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Snowpiercer

2013 film directed by Bong Joon-ho

Snowpiercer is a 2013 film set in a future where a failed climate-change mitigation experiment triggers an ice age which kills all life on the planet except for a lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a luxury train that travels around the globe, where a brutal class system emerges— the elite at the front, the lower class at the tail.

Know your place. Keep your place.
Curtis, dear boy, the fact is that we are all stuck inside this blasted train. We are all prisoners in this hunk of metal.
I believe it is easier for people to survive on this train if they have some level of insanity.
A blockbuster production with a devilishly unpredictable plot
Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Written by Bong Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson.
Fight your way to the front. (taglines)

Curtis Everett

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  • You ever been to the tail section? Do you have any idea what went on back there? When we boarded? It was chaos. Yeah, we didn't freeze to death, but we didn't have time to be thankful. Wilford's soldiers came and they took everything. A thousand people in an iron box. No food, no water... After a month, we ate the weak... You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know that babies taste best... There was a woman. She was hiding with her baby. And some men with knives came. They killed her and they took her baby. And then an old man-no relation, just an old man-stepped forward and he said, "Give me the knife." And everyone thought he'd kill the baby himself. But he took the knife and he cut off his arm. And he said, "Eat this, if you're so hungry. Eat this, just leave the baby." I had never seen anything like that. And the men put down their knives... You've probably guessed who that old man was. That baby was Edgar. And I was the man with the knife. I killed Edgar's mother... And then one by one, other people in the tail section started cutting off arms and legs and offering them. It was like a miracle. And I wanted to. I tried, it's... A month later, Wilford's soldiers brought those protein blocks. We've been eatin' that shit ever since. 18 years I've hated Wilford. 18 years I've waited for this moment. And now I'm here... Open the gate. Please.
  • You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know babies taste the best.

Wilford

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  • Have you ever been alone on this train? When was the last time you were alone? You can't remember, can you? So please do. Take your time.
  • When's the last time you got laid? Like Gilliam said, holding a woman is much better with two arms.
  • I believe it is easier for people to survive on this train if they have some level of insanity. As Gilliam well understood, you need to maintain a proper balance of anxiety and fear and chaos and horror in order to keep life going. And if we don't have that, we need to invent it. In that sense, the Great Curtis Revolution you invented was truly a masterpiece.
  • You've seen what people do without leadership. They devour one another.

Mason

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  • Order is the barrier that holds back the flood of death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our allotted station. We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn't wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn't belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot. Yes? So it is. In the beginning, order was proscribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you. Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine: all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position. So it is. Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
  • My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed.

Dialogue

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Male Reporter: Good morning. On this day, July 1st, 2014, at this hour, 0600, we are at the first airport in the world...
Female Reporter: The topic of so much controversy over the past seven years has continued development. Protests from environmental groups and a number of developing countries continue. But in accordance with...
Male Reporter: It had been claimed that CW7 is the answer to global warning. And we are witnessing it...
Female Reporter: Leaders argue that global warming can no longer be ignored. Today, 79 countries will begin dispersing CW7 into the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Male Reporter: ...In the upper layers of the atmosphere, and surprisingly bring down the average global temperature to the finest levels. It is just a day away that...
Female Reporter: ...upper layers of the atmosphere. According to scientists, the artificial cooling substance, CW7, will succeed in bringing average global temperatures down to manageable levels, as the revolutionary solution to mankind's warming of the planet.
Edgar: How old is Gilliam?
Curtis: Shut up, Edgar.
Edgar: Listen, I'm not saying that I want that to happen. That's not what I'm saying. What I mean is that he will die someday. And when that happens, you're gonna have to take over. You're gonna have to run the train.
Curtis: I'm not a leader.
Edgar: I don't know. I think you'd be pretty good if you ask me.
Edgar: Those bastards in the front sections think they own us. Eating their steak dinners and listening to string quartets and that.
Curtis: We'll be different when we get there.
Edgar: I want steak...What does steak taste like again? I had it once, but I can't remember.
Curtis: If you can't remember then it's better to forget.
Edgar: What does it smell like when it's cooked? It must emanate around the place.
Curtis: We have 4 seconds to go through three gates and bust Nam out.
Gilliam: Then Nam gets us the rest of the way. Our fate depends on this man.
Curtis: Yeah. If we can get him to cooperate, he can take us all the way to the front of the train.
Gilliam: Very front section?
Curtis: Yeah. From here right to the front of the train. Everything in one stroke. We control the engine, we control the world. Without that, we have nothing. All past revolutions have failed because they couldn't take the engine.
Gilliam: What are you saying?
Curtis: This time we take the engine.
Gilliam: Then what?
Curtis: We kill them.
Gilliam: Wilford?
Curtis: You should run the train now, not Wilford.
Gilliam: I am a shadow of my former shadow. My day was decades ago.
Mason: He won't come here. He won't leave his engine.
Curtis: We're gonna rip you into little pieces. He still won't come? Well, we control the water. We turn that off, he'll have to come.
Mason: Turn off the water? Well, you'll only be condemning your own people. The water comes from the front. The nose of the train, it breaks up the snow and ice and-and turns it into water. It's like an elephant's trunk. The water comes in the mouth. Not in the bum, Curtis. [seeing him react] Yes, Wilford knows you well, Mr. Curtis Everett. He's been watching you. And we know you won't harm your own people. Too bad you couldn't save your second in command. What was his name? Edgar?
Curtis: Shut the fuck up!
Mason: Curtis, Curtis, I can help you.
Curtis: You can fucking die is what you can do.
Mason: Wilford won't come here. He's not coming. You've got to go to him. And I can take you. I know the train. I can guarantee you safe passage.
Curtis: Why the fuck would I trust you?
Mason: Because I want to live.
Mason: [as sushi is prepared] You people are very lucky. This is only served twice in a year. In January and July.
Tanya: Why? Not enough fish?
Mason: Oh, enough is not the criterion. Balance. You see, this aquarium is a closed ecological system. And, um, the number of individual units must be very closely, precisely controlled. In order to maintain the proper sustainable balance.
[as they eat, Curtis knocks Mason's chopsticks out of her hands and offers a protein block]
Curtis: No. You eat this. You know what that's made of? Dig in.
Curtis: How old are you?
Yona: Seventeen.
Curtis: Seventeen. You're a train baby, then.
Yona: How about you?
Curtis: Seventeen years on Earth. Seventeen years in the tail section.
Yona: Earth? What was it like?
Curtis: I don't remember.
Yona: Why?
Curtis: I don't want to remember anything before I met Gilliam.
Wilford: Curtis, everyone has their preordained position, and everyone is in their place except you.
Curtis: That's what people in the best place say to the people in the worst place.
Curtis: There's not a soul on this train who wouldn't trade places with you.
Wilford: Would you trade places with me?
Curtis: Fuck you.
Wilford: Curtis, dear boy, the fact is that we are all stuck inside this blasted train. We are all prisoners in this hunk of metal. [indicating the steaks he's grilling] Medium rare? And this train is a closed ecosystem. We must always strive for balance. Air, water, food supply, population must always be kept in balance. For optimum balance, however, there have been times when more radical solutions were required. When the population needed to be reduced, rather... drastically.
Wilford: We don't have time for true natural selection. We would all be hideously overcrowded and starved waiting for that. The next best solution is to have individual units kill off other individual units. From time to time, we've had to stir the pot, so to speak. The Revolt of the Seven, the MacGregor Riots, the Great Curtis Revolution. A blockbuster production with a devilishly unpredictable plot. Who could have predicted your counterattack with the torch in the Yaketerina Tunnel? Pure genius. That wasn't what Gilliam and I had in our plan.
Curtis: What?
Wilford: Oh, don't tell me you didn't know. Gilliam and I... our plan.
Curtis: Gilliam?
Wilford: Gilliam.
Wilford: Our original agreement was for the insurgency to end at the Yaketerina Tunnel. And all the survivors would go back to the tail section to enjoy much more space.
Curtis: You're a fucking liar. Gilliam would never do that.
Wilford: Well, it all worked out in the end. Your counterattack actually made the insurgency ten times more exciting. Unfortunately, the front suffered more losses than anticipated, and Gilliam had to... [clicking his tongue and pantomiming shooting himself in the head] ...pay the price. Ironic, isn't it? How people dramatically cross that thin barrier between life and death.
Namgoong Minsoo: [in Korean] You know what I really want? I want to open the gate... but not this gate. That one. The gate to the outside world. It's been frozen shut for 18 years. You might take it as a wall. But it's a fucking gate. Let's open it and just get the hell out.
Curtis: And freeze to death? What are you, fucking crazy?
Namgoong Minsoo: What if we don't? What if we could survive outside? Remember the Yekaterina Bridge? When your guys were getting chopped up? There's something I look at every New Year. A crashed airplane under the snow. All I saw ten years ago was just the tail. Now the body and wings are peeking out. Less ice and snow means... it's melting. The type of snow that's about to melt. A little push and it all falls down.

Taglines

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  • Fight your way to the front.
  • AD 2031: the passengers in the train are the only survivors on Earth.
  • We move forward.

Cast

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