Snowpiercer (2013)

Chris Evans Has a Softer Side, Says ‘Snowpiercer’ Director Joon-ho Bong

By Kristina Skorbach, Epoch Times
June 26, 2014

NEW YORK—Director of “Snowpiercer,” Korean filmmaker Joon-ho Bong, stopped by a downtown Manhattan hotel on the last leg of the film’s promotional journey on Wednesday, June 25.

“Snowpiercer” is the sci-fi action drama about a post-apocalyptic dystopia, where those who survived a global warming catastrophe have escaped onto a train which runs on a perpetual-motion engine.

On the train, the escapees establish a caste system—those in the front are the most privileged while those in the back are enslaved under the heel of train leader Mason (Tilda Swinton). But when a member of the proletariat, Curtis (Chris Evans), begins to mobilize the lower class and leads them into a battle with the elite, a war erupts.

Although it’s common for directors to write for specific actors, Evans came into the picture after the role was created. He had heard about the film and wanted to meet with Bong before the casting offers went out.

Evans wanted to be part of a serious character-driven independent project that would showcase his abilities as an actor.

“You can say that he’s a very ambitious actor,” Bong said. “He’s very different than the way he appears in ‘Captain America.'”

The casting directors suggested that Bong reviews Evans’ other more serious roles in “Puncture” and “The Iceman.”

“A lot of people see him as this muscle, superhero action guy, but he’s actually very sensitive and has a quiet and introverted side. He’s a very, very smart person, and he’s a director,” Bong said.

Behind Weinsteins' Three Weekend Winners: Surprising 'Snowpiercer,' 'Begin Again' & 'Yves St. Laurent'

Tom Brueggemann

Jun 29, 2014 4:29 pm

[Snowpiercer] This weekend belongs to The Weinstein Company, which opened three films: John Carney’s original musical “Begin Again,” Radius’s well-reviewed Bong Joon-ho actioner “Snowpiercer,” and fashion biopic “Yves St. Laurent.” With room in the market to play–other current films had expanded or were near the end of their runs–these three well-positioned new openers dominated the weekend.

The Weinsteins have been quiet since the last award season. Thus far TWC’s biggest 2014 grosser was Dimension’s “Vampire Academy”($7 million), and with $4.4 million in the till, “The Railway Man” marks their only limited release to pass $2 million.

Opening

“Snowpiercer” (Radius/Weinstein) – Criticwire: A-; Metacritic: 84; Festivals include: Deauville 2013, Berlin 2014, Los Angeles 2014

$162,100 in 8 theaters; PSA: $20,263

The torturous history of the battle to get Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s first English language film, which stars Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton as survivors on a train of survivors during a Dystopian Ice Age) released in his original 126-minute version has been well-reported. Radius took over the release from TWC, and it’s a rousing success.

The $40-million Korea production has already grossed over $80 million worldwide, mainly in South Korea. Radius made a point of the release date as an action alternative to “Transformers.” And it’s working.

First, the reviews have been among the strongest of the year (the 84 from Metacritic is the best for a Weinstein company film since “The Master”). Radius usually (but not always) has parallel Video on Demand play. Though the date for this has not been announced, the theaters playing the film — both initially this weekend and those listed for next Wednesday’s expansion on Moviefone — come mainly if not nearly entirely from those that are willing to be flexible rules about playing VOD films (Landmark, the major specialized chain, so far has little if any participation). This suggests that the film is headed for an early VOD playoff after this initial success.

Why does VOD now seem premature? Here’s why. Only one theater played both this and “Begin Again” — downtown Manhattan’s Angelika, one of the best in the country for limited openings. Through two days, “Snowpiercer,” scheduled for only one screen, grossed $25,200. “Begin,” playing on three screens, has taken in $18,000. Even more startling for veteran gross watchers — L.A.’s Sundance Sunset, which has struggled to get top first run films in the last two years, has grossed over $24,000 in two days – far better than any previous film, while “Begin,” again at three screens at the Arclight, has grossed just under $22,000. The patchwork quilt of other theaters (including three other markets, a Korean-neighborhood LA theater, and only one small screen at New York’s Lincoln Center and another in Brooklyn) — all over-performed based on normal grosses. But these two core NY/LA numbers prove that this could have been a much bigger theatrical success.

What comes next: Some expansion this Wednesday to other cities while we await confirmation of VOD plans.

EXCLUSIVE: Harvey Weinstein Explains How 'Snowpiercer' Became a Gamechanger, We Crunch Theater vs. VOD Numbers

By Anne Thompson and Tom Brueggemann

Jul 21, 2014 5:21 am

Thirty years in, Harvey Weinstein knows the distribution business. While he’s a wily theatrical animal who knows when to spend big on a wide release and when to dump a movie, he took a radical route with Bong Joon-ho’s action adventure “Snowpiercer,” starring Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, seizing the chance to try something new. Weinstein’s decision to open an action picture with major movie stars via autonomous subsidiary RADiUS with a video-on-demand release two weeks after its theatrical opening is rippling through the film community.

As the Hollywood studios struggle with a depressed summer box office, losing the fickle young male demo and locked into a standoff with theater chains on release windows, they’re watching the independents experiment with video-on-demand release models. “Snowpiercer” marks a tipping point in the movie industry’s shift from analog to digital. Why? It marks the most commercial movie to ever open in theaters and quickly go to VOD.

According to Weinstein, following two weeks in theaters, “Snowpiercer”‘s first week on VOD earned $2 million, a company record. That’s a serious number, exceeding the performance for their previous breakout “Bachelorette” (VOD cume: $8.2 million). Movies with stars have always performed better on VOD.

Three indie companies, IFC, Magnolia and Roadside Attractions, have had significant VOD success with big-name films that also had some theatrical impact. The first major “multi-platform” release, Magnolia Pictures’ 2007 heist film “Flawless,” starring Demi Moore and Michael Caine, used a well-promoted theatrical launch to build the imprimatur of quality as well as a sizable VOD audience to the tune of $2 million; in 2010 Magnolia’s “All Good Things,” starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, returned over $5 million on VOD alone. The current multi-platform record-holder is reportedly Roadside Attraction’s “Arbitrage,” at $11 million on VOD. The balancing act is when to exchange the hefty marketing costs of a theatrical release for a smaller VOD number–without the promo expense. Many filmmakers still resist this shift, insisting that a theatric release remains the best way to enhance a movie’s ultimate library value.

Recognizing the shifts in the market, Weinstein banked on the VOD future three years ago by starting an autonomous division at The Weinstein Co., RADiUS, headed by two presidents, Tom Quinn and Jason Janego, who had pioneered theatrical/VOD releasing at Magnolia under president Eamonn Bowles. Believing passionately that there’s a bigger audience to be found on VOD, the duo have been experimenting with different models for multi-platform releases, from premium video-on-demand, which makes a film available at a high premium price-point ahead of theatrical, to theatrical with a much shorter VOD window.

Most of the big theater chains demand that distributors preserve a 90-day window before releasing films on VOD, and refuse to book films that open in advance of that window. About 500 theaters are willing to book VOD titles. (Roadside Attractions, on “Margin Call” and “Arbitrage,” had to four-wall some theaters–buying out the runs–in order to get around this. The upside is you collect all the returns.)

A multi-platform release was not Weinstein’s original plan for “Snowpiercer,” which he acquired after reading the French graphic novel and screenplay and seeing some early footage. Korean producer-distributor CJ Entertainment and Bong wanted a 2500-screen release.

But when Weinstein saw the final film with moviegoers he decided that the picture wouldn’t play for a wide audience without editing changes, especially in the Korean language sections. But Bong didn’t want to alter his film. That was the crux of the much-publicized debate over the film. Go with the director’s cut theatrically and risk spending $25 million on prints and ads and possibly disappoint a mass audience, or stick with the artist’s vision?

Weinstein looked at the film’s performance in France, where it fell off after the opening week and scored only $5.3 million, even though the graphic novel was popular there, which told him it was a cult release. And he saw that Rotten Tomatoes’ score from critics was 94% vs. users’ 77%. That showed him that the film would not play widely with a mainstream audience.
“CJ wanted to go wide, they believed in it,” Weinstein says in a phone interview. “I read the script and saw the footage and when I saw the final movie with the very artistic flourishes that we all love, I thought, ‘it’s not for a wide audience, it’s a smart movie for a smarter audience.'”

So Weinstein renegotiated (for a much smaller minimum guarantee and P & A commitment) a compromise release of Bong’s uncut film with RADiUS, who had earned Bong’s trust at Magnolia, having championed three of his earlier films, including “Mother”–critically praised subtitled genre fare that was not being chased after by other distributors. Quinn and Janego saw a chance to finally try the paradigm that they had wanted to use for “Spring Breakers,” but couldn’t get those filmmakers to agree–instead taking a more conventional approach via A24.

Quinn and Janego passionately argued with Weinstein to let them release “Snowpiercer” for two weeks in the theaters that were willing to book it–not always the top-ranked performers in each market–and go to VOD on the third weekend, taking full advantage of market awareness. The theatrical marketing–a fraction closer to $5 million than $25 million–provided the launchpad for VOD. “We’ve devised a multi-platform model,” says RADiUS’s Quinn. “We’re here to crack that no man’s land between a boutique movie and a blockbuster where there’s no middle ground.”

“RADiUS did it perfectly for a giant financial success,” boasts Weinstein. “We’ve done $2 million in a week on VOD. We’ve never done that much, it’s our biggest weekly number. I think we wind up grossing $4-5 million theatrical beyond VOD, which makes for us all with ancillaries like TV very profitable. That’s the reason I brought in Tom and Jason to TWC, to do an amazing job. I’m not just an old theater guy, I want to be innovative and make movies work.”

RADiUS-TWC has been active since September 2012 (their initial VOD release was “Bachelorette”), but also focused on theatrical (“20 Feet from Stardom”). Nothing among their VOD titles has had close to the potential of “Snowpiercer,” based on how it performed in its brief two-week theater play without VOD competition.

In an uncertain theatrical world, Weinstein was convinced that the uncut “Snowpiercer” was not a guaranteed success in theaters. But its theatrical performance reveals that it was potentially one of the year’s biggest specialized releases, with the potential to gross between $40-60 million theatrically, perhaps as much as “Grand Budapest Hotel,” the year’s biggest specialty success, which is now just under a $60 million total. Only “Chef” from Open Road has grossed over $25 million as a conventional word-of-mouth theatrical release.

This estimate is based on “Snowpiercer”‘s extraordinary opening weekend performance. The PSA of the eight initial theaters was $21,000, slightly above average for a five-city release. Because exhibitors knew of the imminent VOD release, most top-grossing theaters in initial cities–including industry specialized exhibition leader Landmark Theatres– were not available to RADiUS, either based on a policy of not playing releases without a minimum 90-day window, or because they recoiled at playing a film with higher appeal than any previously slated for parallel or near-term streaming.

RADiUS wisely did not announce the imminent VOD date (it leaked), so as to encourage moviegoers to go to the movie. Also, when a movie pops up on VOD menus, the news lights up on social media, providing free and instant publicity.

If we compare the “Snowpiercer” grosses at two locations in New York and Los Angeles, the film’s performance clearly indicates that the film was a high-end specialized performer. The film opened with less initial advertising from RADiUS than the TWC buy for same-day release “Begin Again.”

If “Snowpiercer” had opened at the four best possible theaters in these two cities, with multiple screens (“Snowpiercer” on one Angelika screen in New York outgrossed “Begin Again” on three), this would have had a likely PSA of between $40-60,000. That number is higher than recent Weinstein films “August: Osage County” and “Philomena,” both of which grossed almost $40 million. The numbers include records at the Sundance Sunset in Los Angeles, and strong results elsewhere.

But the film also showed much wider than usual specialized success, suggesting appeal beyond the core often older, critic-influenced crowd. It gave signs of playing for the younger, male, recently increasingly difficult to reach Comic-Con crowd (as this summer’s overall disappointing grosses reveal).

Weinstein will also be releasing “Snowpiercer” in several hundred theaters in the UK, which has less sophisticated VOD apparatus, and will watch the film’s performance closely this weekend in Australia as well.

Here’s TOH box office analyst Tom Brueggemann’s financial projected breakdown based on a 2500-screen theatrical release reaching a projected $50 million, based on sources inside and outside TWC and RADiUS.

The theatrical breakdown:

Marketing expense of $25 million

Film rental (45%) of $22.5 million

Weinstein has an ongoing deal with Netflix (RADiUS as an autonomous company owned by Weinstein doesn’t fall under this). Sources familiar with gross-based Netflix deals suggest that the payout to TWC could have been around $10 million.

Blu-Ray/DVD would have grossed around $6 million (split revenue, with around $3 million net to TWC).

Cable, depreciated somewhat by Netflix exposure, perhaps $6 million more.

Using those figures (again, all of this comes from discussions with multiple players who have worked on specialized films that have grossed in this range, but these could vary widely) show that at $50 million gross TWC would end up netting around $18 million after marketing is deducted when all initial platform revenues came in.

The VOD breakdown: VOD earnings are harder to calculate and project, but here’s a stab after discussing details with multiple industry sources:

The first week’s reported total earnings on VOD and iTunes was $2 million, ranking #1 on the latter. Industry estimates on the distributor return — RADiUS would not confirm any specific deals — ranges from 60 to 80%, much more than theatrical.

Theatrical gross is up to $3.5 million, with $5 million or higher possible. That would mean film rental of between $2-2.5 million. Marketing of about $5 million is a fraction of what TWC’s would have been (increasing VOD sales), but likely could equal the film’s theater gross.

Radius cites 85 million potential customers (multiple people can view the same purchase). 1-2% of these potential buyers actually purchasing the film — a high number for a first-run or shortly thereafter VOD title — would mean somewhere between 850,000 and 1.7 million buyers.

Cable VOD and iTunes costs vary — different cable markets have different price points (it’s $6.99 on Time-Warner LA right now — this often decreases in later weeks). ITunes started at $14.99 to buy the film. Let’s estimate that between the two, the average price ultimately will be $9.

A 2% customer purchase level would mean, at a $9 average price, $15.3 million in revenue. RADiUS’ share estimated at 65% would be about $10 million. Based on the first weekend of $2 million in purchases, this could be a high, but again, the holds for VOD are much better than for theaters.

Blu-Ray/DVD and cable would still bring in revenue, but with the lower theatrical gross and the early VOD, at a lower level than with a pure theatrical release. Figure an additional $5 million return to RADiUS.

By this model, RADiUS gets an after-marketing initial return of $13 million including theatrical gross and subtracting marketing. Again, this is calculating at the high end of possible performance from this multi-platform pattern. The theatrical-driven alternative model was calculated at a slightly less optimistic ($50 million) estimate and again looks like it might have shown a profit of $18 million.

In context though, and as a test of an unproven model, this is more than a respectable showing. It’s a strong enough result to suggest RADiUS and others will continue to experiment with this.

The caveats –despite this impressive potential performance:

First, the combination of elements — strong reviews, cult interest in the director and graphic novel, significant stars, genre appeal — are tough to replicate, and finding the right film to succeed with this won’t be easy.

Second, the excitement for the film came in large part because it did have an initial theatrical play, way over what most specialized films could ever expect and better than most this year that have played at the top theaters. It was key to keep the public unaware of the near-term VOD availability, as many ticket buyers were lured by the attention the film grabbed by opening in theaters with elevated reviews and decent grosses.

The fact that “Snowpiercer” as a genre film was an unlikely Oscar contender also made it possible to take a chance on this kind of opening. Would Roadside have pursued this release on “All Is Lost” or CBS on “Inside Llewyn Davis”? They might have made more money if they had–those awards bookings were expensive given the ultimate theatrical return.

And what is the cost to parent company Weinstein’s relationships with theaters? Presumably RADiUS gives them some deniability. Apart from rankling some of their key customers, this decision also means that a company that so far this year has seen its market share drop to 1.5% (way below their normal annual level) was willing to lose a chance to buttress those numbers.

Unquestionably some sort of increased VOD model will come into play. How will top exhibitors react? Back in the late 1970s, when video first became available, they recoiled and tried to wish it away. But they lost the chance to let the studios use theaters as their exclusive outlets for video rentals, at a time when no retail infrastructure had been built. The best bet for specialized theaters under threat is to allow a four-week theatrical window, allowing top theaters in major markets to have initial crack (perhaps at lower film rental) and accelerated opening dates for some films.

The major chains will still refuse to do this, as wide-release films present a more complex scenario, particularly with the international market affected by any domestic changes. Top specialty theaters could end up facing less competition. They might also hold out for longer regional exclusivity that could work to their benefit. But whatever the ultimate solution, the impact of “Snowpiercer” means we are likely to see more, not fewer, attempts to find the right balance between theatrical and VOD.

Train in Vain: How 'Snowpiercer' Became the Summer's Coolest Movie

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi epic fought its way to American screens — and beats Hollywood blockbusters at their own adrenaline-rush game



By Bilge Ebiri
June 26, 2014

What would happen if, thanks to an attempt to stop global warming that went awry, our big blue marble were plunged into a new ice age? The result would be pretty much what you would expect: Humanity's survivors would find themselves trapped on a perpetually moving supertrain divided by strict us-vs.-them barriers (plebians in the back, patricians in the front), and the huddled masses would have to fight their way to the front, one bloody siege at a time.

That's the central idea behind Snowpiercer, the new film from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho and a strong contender for the most exciting, visually striking and smartest action movie of the season. Several years in the making, this bespoke blockbuster for the international art-house crowd had been a labor of love for the director. Its origins, however, were modest: While working on his epochal 2006 eco-horror/giant-monster movie hit The Host (the highest grossing South Korean film to date), Bong happened to wander into his favorite comic book store in Seoul. By chance, he picked up the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette, about an express train barreling through a postapocalyptic wasteland — and according to the director, "finished the whole thing standing there in the shop.”

"I decided right then and there to make a film out of it," he says, via a translator. But rather than simply adapt the graphic novel, Bong chose to reinvent it, cherry-picking the concept of the futuristic train filled with the rich being in the front and the poor in the back, then leaving the rest of the comic's elements on the side of the tracks. "The key idea behind the film is the way people are to each other,” he says. "It's really a movie about class differences. I wanted to make an exciting movie about the class struggle."

Luckily, Bong's friend and fellow director Park Chan-wook, riding high on the phenomenal international success of his 2005 thriller Oldboy, had just created a production company. He agreed to purchase the rights for Bong, who started writing the early drafts of the script and enlisting American playwright and screenwriter Kelly Masterson (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) to work on the English dialogue. (Although it's a Korean adaptation of a French comic book, most of the film is in English.) "These are the last survivors of humanity," Bong says. "It would have been weird if they were all Korean." But the director also wanted actors like Song Kang-ho (a staple of Bong's movies, dating back to 2003's Memories of Murder) speaking their own language. "I hate it when I see a movie like Memoirs of a Geisha and you've got Chinese actresses speaking English and playing Japanese characters," the filmmaker laments. To get around the issue of language, the characters in Snowpiercer sometimes use devices that simultaneously translate their words. "We already have iPad apps that do this, only slower," says Bong. "It seemed like a natural solution."

The rest of his cast reads like an international who's-who of working actors, ranging from world-cinema stalwarts to Marvelverse superstars. Captain America himself, Chris Evans, plays the proletariat rebellion's leader, Curtis; Bong says he initially thought of The Avengers performer only as a Hollywood hero type, but changed his mind after seeing Evans in the 2011 drug-addiction drama Puncture. Tilda Swinton – who plays a shrill functionary taken hostage by the rebels – adored The Host and sought the director out at Cannes. She was so eager to work with him that Bong changed the character to suit her. "Mason is described in every draft of the script as 'a mild-mannered man in a suit,'" Swinton recalls. John Hurt had been a fan of the director's offbeat 2010 psychological drama Mother, and happily took on the role of Curtis' mentor. A director himself, Ed Harris (who plays the train's inventor and strongman, Wilford) was also impressed with Bong's discipline as a filmmaker: "Every shot is posted on a bulletin board before the day's shooting," he muses.

Preparation was indeed key. The director and his crew had nearly a year of pre-production to imagine this scorched ‚ or rather, freezer-burned — earth and the film's movable social microcosm in all its details. Much of the train was designed by three young Korean conceptual artists taking time off from their day jobs in gaming. Production designer Ondrej Nekvasil, in turn, used their basic designs to build the sets at the Barrandov studios outside of Prague, in the Czech Republic. The train's back compartments are grimy, cramped, and cluttered with steampunk detritus; think of a Hooverville encampment by way of Terry Gilliam. The aristocratic front cars are dotted with lush greenhouses, impressively stocked aquariums, neo-future bathhouses and one very chic nightclub. (There are CGI effects, but they're largely confined to exterior shots of the train.) "I wanted the audience to feel stuck inside this space, and to really feel this environment – like they could reach out and touch this metal and glass," Bong says. "So, I felt I had to create that physical reality as much as possible."

That sense of occupied space also extended to the film's remarkably visceral fight sequences. In what might be Snowpiercer's single most unforgettable action scene, a group of ragtag rebels wielding pipes, hammers, knives, and assorted made-up weapons faces off against a small army of masked soldiers wielding axes. (Bullets, you see, appear to be extinct.) The ensuing melee is intense, brutal, and unbelievably chaotic — and that's before everything switches to darkness, night-vision goggles and flung torches. "Director Bong had storyboards and specific shots he wanted of actors cutting, slicing, thrashing," explains stunt coordinator Julian Spencer. "But we didn't want it to look premeditated, because then it becomes like a dance." Thankfully, Spencer excels at this type of "fresh, raw, real" fighting; he was responsible for the famous sauna fight in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, which involved a very naked Viggo Mortensen and some Russian thugs wielding very sharp implements. "What I like to do is to teach actors how to fight stuntmen – how to hit them, kick them, punch them. Then, I let them run wild."

Still, despite an all-star cast and audience-pleasing action sequences, Snowpiercer almost hit a major roadblock as it made its way to American shores. Late last summer, reports emerged that the Weinstein Company, the film's U.S distributor, wanted 20 minutes cut, to up the tempo of the film – even as the movie was a critical and financial hit across Asia and Europe. The ensuing fan uproar was helped along by some in the cast: Last September, Swinton told reporters at the Deauville Film Festival that "there's no question that all English speaking audiences deserve to see director Bong's cut," pointedly adding that the film works better at "two hours, not one hour and 40 minutes."

Bong now downplays the controversy: "These kinds of things happen, and they're not unique to my film," he says. That may be because he won: The version opening on U.S. screens is the two-hour director's cut, which reportedly tested better with American test screening audiences than the shortened version. The film will be opening in limited release and expanding, but Tom Quinn, president of Radius-TWC, Weinstein's specialty arm, sounds excited about it. "This is our tentpole for the Summer," Quinn says. "We see this as a movie that could play on a thousand-plus screens."

One wants to believe him: As a Senior VP with Magnolia Pictures, Quinn oversaw the releases of three earlier Bong films, including The Host. It would be great to see Snowpiercer became as big an international hit as that earlier film, which also blended cutting social commentary, blockbuster set pieces and the sort of thrills you rarely get out of contemporary marketed-to-death multiplex fare. Regardless, its creators can take pride in the fact that they've beaten Hollywood at its own sci-fi epic/action-flick blockbuster game — and come up with a piece of counterprogramming that's hands down the coolest movie of the summer.

Nominated for Nothing: 'Snowpiercer'

Carolyn Todd

Posted on January 23, 2015




Just about every year, brilliant movies are utterly ignored by the Oscars. The Searchers, Groundhog Day, Breathless, King Kong, Casino Royale, Touch of Evil, Caddyshack, Mean Streets, The Big Lebowski, Blackfish — the Academy has a long history of overlooking comedies, action movies, horror flicks, hard-boiled genre pics, artsy foreign films, and documentaries that aren’t about World War II. Before the ceremony, we’ll be taking a closer look at films that were too small, too weird, or perhaps simply too awesome for the Academy Awards. These are the Non-Nominees.

The film: Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is the story of mankind’s devolution after a plan to counteract global warming backfires, transforming the entire planet into a deadly Arctic tundra. Before all was lost, a billionaire named Wilfred built a behemoth of a train to save the remainders of humanity—and quite literally compartmentalize them by class. The suffering 99 percent is held like cattle in the back of the train—nearly starved, worked to the bone, completely dehumanized, and told to shut up and be grateful, or pay dearly for their insubordination. Meanwhile, the elite one percent luxuriate in their vast front-of-the-train libraries, gourmet sushi restaurants, and plush jazz bars.

Curtis (Chris Evans) and company, with nothing to lose after 17 years of oppression, are sparked by acts of cruelty to revolt by attempting to make their way to the train’s engine. The film’s all-star cast also features Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner and South Korean star Kang-ho Song.

Why it wasn’t nominated: Science fiction and fantasy flicks have a long history of being overlooked by the Academy, save for the special/visual effects categories. The only fantasy film to ever win the group’s top prize was Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. But the tide has been turning in recent years: District 9, Avatar and Inception were all nominated for Best Picture, and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity became the first sci-fi flick to win for Best Director in 2014. (It also tied with American Hustle as the year’s most Oscar-nominated film.) Still, those movies all had something Snowpiercer didn’t—massive marketing campaigns. Which brings us to the next reason the film was shut out.

Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Company bought the American distribution rights to Snowpiercer in 2013, after it had been released in France, South Korea and Japan. He wanted to edit the movie’s runtime down by about 20 minutes and add expository voiceovers in order to broaden its appeal to American audiences. A petition was launched by some impassioned cinematic activists who wanted U.S. audiences to see the director’s cut. Joon-ho held out, and Weinstein finally relented. But while Weinstein didn’t cut the film, he did cut its marketing budget—a lot— and relegate Snowpiercer to a limited theater run in just a couple hundred theaters and a VOD release. As a result, the film raked in a domestic lifetime gross of just $4.5 million. (It did, however, score big numbers on VOD, becoming The Weinstein Company’s highest-grossing on-demand release.)

The film performed comparatively spectacularly overseas, with foreign box offices bringing in 95 percent of the film’s revenue. It did particularly well in South Korea, Joon-ho’s homeland—scoring the eighth best opening weekend of all time, and pulling in nearly $60 million during its run in 2013. It also performed well in France, where the comic it was based on originated, as well as China.

The movie resonated overseas in part because of its global nature—which, unfortunately, further weakened its chances at the Oscars. Snowpiercer was neither homegrown American fare nor a showcase foreign export that could be pegged to a singular exotic locale. Perhaps the globally diverse production of Snowpiercer—based on the French graphic novel series Le Transperceneige (by Jean-Marc Rochette, Jacques Lob and Benjamin Legrand); helmed by a South Korean genre director making his first English-language film; starring American, British, and South Korean actors; filmed in the Czech Republic—was too complex for the pigeonhole-happy Academy.

Why history will remember it better than the Academy did: Global warming, class warfare, the indifference of the one percent, food shortages, the gross underbelly of a stratified society, the self-destruction of humanity… was Snowpiercer the most resonating, relevant film of 2014? Its snubbing becomes even more egregious when you consider how many facets of the movie legitimately merited a nomination. By my count, it could’ve been a player in at least seven categories:

Best Supporting Actress: Perhaps most obviously, Tilda Swinton deserved a nod for her gender-bending, terrifying turn as Mason—the ruthless second-in-command charged with maintaining order and perpetuating the perverse social constructions that keep the dysfunctional class system humming. Swinton steals every scene in which she appears as a manic villain with uncanny mannerisms are at once hysterical and genuinely frightening. (The Oscar-winner was, by the way, also inexplicably ignored by the Academy for two other stellar performances this year in Only Lovers Left Alive and The Grand Budapest Hotel.)

Best Actor: Chris Evans shed his Captain America suit to strip down for this understated, complex, painfully human role. He makes us believe he is a man ravaged by the soul-sucking nature of his society, doing his best to navigate the broken world he lives in and, reluctantly, lead his people out of the dark. He even manages to mutter this line without a trace of melodrama: “I know what people taste like, and I know babies taste best.”

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joon-ho first read La Transperceneige cover to cover while standing in the aisle at a comic book store in Seoul. He recruited Kelly Masterson (who wrote the dark script for Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) to spin the kickass French graphic novel La Transperceneige into an even more kickass cinematic universe—complete with new characters, a compressed timeframe, and visual shock factor. The duo turned cartoon freeze-frames into a living, breathing expression of a world that only existed on paper.

Best Set Design and/or Cinematography: Every train car is a piece of art, from the sooty, decrepit caboose to the ethereal aquarium compartment. Part steampunk, part art-deco, part 1984, the look of the film is crucial to creating such a fantastical yet grippingly-real world. And the action sequences are smartly staged in such a constrained space. Most memorable is a heart-stopping fight scene in a pitch-black car, in which we navigate the bloody brawl from a first-person perspective through a pair of night-vision goggles.

Best Director: Joon-ho blew it out of the water in his first English-language film. What could’ve been an all-over-the-place mess was instead beautifully crafted and compelling. His bold, Orwellian vision and incisive execution rivals the creative genius of Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, and Andy and Lana Wachowsky, masters of the dystopian sci-fi genre.

Best Picture: Fearlessly political, brilliantly allegorical, thrilling to watch, thought-provoking, hard to forget, beautifully filmed, tautly edited, expertly acted, deftly directed, and genuinely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. What else could you ask from a Best Picture?