Snowpiercer, 2013

A common theme in sci-fi is urgency—the genre often speculates on the urgent problems of the far-flung and near future to try and instill a sense of caution in the choices of today. At the same time that I was becoming a more politically aware young adult, I started absorbing an influx of smart sci-fi stories about climate change, the crisis that will claim all of us in a matter of decades and that has single-handedly made this past summer the hottest and most insufferable season of my life. Snowpiercer, from Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) is one such story.

Snowpiercer is a class-conscious thriller about a rebellion on board a globe-spanning train carrying the last vestiges of humanity after Earth has effectively frozen over, becoming completely inhospitable. At the tail end of the trains are the working class, who slave away in the train’s squalid makeshift ghettos while the unimaginably wealthy upper class sit in their fancy cars at the front of the train dining like fat cats and pretending nothing is amiss. It isn’t the most high-brow sci-fi concept, nor is it especially showy in the way that the genre tends to be, and that’s why I love it. Snowpiercer is a grisly and down-to-earth tale of of a future I can picture with relative ease, one where the world has fallen into a state of disrepair and rather than cast aside the harmful attitudes we’ve spent generations learning and reinforcing, we double down and doom ourselves to oblivion. — Moises Taveras