(There are narrative and thematic spoilers throughout this thing, so be sure to have either seen both movies or have reconciled yourself to the wrath of the movie gods before reading further.)
Snowpiercer and Captain America: The Winter Soldier would seem to have nothing in common save the large slab of handsome on the poster. But outside of both starring Boston’s favorite son, Chris Evans, the films are diametrically opposed in terms of content and tone.
Winter Soldier is the latest billion dollar product off the assembly line of billion dollar product, a sleek and polished entertainment machine intended for the widest possible audience across the globe.
Snowpiercer, on the other hand, is a ragged and weird little bit of angry sci-fi. A South Korean production inspired by a French comic, a film so resolutely fixed to its own weird voice that Harvey Fuckface Weinstein decided to bury the film in VOD when he was unable to recut it to fit some fantastical idea of mainstream acceptability. Snowpiercer doesn’t shift tones so much as it pile-drives through every emotional reaction possible, whipping from rousing action film to stomach-churning horror to broad (BROAD) comedy in the space of seconds. As scattered and loose as the film’s early goings can seem, director and co-writer Bong Joon-Ho maintains absolute control over Snowpiercer, his guiding hand assuring the audience that he knows exactly what the film is and where it needs to go.
So what do the shining star of one of Disney-Marvel’s mega-franchises and a grungy ride through a frigid wasteland have in common?
They are both manifestos of righteous dissent.
Snowpiercer and Winter Soldier are both about a (seemingly) virtuous figure roaring back at the forces of power which have sought to control and dehumanize them. In Winter Soldier, those forces are embodied by the covert terrorist organization HYDRA, and their manipulation of the surveillance state of post-9/11 (or post-Whatever Day It Was That the Aliens Came and Wrecked Shit) America. In Snowpiercer, it is not only privacy and liberty that are threatened, but the ability of the rear-passengers to be considered human by the all-powerful denizens of the front of the train.
Both films look at entrenched policies of dehumanization and subjugation, at systems which have been crafted to break down and spit out the weak while emboldening the powerful, and both films come to the conclusion that the only way to beat the system is to burn it down to the fucking ground.
It’s important to note that neither film has a real villain. Robert Redford and Ed Harris give face to the awful nature of the system in Winter Soldier and Snowpiercer, respectively, but neither is the traditional Big Bad who dwells at the end of a sci-fi-action spectacle waiting for the perfunctory fistfight. Redford’s Alexander Pierce did not create HYRDA or set into motion the events which enabled HYDRA’s takeover of SHIELD. No, Pierce is established as the inheritor of a poisonous establishment brought into fruition before his birth and empowered by the short-sighted decisions of a government desperate after the end of World War 2. The true ‘villain’ culpable for the events of Winter Soldier is Toby Jones’ Zola, who never appears physically in the present day of the film and has been dead for decades before the film gets underway. Pierce is not the mastermind of evil, he’s the legacy of a philosophy that truly believes the degradation of freedom is necessary for the advancement of the species, and which has labored to create a world in which this philosophy might, perhaps, be true.
Harris’ Wilford is a different case, as he is, in fact, the creator of Snowpiercer and the entrenched class system which has resulted in the events of the film. But what the climax of Snowpiercer reveals is that there is nothing malicious in Wilford’s actions. The class system, and the revolution which Wilford is discovered to be the secret mastermind of, are all mechanisms which Wilford uses to try and control the population of the train so resources do not run out. We look at the rank filth of the tail section, and at the nightmarish violence and loss of life that the revolution incurs, and we recoil in horror. But more horrifying is the realization that Wilford is actually correct. The train cannot sustain all the life teeming within it, and a culling of ranks is necessary. If you believe that Snowpiercer is the only possible habitat for humanity left on earth, then Wilford’s logic is both sickening and inarguable.
Both films build to the dramatic realization that the cancerous evil that has been plaguing our heroes is not an outlier challenging the rules, the evil IS the rules. Evil is a banal and everyday occurrence, an acceptance of horror as necessary for ‘the greater good’ of perpetuating the organization that is foundational to society.
It would be easy for either film to arc towards a depressing place of evil triumphant (Snowpiercer, in particular, appears to be heading for a truly nihilistic conclusion before banking sharply away [for the better]) but instead Bong and the Russo Bros. illustrate a different path, one which implores audiences to reject the entire proposition of compromise and just tear down the systems and start again.
This is where the casting of Chris Evans in both films is crucial. Since his earliest days as an actor, Evans has radiated a decency that endears him to both audiences and his fellow movie characters. You believe that this guy, picking up an errant cell phone call, would throw himself headlong into danger to save the person on the other end of the line. You believe how vulnerable he is as Skinny Steve, and remember that vulnerability when he morphs into Cap. And in Snowpiercer, there’s never a second of doubt that his Curtis has the gravity to draw the entire tail section to his cause and drive them towards revolution.
So we trust Evans, even when his characters do not trust themselves. The arc of both films is for Evans’ characters to try and figure out what role they play in a world that seems to have so readily gone mad. For Steve Rogers, it’s his discomfort with the modern age that has him unsure of his step, while Curtis in Snowpiercer has very, VERY valid reasons for the doubt and self-loathing which hold him back. Watching Curtis and Cap work their way towards an understanding of self is what forms the dramatic spine of both films, leading up to a climax in which both Cap and Curtis forsake what they have been told and choose to throw their trust entirely behind a figure that all others have deemed untrustworthy or unsavory. The final act of rebellion is choosing trust and hope over mandated doubt and suspicion. (For Cap, that’s continuing to believe in Bucky, while for Curtis, it is throwing down the mantle offered him by Wilford and supporting Namgoong’s plan to blow up the train.)
And that is what forms the crux of both films’ argument. The greatest lie of any addiction is that you will be unable to survive without it. Whether that addiction is food or guns or drugs or fuzzy slippers or security or whatever, we allow ourselves to be subjugated by others because we believe that without what those others sell us, we won’t be able to continue.
Snowpiercer and Winter Soldier preach the truth to that lie. They passionately argue that it is in our connections to other people, in our capacity to build and hope and dream with one another, that true salvation waits. Both films look at barren, blasted lands, and promise that there is a bright dawn on the other side, one that does not need to be beholden to the fallacies and weaknesses of what came before. Along with their thrilling action and rousing set pieces, both films carry the flame for humanistic triumph over rotten systems and bleak intentions. They are films which challenge you to look at what you allow to be sacrificed every day, and demand to know just what the fuck you plan to do about it.