If you haven’t seen Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 post-apocalyptic thriller Snowpiercer (which starred Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton and was the Oscar-winning director’s first – and to this point, only – mostly English language film)*, I’d recommend you sit down and watch it immediately. It’s really great. Then I would recommend that you skip this television “adaptation” of Snowpiercer because it will pale in comparison to the strengths of the film you just saw. And, if you’re a fan of the film, well, how about you watch it again to remember how great it was and then skip the TV show as well.
*Director Bong and his producing team are producers on the project but were not involved in the writing or day-to-day operations of the series. With the recent news that a television adaptation of Parasite is in the works, one hopes that the mess of this project might make the folks involved take a step back and re-think if we really need another such potential problem.
The problem with Snowpiercer the TV series isn’t that it’s bad. It’s a perfectly fine show, for what it is. The problem is that it doesn’t come close to exploring the issues raised in the film, which managed to weave a complete story that delved into the dangers of unchecked climate change and the rising tensions between the haves and the have-nots in 1/5 of the time it takes the television series to even scratch the surface of all that. But there’s a reason the film is so successful while the television series meanders through ten episodes, desperately seeking the right tone and struggling with conflicting plot points (along with a host of under-developed and poorly acted characters). The film knew what story it was telling. And it told it effectively and efficiently. The television series doesn’t really know what it’s about, so the first season of the series (a second has already been mostly filmed) plays like a jumbled mess in its worst moments and a pale shadow of the original film at its best.
So, what’s Snowpiercer about? The series takes place prior to the timeline of the film,* set in the not-so-distant future where our last ditch attempt to stop climate change from destroying the planet created a new ice age. Thankfully for some, an intrepid engineer created a train, 1,001 cars in length (something you are reminded of at the top of every episode), and sold tickets to the richest to ride it for eternity. The train is broken up into four classes (the economic and social barriers of the series, like in the film, are clearly defined): First, where the ultra-rich pretend they are still living their best lives; Second, where the more normal, but still highly connected, live their pretty great lives (we spend next to no time here, so there’s not much explained about how one gets placed in this class); Third, where the workers live – they were given passage on the train in exchange for agreeing to work for the rest of their lives; and The Tail, the people who, when they realized the train was not accepting normal folks for passengers, shoved through the barriers while the train’s paying and working passengers boarded in Chicago and forced their way on. The stowaways in the Tail get meager rations and, like in the film, are plotting a way to take over the train. They have significantly higher numbers than the other classes, so it’s plausible.
*It appears that the series is meant to be a prequel, although to get too far into this would spoil a heck of a lot from the season (and the set-up for season two). I will say, however, that after ten episodes containing a mishmash of styles, a lack of focus on character when the show desperately needed it, and an over-reliance on telling the audience rather than showing us what we needed to know, the closing moments of the season are the clearest and most promising of the show – largely because they bring the series far more in alignment with the film than anything that happened prior.
But lest you think this is another rehash of the film’s plot, the story being told in season one of Snowpiercer isn’t one of a man from the Tail (Daveed Diggs as Andre Layton) taking on the train’s authority figure (Jennifer Connolly as Melanie Cavill) – well, as least not at first. Nope, the first half of the season is actually a crime procedural. Murder on the Snowpiercer Express, if you will. You see, several men in Third have been murdered in rather gruesome ways, and Melanie is at a loss as to how to solve these crimes. Luckily for her, Layton was a Chicago detective in his past life, so she orders him to be removed from the Tail to help out with the investigation.
Now, if the show wasn’t called Snowpiercer and didn’t have the baggage that name suggests from its association with the film, the first five episodes of the series that deal with the murder investigation would make for a pretty interesting television series. Diggs does great work as the troubled detective trying to get out of his lot in life, forced to get back onto a beat he doesn’t like, working for people he hates on principle (but, naturally, learns aren’t all as completely awful as he suspected). While the mystery itself isn’t great (the ultimate criminal mastermind is pretty clear from the get-go, although the ramifications of their trial provide the best window into the precarious peace that exists between the classes on the train – which is another thing the show is more concerned with explaining to us and not showing us evidence of), it’s the strongest portion of the season by far. Mike O’Malley does great work as the train cop assigned to help Layton with his investigation, injecting some wry humor into a generally humorless show. But once he largely disappears from the scene,* the series becomes more confused and unfocused. The procedural elements of the initial several episodes allow us to explore the train, the classes, and some of the characters. But we don’t spend nearly enough time in this exposition to get a real feel for the nuances of this world. A skeleton structure is presented, but it lacks to color and vibrancy we need to care about what’s about to go down on the train. We barely get a chance to learn who Layton is, much less any of the other supporting characters.
*The series has had a pretty fraught development period that included jumping from TNT to TBS before being moved back to TNT. If you want a clear example of how fraught it was, check out the show’s Wikipedia page. At least half of the characters mentioned on it no longer exist as written and several of the actors mentioned barely appear in the season or don’t appear at all.
The back half of the first season drops the structure of a crime procedural for, well, I’m still not quite sure what to call it. I guess a more similar story to that of the film? At this stage, the plot is strikingly similar: Man from the Tail manages to infiltrate the upper cars, learning secrets that threaten to destroy the entire fragile society that exists on Snowpiercer while a woman with great power attempts to prevent that from happening. The major downside to this entire plot point? Well, the film already did this story. And did it with better writing, better acting, and a more focused arc.
The worst part of this quick transition from a procedural to a less-good version of the film is that it’s not something sustainable with the show’s writing or the acting performances. The show is significantly better when it asks its writers and cast to work within the pretty mundane confines of a cop procedural in a dystopian sci-fi story. There’s just enough room within the story to allow for a modicum of creativity, and the cast isn’t asked to stretch too far with their abilities. Once things transition into a less grounded narrative and the characters (and actors) are suddenly expected to support a more complex, emotionally fraught plot, well, that’s when things start falling apart. Now, it’s not all the fault of the cast – although, aside from Connolly, O’Malley, Allison Wright (The Americans), and Timothy V. Murphy, most of the cast is clearly out of their depth with what little they are asked to do – there’s almost no real character building throughout the season, which means we only know a bit about the characters we’re supposed to care about. If I can’t even remember a character’s name, why would I care if they die? The series does a solid job explaining the classes and key elements of the train, but fails to actually craft the characters that inhabit it. Which is probably the biggest failing of the show. If the film was able to craft memorable characters in a mere three hours, why can’t the television series do that with an entire ten?
While watching the ten episodes of the first season, I often found myself wishing I was watching the film instead. And that’s a HUGE issue. I still don’t feel particularly connected to the show’s wide ranging cast of characters, and don’t feel very inclined to want to see how season two unfurls. While it promises a closer through-line to the source material of the film, I’m already disenfranchised from the majority of the characters at this point to really care. This might be a case where knowing how the movie ends makes it less compelling to watch the prequel. Perhaps if the series had opted to focus on how life was lived on Snowpiercer in the years leading up to the film it would have been more successful (I certainly would have enjoyed watching the ins and outs of how society functioned on the train before diving into a coup attempt storyline). Or maybe the show could have focused on the rise of Detective Layton and the conflict he feels with his fellow Tailies upon moving up the train (it would certainly be a better fit for Diggs, who does some great stuff in the early episodes but struggles a lot in the later episodes of the season when he’s asked to do heavy, emotional lifting while carrying the bulk of the story). But as it is, Snowpiercer doesn’t erase the memories of the film and doesn’t strike enough new ground to make me want to see what it can do beyond this inaugural ride. Sometimes a film should just stay a film. This is one of those times.
Snowpiercer premieres on TNT Sunday, May 17 and will air weekly. All ten episodes of the show’s first season were provided for review.
-
Direction
-
Writing
-
Acting
