Snowpiercer

Whoever made the decision to film season 4 with an abundance of close-ups, hand held cameras, and what looks like cell phones in the season 4 opener, really should be forced to sit on an anthill. That's what watching this show is like. The jump cuts, shaky camera work, jeez, what are they thinking. Let me guess, some "creative thinker" thought, lets give the show a claustrophobic feel with tight shots. This is what happens when someone surrounds themselves with sycophants who tell them they're geniuses. Or it's the fall back on the back of for a show that is not very interesting and is reaching for something it has lost and can't get back. It's the cinematic equivalent of jumping the shark. It reeks of desperation. This shows camera work is physically painful to watch..

I find my opinion similar to most of the reviews out there. The first two seasons were definitely better than the third. Honestly, I don't enjoy the way they focus on three characters in one episode and then switch to another three in the next. Sometimes, you don't see a main character for weeks. I think this format is one reason why season 3 feels so slow and boring.

Most of the characters lack depth, which I attribute to the writing rather than the acting. Melanie is the only character I find worth watching, and Jennifer Connelly delivers a great performance, as always. I aslo think season 3 suffered a lot because she was hardly present.

I've just started season 4, which we've waited ages for, and it looks like they're sticking with the same format, showing different sides of the story in each episode instead of giving us the full picture. It's too early to tell if there will be any improvement in the character dynamics. I hope they don't continue the pattern of alternating episodes between different settings, one outside the train, the next on the train, and so on. This would be very dull. I also hope they bring everyone together again to face the main conflict, or whatever they have planned for this season. And of course, I'm hoping for more Melanie too. Let's see if things improve.

Update after 3 episodes: layton's character is as annoying as ever.. no improvement there.

First of all lets make one think clear, this is a show in a sci-fi setting and Sci-fi has always been experimenting with cheesy and illogical concepts. I don't know why people forgot that. Of cource the idea of a endlessly running train isn't realistic nor would the class system of the train work in real life, but thats not the point of the show. You wouldn't say that fighting with laser swords or travelling through time in a car is very realistic, but it is definitely fun to watch. That is why (at least for me) Snowpiercer works. Is it a show that would win awards for groundbraking acting or writing? No, probably not. But the story is definitely thrilling, the set pieces are fascinating and I am extremely invested in the show.

Like most people, I enjoyed the movie enough to give this show a chance. Season 1 was good enough, with some glaring issues but not TOO many. Season 2 was still watchable, but a clear decline in quality. As for Season 3, it has been painful just to get through each episode, and I'm only still going because I very rarely just stop watching something mid season after I've invested many hours in it already. I truly don't even know where to begin, when explaining why the current season has been so bad. Many reviews have already stated how bad of an actor the guy who plays Layton is, but even the characters who were once interesting and often likeable are barely recognizable anymore. Also, the attempts at artistic shots and dialogue fall flat every single time; it feels like a college student wrote most of the monologs. I'm currently on episode 8 of Season 3 and will, at the very least, finish with this season... but not because it is interesting or captivating. Rather, just out of a general curiosity to see where they're going with the show and to confirm my theory that it can't get any worse (even though episode 7 proved me to be painfully wrong already). You've been warned.

Actors/events carry no significance. In the movie tailies are stuck in the tail section for years, trading body parts etc really having it hard. In this they sort of just walk up and down the carts freely. People from different tiers of the train all seem very energenic, well fed and in great spirit. They look and behave exactly the same the only difference being the clothes. No depiction of the psychological effects of having to wear the same clothes for 17 years, no shower, having to sleep next to hundres of others each night, trading scraps and barely surviving on protein blocks. Wilford being a genius of epic proportion doesn't seem very bright at all. His henchmen should behave like Gestapo but they're more like random henmen 10086 which makes everything the good guys are trying to overcome seem less significant.