Blu-ray Review: Snowpiercer: The Complete First Season

For those who are not familiar with it, Snowpiercer is based on a 2013 movie starring Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, which is based on a French comic book. The story has kept many original elements and themes and the general storyline intact from that film to this television series. 

The story is somewhat complicated, and I don’t want to give too much away, so here is the general overview. In order to fight global warming, the world tried a science experiment that went way wrong in the opposite direction. What resulted was the Earth entering a new ice age with much of the world being uninhabitable by humans. 

A wealthy billionaire, Joseph Wilford, has built a train that runs on a track around the entire globe. The train runs in perpetual motion and has 1001 cars, and is filled with livestock, fruits and vegetables, and water filtration. It has everything to keep those humans onboard alive. The train continually travels around the world non-stop. Only the richest of the rich can afford a ticket on the train. As the train was leaving the station, many poor and homeless people jumped on board, effectively taking over the train’s last cars. Living in a self-contained world of 1001 train cars that are strictly segregated by class, the story revolves around what the classes do to survive and what each must do to maintain their place in this world.

The production of this series is top-notch. The special effects of the train, the ice-covered world, and the action sequences are well done. For a television series, we see things that you would almost expect to see in a film. Given that pretty much all the action takes place on a train, the creators did a great job of making this an engaging setting and not just feel like we’re sitting in a room or series of rooms the entire time. 

The cast is also solid. The owner of the train, Joseph Wilford, is played amazingly by Sean Bean (Game of Thrones), and his conductor Melanie is played strongly by Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind), and the leader of the rebellion is played by Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) with compassion and empathy.

SPECIAL FEATURES

“Overview”
“Class Warfare”
“Jennifer & Daveed – Behind The Scenes Interview”
“The Train”
“Behind the Curtain: Art of the Frozen World”

This series holds nothing back, getting the strongest performance from the entire cast. Snowpiercer is exciting, gripping, and riveting in a way that builds steadily as each of the ten one-hour episodes plays out. 

Snowpiercer: The Complete First Season is currently available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.