(no subject)

[skygiants]

So aberration and I just got back from seeing Snowpiercer. It took us about an hour to get back from Manhattan and the entire ride went like this:

VERONICA: It was very pretty! The logistics were not the point.
BECCA: Right! THE POINT WAS ALLEGORY. ALLEGORY WAS THE POINT.

[PAUSE]

BECCA: I mean it kind of makes no sense that [thing that makes no sense], but -
VERONICA: Logistics are not the point!
BECCA: RIGHT.

VERONICA: ...I mean I guess they were going through the Arctic, but did they build a bridge or -
BECCA: Logistics are not the point!
VERONICA: RIGHT.

BECCA: I mean, I still don't understand why they even had a prison section to -- sorry! SORRY. IT'S AN ALLEGORY. IT'S AN ALLEGORY.

[lather, rinse, repeat]


I mean, I do not disapprove of the allegory, and I certainly do not find it irrelevant, but all the same the whole thing felt kind of fascinatingly throwback. I could easily imagine Snowpiercer being written in the 1910s. In fact the whole time I kept having flashbacks to The Iron Heel.

Comments

[aurimae]

\o/ radical amounts of required suspension of belief aside, sounds like you enjoyed it!

[skygiants]

I'm not sure enjoyed is the right word exactly .... I mean, it was interesting! Slightly too soul-crushing for my personal tastes.

[shati]

After we finished it K kind of bluescreened and started yelling at me about how fucked up everything was and that she was never watching a movie I picked ever again and I was yelling back that you can't keep yourself from starving by eating your own arm like how can the nutritional benefits of your own arm meat be enough to make up for the loss of a limb and a shit ton of blood and oh maybe that's why she didn't believe I didn't know. Anyway, now that I think about it, it was...not unlike my reaction to finishing Mawaru Penguindrum.

[skygiants]

I assume that there was a round-robin of limbs? So, like, some people lucked out by getting a limb that was more nutritious than ... their own ... and for some unlucky people the next limb down the line was a sad and scrawny one and they JUST HAD TO DEAL.

We also did not understand why they were so grossed out by the bug bars after they'd already gone to the eating babies place. Sorry, Chris Evans, but CANNIBALISM IS GROSSER THAN COCKROACHES.

... I think the most hilarious thing to me though was how delighted Chris Evans looked to finally lose his arm.

[bcgphoenix]

I had that exact thought about the cockroaches! DUDE, YOU HAVE EATEN BABIES, BUGS CANNOT TOP THAT.

(I mean, I legit loved the movie, but yeah. Allegory! Suspension of disbelief! Etc.)

[skygiants]

EATING BUGS IS ACTUALLY VERY TRENDY NOW. Although I hope they were also, like, throwing oranges into the mixer or something. Orange-flavored bug bars? Otherwise everyone in that tail section would be so extremely scurvy-dead.

[sovay]

Orange-flavored bug bars? Otherwise everyone in that tail section would be so extremely scurvy-dead.

I assumed there were other ingredients in the protein bars, they were just also . . . really gross.

And I can see how people would find cannibalism less viscerally disgusting than insects, actually. There's not so much exoskeleton and antennae involved in cannibalism, unless you're, I don't know, a cannibal lobster.

[skygiants]

I actually find the jelly part the grossest thing of all ... the texture of that kind of gelatin stuff is just so weird. I can put up with it for a while, but not forever!

I do enjoy the thing I read wherein Korean audiences were encouraging their first-time viewer friends to bring jelly candy with them as a snack during the show.

[shati]

I still don't think...okay. When you starve enough doesn't your body essentially end up consuming itself anyway? ISN'T THAT MORE EFFICIENT THAN CUTTING OFF YOUR ARM AND CHOWING DOWN even if you swapped for a bigger arm! Shit, if nothing else, it uses less energy.

And this is all assuming they had access to water, because I can't remember.

[skygiants]

Maybe it was all part of Actually Evil Gilliam's plot? Convince everyone that cutting off your limbs is a heroic thing to do when ACTUALLY IT JUST WEAKENS THE UNDERCLASSES FURTHER. (It's an allegory.)

[aberration]

Look what I found!

Why is it marked with American holidays? Weren't they crossing a big bridge at New Year's???

(Logistics were not the point.)

[skygiants]

Maybe it was a bridge over a lake!

...WHY DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY.

......I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT I'M TRYING TO REPRESS.

[troisroyaumes]

Late comment is late, but that's interesting because the one linked on Korean sites looks very different: map.

[tree]

and why would you have the sauna carriage AFTER the salon carriage? if you've just had your hair done, you don't want to have to traipse through all that humidity to get to the party carriage!

forgot to add: it's based on Le Transperceneige.

[skygiants]

And what DOES the sushi guy do the rest of the year when he's hanging out sad and alone in the sushi car forbidden from destroying the balance of the fish?

Almost the first thing I did when I got home is look up Le Transperceneige - I was actually really curious about whether it was a more contemporary source or an older one. Way to be more depressing than the film, Le Transperceneige! Not even a symbolic Polar Bear of Hope!

[nextian]

Ok, but why would a polar bear be-- right, right, allegory

[skygiants]

If I was going to pick a Symbolic Animal of Hope to represent Survival, I have to say, a polar bear would probably not be my first choice?

On the other hand maybe Yona and Little Timmy are about to get adopted by the panserbjorne! Humanity may be mostly extinct, but ARMORED BEARS ARE IN THEIR ELEMENT.

[nextian]

TBH, that engine would make way more sense if it was powered by the Dust from kids under five in the first place.

[skygiants]

It's so true! I'm sold. All of my logistical questions can be settled if we just pretend the whole film is intended to tie directly into His Dark Materials. (After a few weeks they started EATING PEOPLE'S DAEMONS. Chris Evans knows that baby daemons taste the best! Because they can still transform into really large cows that can feed someone for a week.)

[nextian]

PERFECTION. Yona's clairvoyance: Namgoong's crime for which he got put in cold storage was building an alethiometer. The sushi tank: that guy's daemon is a dolphin and they had to accommodate him somewhere

[skygiants]

IT SOLVES THE SUSHI TANK *____*

(Yona would actually make an amazing Lyra.)

The bug horror: Chris Evans' daemon is a cockroach.

[nextian]

Omg, we're geniuses. This is a work of art. Yona would make an amazing Lyra. I hope someone who takes this movie more seriously than me is writing this fic even now.

[skygiants]

I DESPERATELY HOPE SO TOO. If only for the scene in which Chris Evans shouts, "HOW CAN I BE A LEADER WHEN I STILL HAVE ONE GOOD COCKROACH?"

[aquamirage]

OH MY GOD

you guys

this is incredible

[ellen_fremedon]

I saw the movie today, and THIS FIXES EVERYTHING.

[tavella]

Well, as a sign of survival to humanity (at least humanity not armed with at least .50 caliber weapons), not so much. But as survival of the ecosystem, actually a pretty good symbol. For polar bears to survive, there has to be seals left, and for seal to be left there have to be fish and clams and so on left. And for fish and clams to be left, there has to be photoplankton left. And so on.

[skygiants]

This is true! ...or would be true if we had any signs that the movie existed in a logical universe wherein living creatures depend on reliable, nourishing food sources to survive, rather than 'bug bars made of protein and apparently no other nutritional ingredients.'

[sovay]

If I was going to pick a Symbolic Animal of Hope to represent Survival, I have to say, a polar bear would probably not be my first choice?

Actually, I thought it was a pretty decent olive branch for a frozen world.

(Between the explicit naming of the train as—however inadvertent and unfair—an ark in the opening narration and Yona's name, I thought the mythology of the movie as well as the allegory was pretty clear. And I would probably have felt sarcastic toward an actual tree.)

[skygiants]

Ha, yeah, I get that. But I also felt sarcastic towards the polar bear! It was just very difficult to ignore the "oops those Symbolic Children of Hope are about to get chomped SO HARD" factor.

Maybe they could have compromised with an arctic seal?

[sovay]

Maybe they could have compromised with an arctic seal?

I would have enjoyed an arctic seal, but I enjoy seals in general.

I didn't think the polar bear was an uncomplicated sign of survival: Yona and Timmy and whoever else they can salvage out of the shattered cars may still not make it through the slow warming of the world; their resources are limited to the ruins of the train and whatever it turns out the polar bear was living off. (Maybe they will rapidly acquire some ice-fishing skills.) But the point is that the world itself is not dead: humanity did not actually freeze it to death. We may have frozen the planet to our death. But that's not at all the same thing. I like to think Yona's going to make it, but I don't know for sure. I am fine with a science fiction film that ends with that kind of equivocal hope.