The summer movie season is nearly upon us, but one of the most hotly tipped summer movies (at least for film fans of a certain ilk) still doesn’t have a release date in America: Bong Joon-ho‘s sci-fi extravaganza “Snowpiercer.” The Weinstein Company bought the domestic rights to the movie, which concerns a train traversing a post-apocalyptic, snow-covered earth, and initially had planned to release it this summer, when the movie rolls out globally. But they haven’t said much, so god only knows when it will wash up on American shores. Until then, a recently released behind-the-scenes clip gives us our first look at “Snowpiercer” in motion.
The entire clip is only a minute long and there are scattered images throughout, alongside actual behind-the-scenes footage. Still, it’s enough to give you a sense of the world of “Snowpiercer,” in which different classes and ethnic groups make up different cars on the colossal train. You get a look at John Hurt, Tilda Swinton and Song Kang-ho, although it’s kind of hard to tell considering how dark everything is and how dirty everybody looks. At the end of the clip you see Chris Evans wielding an axe, which is definitely cool. There are also a couple of shots that take place outside of the train, where you see the vast, snow-laden world and one shot where it looks like the train almost derails. It looks like Bong Joon-ho, who had previously directed more modestly scaled genre fare like “Mother” and “The Host,” has a firm grasp of the requirements and limitations of a large-scale sci-fi adventure.
In short: the footage hasn’t exactly lessened our excitement about this movie. “Snowpiercer” will bypass Cannes and open internationally this summer, and hopefully stateside not long after. [via The Film Stage]
