see it as soon as it opens.  If was here for all of three days, then gone.  I think everybody who wanted to see it saw it the first day.  

And like I said, it was . . . really bad.  Terrible doesn't even describe it.  

Funny about this forum...it has a train so I have to see it regardless of how crappy it is.

LOL!

I can wait until it is on DVD.  I believe the closest theater to here that it is playing at is about 160 miles away. 

From another post:

I have the un-cut region 3 (Asia) version I purchased from a DVD store in Thailand.  US distribution delayed because the U.S. distributor wanted to cut 25 minutes to get more showings per day.

Basically big industry decided to chemically change the atmosphere to cool the earth so they could stop global warming and continue business as usual. The train owner and builder (Ed Harris) knew it wouldn't work so the train was an attempt to save some people. The train has been running 17 years over a totally frozen planet.  The first class ticket holders live in luxury, second class OK and the back of the train, many stow a ways, live in misery. The movie is about the back of the train folks trying to get to the engine. What happened?  No spoilers here, go see the movie.

No sex, so OK to take kids? WRONG, way too bloody.

A first class exploiting the second class and massively oppressing the third class !  How do writers come up with such ridiculous fantasy?

It is out here in NY as of this weekend and got 3 out of 4 stars in the Paper.

Save your money, it is horrible And I am being kind.

80% of the Rotten tomatoes web site loved it but what the heck were they watching. 

Available on Apple TV now. Uncertain which version. 2hrs 6min if that's a clue.

I've read the reviews on here, and get the premise, inside. But if the "train" has enough energy to haul that many cars full of human-kind around, for 17 years no-less, why the *#&%! don't they just stop somewhere and use it to build a city?

A plane, or even a boat I could see if the ground was unstable, but this is on tracks.... it does have tracks doesn't it  

 Dave

This is the worst piece of celluloid crap I've seen in a

v-e-r-y,

v--e--r--y,

v---e---r---y  

L----O----N----G time.

Any viewer who chooses to watch this is IMHO inflicting self torture.

Now, now, Dtrainmaster - this is MOVIE science fiction, not Heinlein, Clarke, Niven, etc.

Think of it as you would have of the TV series (whose name escapes me, thank God) that had reptilian aliens coming to steal water from Earth for their home planet. I watched long enough to ask why they didn't go to a gas giant for hydrogen or a comet for ice and make their own water.

Remember, it could always be worse :  it could've been the return of "Super Train".

Oh my gosh, no!  That would be the end of the world!

Well, nobody has answered "it does have tracks doesn't it" from my earlier post.

Don't tell me that I've hit on the movie's soft spot, that there are no tracks and the "train" has to keep moving to stay on solid footing. If that's the case then it's more worm than train!

Dave

The end is nigh.... 

Thanks for posting the trailer, Nicole. It was horrific.

Taste is a very personal thing. .  While I haven't seen the film, I'm guessing this movie is about as much about trains as Easy Rider is about motorcycles,  or The Crucible is about witchcraft.

The older I get, the less interested I am in seeing films with lots of violence.  I've seen enough up close and personal so that I don't find it educational.

I'm glad someone reminded me of Supertrain.  Although it is still close, Snowpiercer is such a stinker that it is a good candidate for worst train movie ever made.  But no, the world is not coming to an end: they have not yet made a worse train movie than Supertrain.  But we have to be concerned.  Somebody tried.  They could try again.  We must be vigilent!

Snowpiercer is really, really bad!

I have watched bits and pieces on YouTube and I think I see tracks. But if the world is frozen, how can any train roar along on icebound tracks with no maintenance of said train or of the right-of-way (ROW)?

The Hudson Bay Explorer between Winnipeg and Hudson Bay has to go slow where tracks are laid on permafrost. Telephone poles have to be propped up, too. Anything solid laid on (or driven into) permafrost conducts heat, softens / melts the permafrost, and weakens support.

Supertrain may be a dud but it sure is fun imagining a train like that could exist. I heard that a big model was made for exterior action shots (no CGI in those days). I also heard that something went wrong and the train went up in the air while cameras were rolling. If anyone finds that, please post.

I wish a movie mogul would greenlight Veranda Turbine.

As I recall, a portion of the "full size" Supertrain was constructed on Trailer Train flat cars for some exterior shots.

There was a proposal for a wide gauge (18' gauge) auto-train in the 1960's that appeared both in the Sunday Parade magazine and in Popular science.  A mock-up was made using HO components.

Rusty

That probably inspired the TV show.

It's hard to tell but I think the opening credits show Supertrain coming out of an urban tunnel (with a steam locomotive nearby?) on standard gauge track. Exterior shots in wide-open spaces show a much wider gauge. They were probably filmed with a big model on a custom-made layout.

I think that the lines between science fiction and fantasy have become blurred, with some fantasy creative endeavors adopting a Sci-Fi aura.   It appears to me that the this is the case here, the Sci-Fi premise for this film is not logically consistent.   So I would say this is a fantasy story set within a Sci-Fi-styled world.  

I don't mean to discourage anyone from seeing the film, it could be a nice diversion, and perhaps has a cool train!

WHY would anybody modeling such a futuristic train as Supertrain set it on a layout with steam locomotives and wooden cabooses?  LOL

I remember thinking that back in the day when watching the show.

I guess a lot people still associate steam locos with railroading. I wonder if Snowpiercer has any steam engines in it! 

I loved the movie, very dystopian, intriguing and an escape

For Mark, Lee and David, best you guys stick with The General and Silver Streak, they seem more your type of movie

Mark,

you are so right, it is the most disgusting movie I have ever seen. Nothing worthwhile to say about it.

No wonder it was never released in the USA on a wide basis. 

One of the reasons we called it "Stupidtrain" at my local club.

Rusty

Saw the movie last night. It's different, I'll give them that. But the overacting and the ridiculous overall concept left me saying, "Meh" early on. I like my sci-fi at least somewhat plausible. The overall concept was... well, downright silly.

I remember the TV Supertrain series when I was a kid (per the Wikipedia page, I would have been 10 at the time if aired), but only the visuals. The first time I saw the train leaving NYC and could clearly see wooden boxcars and steam locomotives, it confused the heck out of me even then. I can only assume they did that to either show the difference in technology to make the TV train even more impressive, or the model makers simply wanted to build a steam locomotive.

I guess you could argue that maybe the show took place in an alternate world where certain technologies never went away or perhaps something bad had happened with the economy (I recently read a theory that the Scooby Doo series actually took place in a post-apocolyptic world because you never saw anything that wasn't totally run down).

I have to admit in the past, I’ve thought of the idea of building a sci-fi themed layout where you could do stuff like this. I think it’d be great to do something like this because all bets would be off on what you wanted to run. Even conventional steam would be fine, you could say that it’s for someone who wanted to run their newly-built reproduction steam engine (which is actually radiation powered or something like that).

Thanks for posting the b&w photos! I don't remember the stewardess. Hmmm . . . Could that be Veranda Turbine in a cameo?