Snowpiercer

Plot

In 2031, 17 years after an attempt to stop climate change via stratospheric aerosol injection catastrophically backfired and created a new ice age and caused ecocide,[13] humanity have taken to a self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards.

Urged by his mentor, Gilliam, Curtis Everett and his second-in-command, Edgar, lead the tail passengers in a revolt. They free Namgoong Minsoo, a captive security specialist, and use a drug known as Kronole, made from industrial waste, as bribery in exchange for his assistance. Namgoong also insists that his clairvoyant daughter, Yona, be freed. Namgoong helps the tail mob progress, but they face guards armed with melee weapons, overseen by Minister Mason. Edgar is held hostage, but Curtis sacrifices him to capture Mason, forcing her to order the remaining guards to surrender while Edgar is killed. The tail mob stays back, holding the guards captive, while Curtis takes Mason, Namgoong, Yona, skilled fighter Grey, and Tanya and Andrew (two parents who have had their children taken from them) toward the front of the train.

Curtis's group travels through several opulent cars. Namgoong and Yona recognize a landmark outside and consider that the ice may be thawing. The group reaches a schoolroom, where a teacher is indoctrinating the children on Wilford's greatness. A bald man brings eggs for the children to celebrate the eighteenth circumnavigation of the Earth. The bald man goes to the tail army and shoots them with loaded automatic guns hidden under the eggs. The captured guards are freed, as is Mason's henchman Franco. The teacher, who received a gun from the bald man, kills Andrew before Grey kills her. Franco broadcasts to the classroom his execution of Gilliam, which prompts Curtis to execute Mason in turn. Curtis's group moves on, but Franco catches up with them, killing Grey and Tanya. Franco is then seemingly killed by Curtis and Namgoong. The two, along with Yona, continue onward.

In the last car before the engine, Namgoong reveals that the reason he collected the drug Kronole was to use it as an explosive to escape the train with Yona, believing they can now survive outside. Curtis stops them as he wants to meet Wilford; Curtis explains that in the early days of the train, 17 years before, the tail section had resorted to cannibalism, and he had been ready to eat the infant Edgar, but Gilliam offered him his arm instead. Curtis wants to face Wilford to ask why he created this closed ecosystem. The engine door opens, and Wilford's assistant Claude emerges and wounds Namgoong before inviting Curtis inside.

Curtis meets Wilford and, to his shock, learns that he and Gilliam conspired to stage Curtis's rebellion to reduce the tail section's population to sustainable levels. He then offers Curtis his position leading the train. Curtis appears ready to accept as Yona overpowers Claude, rushes in, and asks for matches. In desperation she pulls open a floorboard, with Curtis' help, to reveal Tanya's son, Timmy, working the engine as a machine part, taken from his mother to be a slave. Appalled, Curtis knocks out Wilford and rescues Timmy from the machinery, though he loses his arm in the process. Curtis gives Yona matches to light the fuse for the Kronole bomb, while Namgoong fights and kills Franco, who had followed them. Andy, Andrew's missing son, crawls out of a nook and is unresponsive to Curtis' begging as he climbs into the engine. As the door to the engine room was damaged during the fighting and will not close, Curtis and Namgoong use their bodies to protect Yona and Timmy from the blast.

The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails and wrecks the train. Curtis and Namgoong are unresponsive, so Yona and Timmy escape the wreckage. They see a polar bear in the distance, indicating that life exists outside the train.


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