If you’ve seen the movie then you know the gist of the story, the Snowpiercer is a massive train that continually runs along a track that seems to go pretty much everywhere that can be imagined and was designed to be able to break through ice formations and immense snowdrifts, hence the name, so that it wouldn’t be stopped. In a very big way the Snowpiercer is the what remains of humanity since it is the last moving thing that can be seen in the movie, and those that travel upon it are divided into different classes that can be seen as one advances along the various cars. You might think that it would be insanely cramped and even uncomfortable being stuck on a train, but the frozen wasteland beyond the confines of the train is even worse since it’s stated that it cannot sustain life any longer. Whatever cataclysmic shift occurred in the world to cause this isn’t entirely known since the world within the train eventually became the only world that people came to know, and thus the only world that mattered. One might think that natural curiosity would override a person’s ability to just go with the flow, but when one is given euphoria on a continual basis and shown that it’s all that matters, apparently some folks will gladly take the unreal over what could be described as the horribly real.
Unlike the movie this series, as Dannette Chavez from AV Club tells us, will take place just 7 years after the cataclysmic events that brought on another Ice Age, during which the train is running and the classes have already been divided. Given that the movie set the timeline as the Ice Age emerging in 2014 (yes that is pretty funny) it would be at least two decades give or take before the series would catch up to the movie. What this means unfortunately for the passengers on the train is that while rebellions could very well be a possibility, the guards who are not armed with live ammunition in the movie would likely possess live ammunition in abundance when the train first gets to rolling. What you can possibly expect from the series is that not only only will the class division be naturally railed against, but more than one rebellion could occur during the course of the series. That being what it is, it’s also likely that Wilford, the operator of the train who resides in the front compartment, will have already began to think about a plan that might keep the train running indefinitely since, once again you’d have to watch the movie, the tail end is essentially responsible for keeping the entire system running.
It might be that the ecosystem that’s been built within the train could experience a few glitches early on, or it might not sustain the survivors as it should at all times, as there are plenty of stories that could emerge as the Snowpiercer continues to run along its track in a continuous manner. There is also the matter of the continued need for space as the number of survivors are bound to procreate, take up space and resources, and age eventually and pass on. The implications for all this in a closed ecosystem are a bit horrifying and might explain the different expressions that people in each car tend to have since those that don’t want to know the truth tend to look vacant in a very haunted way that implies they might guess what’s going on, but don’t want to know. Those in the back of the train where the conditions are the most horrible might know that life is hard and unbearably cruel, but without any real information about what goes on in the forward compartments they would seem to know only resentment and possible fear that could eventually cause them to rise up in anger and strike back against their oppressors.
In any case it would seem that Snowpiercer as a series could become an intriguing idea, though one that might hit a few snags here and there since the lack of any humongous change in scenery could very well work against it. In a movie setting this is great since it delivers a very solid idea that the movie will begin and end in a two-hour or less period despite how many other stories might be there for the telling. Within a series it will be very interesting to see how it works since there ARE a lot of stories to tell no doubt, but being stuck in the same spot for so long seems to indicate that the setting could grow very stale very quickly. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but it does seem to present a very unique challenge that the writers have had to deal with. But the series will be worth a try at the very least, as the movie wasn’t too bad.
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