WMG / Snowpiercer

The Film

Edgar and Curtis.

Gilliam and Wilford wanted Edgar and Curtis to take their respective places—Edgar in the back, Curtis in the front—to maintain the population the way they've done all those years.

The Snowpiercer is The Polar Express.

Santa didn't have anything to do with the global ice age, but he still had his magic train. In a panic, he gathered refugees onto it but quickly became disgusted and embittered by the hellish conditions that overpopulation brought to the survivors. He shaved off his beard and became Wilford, but he still likes children. Kind of.

• Oh, well connected! Maybe the children and nightclubbers are actually his elves!

Everything that's said about the world outside the train is a fabrication.

The only information any of the passengers know about the outside world is what they see outside the windows and what they learn from Wilford. It's entirely possible that the train just circles the earth near one of the polar points, like across Canada and Siberia, pretending to snake around the rest of the earth. (There's plenty of landmass to do just that!) Wilford doesn't need the rest of humanity to die off in order to control the population on the train, he just needs them believe it has. The movie runs on Rule of Perception.

• That would certainly explain what the polar bear is doing there. The polar bear couldn't have just sprung out of nowhere — it had to be surviving for those 17 years. And the fact that it managed to survive means a population of prey animals also survived, as did the plants ultimately needed to sustain those prey animals. None of that meshes with an atmosphere so cold it can freeze an arm solid in just 7 minutes — unless it's a trick.
  • The film flat out states in the classroom scene that the entire world isn't frozen - there's still the "scorching heat of the African desert." It's never brought up outside of that and the kids are brainwashed into thinking stopping the train means they'll all "freeze and die." It's unlikely Wilford is trying to brag about the durability of his engine, given the fact no kid born on the train would know what extreme heat feels like. He may be trying to explain away why passengers can't get off when they don't see snow, even if the region is more hospitable to human life.
  • There's a couple other things to consider with the punishment scene. Before applying the torture, one of the attending guards mentions that at the altitude the train was traveling at, they'd only need seven minutes. Presumably, it was that combined with the windchill effect produced by the train's speed that caused the victim's arm to freeze solid. Similarly, at lower altitudes, it probably takes longer to freeze the limb in question, and they probably don't do it at such high altitudes all that often, as Mason shushes the translators when she's making her speech (saying that she's only got seven minutes when the translators are probably used to much longer intervals and just automatically repeat Mason's words in the appropriate languages).
  • Perhaps the cold didn't freeze the arm, but the lotion-like substance the attendant applied Andrew's arm before the torture. Maybe it was a version of CW-7, and the "arm in the hole" technique is just a ruse to reinforce the deception. Also, in the video shown in the classroom, young Wilford states "When I grow up, I want to live in a train forever". This definitely points to Wilford manipulating either a real or fake global freeze.
• It's also rational to believe that the massive and killer freeze would be a big shock to the caste system outside — the people who are in power, but have all their wealth tied in useless stock and shares, land that is now frozen and industries that mean nothing after an apocalypse like entertainment and tourism. The train was the last of these caste systems left, which was why Wilson didn't want it to stop. The message of the movie still stands. It took the end of humanity as we know it to break the perpetual engine that is the caste system.

This movie takes place in the BioShock multiverse.

• Wilford is the man, the train is the city, and they departed from a now frozen and forgotten lighthouse near the Yekaterina Bridge. It also has the typical Bioshock setting by taking place in the snowy mountains.

Mason was a tail section passenger abducted as a child.

And used as a part of the engine. Notice the repeated mechanical motions of her hands, like a piston retracting or a valve turning. She repeated that motion again and again until she grew out of the job. Her religious reverence of Wilford is possibly more than the brainwashing of a front section passenger. To the traumatized engine children, if they keep their minds at all, Wilford must be a god to whom they are literally mere cogs in a machine of his design. Following this theory, Wilford is the reason she lost her teeth and she has cause to ask Curtis to kill him.

• She's too old. It's specifically stated in the movie that children of a certain size are used as machine parts, and that these kids are usually around or no older than five years of age. The Snowpiercer has been running on the tracks for eighteen years. If she was taken as a five year old and used as train parts, she could not be more than twenty-three years of age. It's also stated by Wilford that taking children from the tail section is a more recent practice, and that possibly Timmy and Andy were the first "replacement parts". Mason must be in her forties or fifties in the film. Also, on one of the other pages it stated that Word of God says Mason was a cleaning lady from the tail section that was brought to the front and then eventually given the position she has now, much like the violin player who was recruited from the tail section in the start of the film. It could be she had a hand in cleaning the engine, which would explain the repetitive motions she uses, but she could not have ever been a "replacement part".
  • I agree she's too old, but they do imply that they have been using children as spare parts for at least a while, since they note how much Wilford loves children, something Gilliam repeats with a more disgusted tone. When I watched it I assumed they were alluding to something sexual, but after the ending it seems likely that he has been using them to replace engine parts until they age-out.

Gilliam was never working with Wilford.

The tail section passengers have next to no privacy. How exactly is Gilliam supposed to have secret phone conversations lasting for hours without anyone catching him or even overhearing him? Far more likely is that Wilford simply has his train bugged.

There are other survivors.

The train was a ridiculously inefficient means of supporting a population. If Wilford could foresee the global cooling others would have too, and built arcologies, probably underground or something.

• Sufficiently insulated solar powered greenhouses could do the trick, and would be much easier to set up (not to mention, feed and shelter many more people) than the Snowpiercer. Alternately, just pop an insulated dome over a town.
• Regions with continual geothermal activity, like Yellowstone Park or parts of Iceland, might offer a natural refuge for people and even wildlife. Of course, Snowpiercer's route doesn't go anywhere near those locations.

Gilliam and Wilford may have been working together, but Wilford never intended Curtis to replace him.

There were just too many things that could have gone wrong for this to have been Wilford's true plan. Wilford needs to control every variable that he can — he would have had to instruct every single guard that Curtis was off-limits, and they all seemed pretty sincere in their efforts to kill him. Plus, even if Wilford had intended this, there's a pretty significant chance that Curtis could have caught a stray bullet (or slipped on a fish and fallen into an axe) during the coupe.

The CW-7 actually worked for the rest of the world; it was those living in the former arctic areas that got wiped out.

Several times in the movie we see large cities covered by snow. These cities look larger than most present day places at that latitude. Which means, that people took advantage of the new areas made habitable due to rising temperatures. When the CW-7 was used, it had the effect of making those areas drop to arctic temperatures once more, stranding people at those latitudes, with the only way to survive being on trains such as the Snowpiercer.

The W in CW-7 stands for Wilford.

Why, because Wilford created it and knew how it was going to work. Why else build a train that sucks up snow and converts it into drinking water if you weren't planning on there being a lot of it?

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Snowpiercer take place in the same universe.

Humans launched the super atmospheric anti-freeze in a last-ditch effort to prevent any further climate change. The train was constructed as a refuge from both the unbearable climate and from AI takeover, thus no robots were invited on the train. Once the train crashes, all of humanity is wiped out, except for the two survivors, who die soon after—either from exposure or because that polar bear ate them. Two millennia later, the hyper-advanced AI are still living in a frozen world and searching to understand the secret greatness of the extinct human race.

Humanity survives the end of the movie.

As mutants after the Adam and Eve Plot ending.

This movie takes place in the same universe as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEX52h1TvuA.

The Series

The non-tailies' blaming tail-enders for "stealing" a place on the train is completely ironic and unjustified.

Because the Snowpiercer, itself, was stolen. The reason why Melanie's co-driver called her "Mr. Wilford is that, shortly before the train's departure, the convoy bringing the real Mr. Wilford to the train station was ambushed and delayed. When news of this was transmitted to the Hospitality crew already on board, Melanie unilaterally decided there wasn't time to wait for him, and signaled the engineers to get the journey underway. Her co-driver was present and heard her give the order, so she persuaded him to work with her to convince the other train staff that Wilford had indeed boarded, and was running things all along, in a No One Sees the Boss scenario. Her colleague called her "Mr. Wilford" to signify he was handing over control of the train to her; when she passes the job back to him at the end of her shift, she'll call him that in turn. So, in effect, everybody on board is complicit in stealing their berths on the train from Mr. Wilford, not just the Tailies.

• Partially Confirmed in episode 8.

The Fantastic Caste System was put into place not out of simple classism or a twisted desire for order, but as a form of vengeance.

Perhaps when the tails were first boarding the train, one of them directly or indirectly caused the death of someone close to Melanie causing the whole bunch of them to be treated like dirt for so many years as simple petty revenge.

• Jossed. Melanie was simply acting inan utilitarian way, doing the best she could with the system Wilford had put in place and the unexpected stoaways she had to deal with. Politics on board of the train simply prevented her from transitioning to a less segregates system over time, and that's why it was still in place.

The baby in Melanie's picture will be Rowan Blanchard's character.

• Jossed. Melanie acknowledges that her daughter wasn't anywhere near Chicago when the train departed. Jossed again by the season finale, in which Melanie's daughter appears as a teenager aboard a second Wilford Industries train.
  • Then Confirmed after all when she turns up alive in the prototype train.

If there are other trains out there in this version, then they were made by people other than Wilford.

Melanie's actions don't seem to indicate confident knowledge of any living humans besides themselves.

• Jossed. Whether are not anyone else made trains, Wilford Industries does have a second one.

The real Mr. Wilford is in one of the 400 Drawers.

• Jossed. Once exposed, Melanie admits to Ruth that she deliberately left Wilford behind because he hadn't wanted to save anyone, just to keep himself in comfort for a last few months of on-board debauchery.

Mr. Wilford did make it onto the train, and is livening incognito in the Tail.

Fear of this could be why Melanie is so restrictive towards the Tail in the first place.

• Jossed. Instead, he's in a second train.

Big Alice has more Australians aboard.

Casting calls did describe the Last Australian as the last Australian that he knew of, implying there might be others somewhere else.

• Confirmed in "A Single Trade", in which he meets a woman from Perth who'd assumed she was The Last Australian.

Big Alice the prototype train has less of a class system than the original train.

It was intended as a supply train, after all. The paying, ticketed passengers (or at least the most affluent ones) are presumably all onboard the Snowpiercer and Wilford might have treated any stowaways better in order to gain more manpower for the eventual confrontation between trains.

• Confirmed: except for Wilford himself, who lives comfortably in the engine car, all other passengers are shown to share the same living conditions, including Wilford's inner circle like Alex, Kevin or Sykes. And even Wilford himself has to deal with the limited food on board before catching up with Snowpierver and having fresh products traded over.

There are more cattle aboard Big Alice.

Possible candidates for the engineer/s of Big Alice.

• Alec Forrester from the comics. It might be a nice Continuity Nod (especially since Forrester gave his engine a woman's name to).
• Announced season 2 characters the Headwoods, as the description of scientists operating in seclusion could refer to engineers.
• Alexandra (maybe she learned at her mother's foot before the Freeze).
• Wilford himself, which could discredit Melanie's claims that he had nothing to do with the actual mechanics and development of the train.
  • Confirmed for Alexandra and, occasionally, Wilford himself. Jossed for Alec Forrester (who doesn't appear) and the Headwoods (who are medical doctors and researchers).

Miles' family might be alive on Big Alice.

Some of those from the detached six cars were picked up by Big Alice or survived in any nearby Drawers.

• The show runners did hint not to count them all as dead yet.

Big Alice was only recently activated.

A forty-car train simply wouldn't have the resources to sustain a population for seven years, especially if most of its cars were already stuffed full of replacement parts for Snowpiercer. Rather, the group to which Alexandra belongs had been living in an underground survival bunker beneath Chicago, which Wilford resorted to seizing control of after Melanie stole his ride. Over the years, they've observed that Snowpiercer keeps passing through every so often, and have been planning to capture it for its resources; however, they never quite got the timing right before. But this time, they knew exactly when it would arrive, having listened in on Ben's radio messages to Melanie. Using thermal suits - probably more sophisticated ones than Snowpiercer's, as they've been using them extensively to loot frozen Chicago for supplies - they rushed to Big Alice's depot and got it running, in plenty of time to intercept the larger train.

• Partially Confirmed? They were surviving in Big Alice the entire time, but they used the train itself as a bunker, somehow 'hunkering it down' and rennovating it in order to make it suitable for the ambush and takeover of Snowpiercer. They absolutely were waiting to ambush it however.

Versions of some of the Tail Section passengers from the movie will eventually appear.

• In terms of characters wig gave already appeared, Old Ivan is a bit of a Gilliam Expy, while Suzanne might be based on Andrew and Miles has a few similarities with Timmy.
  • Grey (although maybe renamed or unnamed for One-Steve Limit reasons). Maybe Luke Pasqualino could even reprise his role.
  • Younger versions of Curtis and Edgar. More specifically, a young boy being raised by a man who almost cannibalized him before having a Heel Realization.
  • The Painter.

The cold treatment will be problematic at higher temperatures.

Unlike Josie, who seemed to do fine in the overheated pirate train, Liana will turn out to be vulnerable to higher temperatures due to receiving the Headwoods' cold treatment as an experimental gene therapy before birth. While it was designed to work just fine when living in the controlled conditions of the train, in an open system like New Eden it will be unpredictable and a potential hazard to her health when the temperature rises above a certain level. This will cause friction between Layton and Zarah, and put the whole New Eden colonisation plan at risk.

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