the Netflix series manages to distance itself from the film … by approaching the present

The first season of ‘Snowpiercer: Snowbreaker’ foreshadowed that this Netflix series was a confirmation of a certain creative bankruptcy, which leads to betting on retelling a story just to make money. And despite interesting elements, the result was so inferior to the Bong Joon-Ho movie that it seemed so. But with this second season things have improved a lot.

The story of a train with more than a thousand cars

When the first season of ‘Snowbreaker’ premiered, something smelled a bit of singe: both the director of the original pilot, Scott Derrickson, like the first showrunner, Josh Friedman, had left the project due to creative differences. It seemed that the series was going to take a very different path than planned.

We have indications of how its starting point was (darker and with more prominence from the lower classes), although we can judge what Graeme Manson, its showrunner, got: an interesting series, but one that was missing something.

What started as a criminal plot, with Detective Andre (Daveed Diggs) investigating murders, ended in a revolt that achieved the impossible: that the passengers in the queue were recognized and wealth was redistributed in the midst of a tense peace, on the verge of collapse.

Go, he went from a criminal procedural to retelling what happened in the film, but without the visual power of the Korean filmmaker and the burden of some chapters that did not know very well when to end. Come on, we were not thrilled here. And of course, what was left to tell?

Luckily, the answer benefits all viewers: what was truly interesting remained to be told.

And the reinforcements arrived

Peace does not last long in ‘Snowbreaker’: Wilford (Sean Bean), the creator of the train and its perpetual engine, the one Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) abandoned to his fate, he returns wanting to take what he considers his own aboard the Great Alice, a supply train powered by the same engine as the thousand-car train.

So Wilford attaches Big Alice to the Snowbreaker and begins a power game against two opposing forces forced to agree (Melanie and Andre).

The main difference is that Melanie could be cold and follow along with some of Wilford’s policies (the guy designed openings to put arms through and amputate), but she was human. Wilford goes far beyond depravity and cares little for the means, even the lives of the passengers, to reach his end., which is the reconquest of the Snowbreaker.

The cold war, and never better said, between one and the other vertebrates this second season, while an x-ray is taken of how the arrival of a leader whom some adored enters the passage.

Art imitating mud

Perhaps what most impacts me, and likes, and scares, of this second season it is how terrifyingly similar they have made it to American politics. After all, one of the main points of argument is that how is it possible that a violent and capricious guy like Wilford can win the favor of the people.

Because despite not having Wilford for a day at the helm of the Snowbreaker (something we discovered in the first season), there are many people who believe they owe him their lives for making the train. And so it is, but How many are willing to give up their souls, despite knowing that Wilford purposely sabotages his own train to command it?

Therein lies the interest of this series, now and for future seasons: there is the side of those who are not willing to sacrifice anything in favor of an overwhelming narcissist, no matter how much he promises a social peace (which, in reality, he is altering), and those who believe that they can look the other way because it does not affect them directly.

There is a moment, a phrase, that almost makes me fall off the sofa after having been in suspense: They say the third class don’t care who’s in power if Melanie, Andre or Wilford, because for them life is always the same. It still reverberates in my head, I can’t help but come back to it every time I watch the news or walk down the street.

With that phrase, with this approach, with this moral degradation of many of its passengers in the name of a vague promise that things will improve if they let other people suffer or be denigrated, ‘Snowbreaker’, the series, manages to overtake at the end the film, whose approach was more direct (although, beware, no less accurate).

Because this is no longer about good and bad, but about all the grays in between: it is about the people who do, those who let them do, those who command and those who leave the board. And it’s scary, of course, because maybe it can, recognizing you in one of these wonderful and complex characters can help you better understand your surroundings. I can’t think of a better praise for a fiction.

Technical problems in the wagon

Of course, that at the thematic level the series is outstanding does not mean that all sections work the same. It doesn’t make sense to ask the series directors for the level of Bong Joon-Ho, but there is some visual rubbish. At least, the most shocking moments are carried with ease and there is a scene, with the train descending an infinite curve and numerous red lights in its windows, that manages to be overwhelming.

The only downside that I can really put down is that still don’t know how to end an episode, and not because there is too much footage (something typical of Netflix), but because almost each chapter concatenates the conclusions of the plots without knowing how to thread them.

Passengers on the train

At the acting level, This is Sean Bean season Who had not seen so happy playing the villain of the function for a long time. Another interesting addition is Rowan Blanchard as Alex, Melanie’s lost daughter, who serves as an engineer and is torn between loyalty to Wilford or affection for her mother.

Connelly, by the way, he can finally play a card more than the cold leader with a heart kept in the box officewhile Daveed Diggs cannot believe that after winning a revolution, he has to fight another war. A third leg is Mickey SumnerLike Bess, who leaves his post as a brakeman to become a policeman and witness, first-hand, the uprising of the classes in favor of Wilford.

In general the level of the cast is outstanding and both in script and direction they juggle so that the more than thirty secondary that populate the train have a life and agendaBut there is one other actress who stands out on a level with Bean: Alison Wright as Ruth from the Snowbreaker hospitality service. His fall of the cherry on Wilford is what the series needs to sign his speech: there are people who, until they are touched, prefer not to change their point of view.

I would not like to end without highlighting the translation and adaptation work in charge Maria Sieso, Juan Miguel Valdivieso Y David Suarez for the Spanish version, as well as the dubbing of Deluxe. In the Spanish version there is a very high level, but I want to highlight the work of Jordi Boixaderas, who plays a Wilford as wicked as Bean’s, already Lola Oria, That makes Ruth’s change understand perfectly.

The journey continues

The end of this second season leaves you wanting much more for a simple reason: the speech he has given us so far has not ended in our life. It is illogical to ask a fiction for the answers that we do not have, but one never loses hope in the face of its third season.

At the end of the day, this thousand thirty-four car train was only asked to continue with the proficient level of the first season, and it has delivered more than I expected. I wish it had just been fiction.