Filmoria podcast on Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I recently recorded a podcast about Captain America: The Winter Soldier for Filmoria, along with Rebecca Pahle of the Mary Sue, and Grace Duffy and Lesley Coffin, both of Filmoria. Regular HelloTailor readers may already have read quite enough about this movie, but on the off-chance that you're still interested, you can listen to the podcast here on Soundcloud! I'm still fascinated by this movie, and we all had a great time discussing it at length. :D

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Costuming and Design in Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- Nick Fury, Black Widow, and S.H.I.E.L.D.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU. 
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky.

People love to namecheck spandex when talking about superhero costumes, but as far as I recall there's no spandex to be seen anywhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Cap's costume toned down to a subtle navy blue for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the most comicbook-looking character we see is Nick Fury.

With each new appearance, I've grown to love Nick Fury's costumes more and more. Not just because they look cool, but because of the internal logic of why he dresses like that. To understand what I'm getting at here, take a moment to think about S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, and Fury's role within the organization.



In The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other Marvel movies, S.H.I.E.L.D. is portrayed as a quasi-governmental Men in Black organization. It's populated by military types, agents like Coulson, jumpsuit-wearing Helicarrier personnel, and a smattering of individuals like Black Widow and Hawkeye. Fury is in charge, with Maria Hill as the deputy director and Alexander Pierce as his immediate superior, a kind of liaison between S.H.I.E.L.D. and various world governments.

Up until now Fury was the authority figure, a character who swoops in and solves problems or tells the heroes what to do. He was basically a trigger-happy, morally ambiguous Gandalf figure.

CATWS brought in a much-needed new dimension of fallibility to Nick Fury, as well as showing him inside S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters for the first time. Alexander Pierce, in his old-fashioned but stylish three-piece suits, both fits in with those surroundings and represents the political establishment. Meanwhile Fury, with his ostentatious black leather outfits, does not exactly seem like he belongs in a grey office building.

There's a certain internal consistency to the costumes at S.H.I.E.L.D., with Maria Hill and most of the Helicarrier personnel wearing navy blue uniforms (the same shade as Cap's new uniform and his nylon biker jacket in this movie, incidentally), and characters like Coulson and Agent 13 wearing subdued businesswear.

Nick Fury does not fall into either category. He's sure as hell not wearing normal clothes that could blend into his surroundings, and I highly doubt that his outfits adhere to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s official uniform. Instead, I can only describe his favourite costume as some kind of supervillain-themed black leather cosplay outfit.

Yes, Nick Fury is a goth.

GIF by harlequinnade

Black leather trenchcoats have a long and storied history in the sci-fi/action movie genre, and it's one that I'll go into in more detail if I ever write about The Matrix. Suffice it to say that there's no practical reason why Nick Fury, a man in his sixties, would choose to wear an ankle-length leather coat every day.

This decision was surely based on style and style alone. And since we've definitely seen him wearing several different coats, I can only imagine what the inside of his wardrobe might look like.

In The Avengers

Fury has two basic costumes throughout the Marvel franchise: a black turtleneck/black trousers outfit, usually coupled with a long black leather coat, and the black "uniform" suit we see in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Aside from being totally goth, Fury's outfits have one major thing in common: they're menacing. The softest, most casual thing we ever see him wear is a dark grey cardigan when he's hospitalized after faking his death, and even then he's wearing it with some sort of bespoke leather sling that looks like a holster.

His black body armour/leather coat outfits are a blatant visual signal for badassery, while the high-collared, uniform-inspired suit he wears in CATWS is particularly interesting in that it has a lot in common with classic villain costumes. That "uniform" jacket is reminiscent of the officer's uniforms on the Death Star. Fury has the potential to "look evil," whereas Alexander Pierce looks perfectly neutral at all times. Rich and neutral, much like Guy Pearce's supervillain character in Iron Man 3, in fact.

Nick Fury's badass black outfits make him into a visually iconic figure, even within the movie itself. This has the effect of a kind of reverse disguise because as soon as Nick Fury takes off his signature costume, it's very easy for him to disappear. When people are expecting a big, imposing figure in a sweeping black coat and eyepatch, they're not going to be looking for an elderly man in a hoodie and sunglasses. I absolutely loved this costume changeover at the end, not just because of the way it utilizes Samuel L. Jackson's age but because of the link it provides with Black Widow.

I'm not overly familiar with Black Widow comics, but my impression is that she's often portrayed as a rather vampy character. Her most famous visual characteristics are her vibrant red hair and shiny black catsuit, which is generally drawn to be sexier than the version we see in the movies. I'm happy with the MCU's interpretation of her appearance, partly because it allowed me to develop a pet theory about her hair.

The movies obviously had to keep Back Widow's red hair, but instead of going for a natural shade like Pepper Potts, they went for a bright red tone that could only come from a bottle. That's where my comparison with Nick Fury comes in. I think that Black Widow purposefully dyes her hair such a noticeable shade because it then becomes her defining feature. The result? As soon as she changes her hair colour to something else, she can easily slip under the radar. Another reverse disguise, just like Nick Fury's carefully constructed image as a leather-wearing badass.

I'm ambivalent over whether we ever see Black Widow's own "real" dress sense. Perhaps she doesn't even have one. In Iron Man 2 she wears tight, expensive businesswear while undercover as Tony Stark's new P.A., while in The Avengers we see her wearing a similar costume to the jeans and leather jacket she wears for a few scenes in CATWS. The dark leather blazer she wears in the graveyard scene looks far closer to the kind of thing we might expect from the comics (although I also think it looks about 15 years out of style, despite being a $2,400 Burberry design).

Black Widow is meant to be a very enigmatic character, and her ability to change and utilize her appearance means that her costumes are understandably difficult to pin down.

When you see Steve and Natasha together they both appear to be wearing generic, nondescript clothes, but they chose them for very different reasons. Steve probably doesn't know how to shop and may just have picked out the plainest thing possible, whereas Natasha has the capacity to put a great deal of thought and analysis into what image she wants to present to the world.

For me, the most important aspect of Black Widow's costuming in CATWS is that it's yet another volley against the idiots who think Scarlett Johansson is only onscreen to look pretty. Even in a general sense CATWS is the most sexless movie in the entire franchise, and the most sexualised Black Widow situation is perhaps a split-second shot of her butt in the catsuit in an early scene. (Incidentally, Guardians of the Galaxy was pretty awful in this regard.)

When she's wearing what we assume are her own clothes, she wears skinny jeans and casual jackets, and when she's in disguise she wears a baggy grey hoodie and sneakers. Her t-shirts for each outfit are so similar that they might as well have come from a multipack. In other words, a selection of incredibly normal, neutral-coloured outfits designed to blend in with thousands of other women in their twenties. Perfect for an accomplished spy, and perfect for the realistic tone of the movie as a whole.

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Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers, Part 1: SHIELD and Part 4: Black Widow & Hawkeye.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU. 
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky.

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Doctor Who: The Doctor's new outfit, and some thoughts on female companions and costume design.

The unveiling of a new Doctor Who costume is a lot like a superhero rebranding -- or a new collection by an established fashion label. It's a combined attempt to get people excited about innovation, while reassuring everyone that not too much has changed. And so, the BBC announced Capaldi's new costume by talking about how it blends elements of old and new -- for example, the visual callback to John Pertwee's costume.

Thanks to the age gap between Capaldi and Matt Smith, the whole "old vs. new" thing is specifically relevant to this regeneration. Smith was dressed in an almost grandfatherly way (tweed, bow tie and braces), but that had the side-effect of making him look like a hipster. This was problematic because the Doctor's costume should never resemble a current fashion trend.

If you can look at the Doctor and say, "That guy looks like he should be hanging out in a vintage shoe shop in 21st century Hackney," then it detracts from his image as an alien -- although of course, if you make him look too alien then you can't take him seriously. Capaldi's costume sidesteps this issue by being extremely simple and pared-down, which I enjoy a great deal (not least because I want to wear the entire outfit myself).

Looking at Clara and the Doctor in the first episode of season 8, the similarities between their two outfits are obvious. He's wearing a white shirt with a prominent collar and no tie, in a more severe version of Clara's lace collar. Then there's the black/white/red color palette, and the fact that he's wearing a cardigan rather than a waistcoat underneath his jacket. If you wanted, you could probably even stretch to linking Clara's tartan skirt to the fact that Twelve has a Scottish accent.

To me, this link between the Doctor and Clara's clothes is a clear sign that intentionally or otherwise, he imprinted on her after regenerating. (Although if you look at Clara's cardigan, you'll see that it's patterned with bow ties -- a callback to Eleven's signature accessory. She's still looking back to the Doctor's previous incarnation, whereas the new Doctor is calling out for her attention.

I no longer have much trust in Steven Moffat as showrunner, but I enjoyed the way the new Doctor was introduced as being rather emotionally vulnerable. He isn't just desperate for attention (which would be typical for the Doctor) but is needy for support from Clara. When he puts on his new costume for the first time, he immediately looks to Clara for reassurance.

Intriguingly, there's a third person in this regeneration costume club: "Missy." This character is almost certainly a villain, and seems to be collecting people who die as a result of the Doctor's actions.

Missy wears a female version of the Doctor's costume: A stiff white collar with no tie, and a black coat with short lapels. Missy is also clearly linked to the Doctor in some way -- although the less said about that, the better. I don't trust Steven Moffat to introduce a female antagonist who refers to the Doctor as her "boyfriend."

Regarding Doctor Who's increasingly dubious relationship with its female characters, I have mixed feelings about Clara's tenure on the show. Her characterization last season was practically nonexistent, but season 8 seems far more promising. Unfortunately, I do have some problems with this new running "joke" where the Doctor makes fun of Clara's appearance, because it's just so... pointless and mean? Moffat is weirdly obsessed with the attractiveness of his female characters, and this often carries over into episodes by other writers.

Moffat may not write every episode, but he's in charge of the overall story arc and tone of the show, which often means editing or adding to other people's scripts. For example, I find it difficult to believe that last season, Neil Gaiman wrote the Doctor describing Clara as “a mystery wrapped in an enigma, squeezed into a skirt that’s a little too tight." This line obviously annoyed me due to Moffat's history with female characters, but also because Clara's skirt was not actually tight during this scene. If you're gonna insert creepy, sexist comments into the show, then at least make sure they're relevant.


When you combine this with the way Moffat talks about women in real life, all those comments about Clara's appearance are far more distracting. In two episodes, the Doctor has called her "short and mannish," mocked her (supposed) vanity, said that she was "built like a man," and commented that she looked tired and it was good that she was "still making an effort."

The thing is, all these jokes seem to have come out of nowhere. In "Deep Breath," the Doctor says Clara is egocentric and obsessed with her appearance, but we've never seen much evidence of that. Not unless you count the fact that she always has nice hair and clothes, which you could equally have said about Martha back in season 3. Then there's all the unrelated comments about her appearance from characters like Strax, which are apparently just included for laughs.

If this dynamic only existed between Twelve and Clara, then I might accept it as a quirk of their relationship. However, we've already seen plenty of Moffat-era episodes that include things like River advising Amy, "Never let the Doctor see you age." Moffat has a creepy fixation with gender roles and women's looks, and this is inadvertently ruining a characterization detail he introduced in "Deep Breath": Clara's vanity.

I really enjoy the idea of Clara being a little vain about her looks, because it's very rare to see this trait in a "good" female character. It also explains why Clara always looks so pretty all the time, because otherwise we'd have to assume that it's simply because she's a young woman on TV. Sadly, this characteristic is completely undermined if we only ever hear about it in the context of male characters mocking and belittling her for it.

Modern Doctor Who has been very good at providing realistic costumes for its female leads. Rose's hair, makeup and fashion sense all looked appropriate for a 19-year-old girl who grew up in a London council estate. Donna wore clothes that implied she shopped in bog-standard department stores, while Martha, a doctor from a more middle-class family, looked a bit more put-together. Then once we reach the Moffat era, both of Amy's jobs ("kissogram" and fashion model) were based on her attractiveness, so her casual-but-beautiful appearance made sense. But Clara's fashion sense was always a lot harder to pin down, partly because the show failed to tell us much about her as a person.

Compared to the family backstory for Rose or Donna, Clara's background is virtually nonexistent, which didn't help when combined with her shaky characterization in season 7. In her first episode, "Clara Oswald" is actually Oswin the Dalek, who is portrayed by Jenna Coleman in a sexy red dress, perfect makeup and an apron (because she loves to bake). Clara's "real" appearance is a little more toned-down, but is still very pretty and feminine.

In the second episode of the new season, one character remarks that Clara looks like a schoolteacher -- which she is. However, those schoolteacher outfits (patterned dresses, cardigans and cute accessories) alway look very fashionable, which is why I like the idea of Clara taking a lot of pride in her appearance. It explains why she always has such perfect makeup, shiny hair, and great outfits, and I like the idea of a female character who can be heroic and nice, but also kind of vain.

It's just too bad that these traits are accompanied by the Doctor making cracks about her appearance, since this show already includes way too much gender-based humour.

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Interview: "Snowpiercer" costume designer Catherine George.

Following my review of Snowpiercer, I originally intended to write a post discussing the film's very striking costumes. But after looking back at some photos and clips, I was struck by how much more I wanted to learn about the process behind this film's visual design. Each section of the train had such a strong theme (filth and poverty in Tail Section; delusionally wholesome springtime pastels in the school car; opulence and luxury towards the front of the train), but nevertheless felt grounded in reality.

Happily, costume designer Catherine George agreed to an interview about her work on the film. She discussed the inspiration behind Snowpiercer's most memorable costumes, and what it was like to work with director Bong Joon-Ho and a cast including Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton.

HelloTailor: To begin with, how did first you get involved with Snowpiercer? The combination of Korean and English-language production made me curious about how you came to work on the film.

Catherine George: Director Bong had seen We Need To Talk About Kevin at Cannes in 2011, when he was on the jury, and he liked how the costumes looked. They sent me the script a couple of months later and I Skyped with Bong and and his producer Dooho because they were already in Prague prepping [for Snowpiercer]. Before I knew it, I was on a plane to Prague. Bong also met with Tilda Swinton at Cannes as they were both fans of each other’s work, and he decided to cast her as Mason -- a role that was originally written as a man.

[You can read more about the costumes of We Need To Talk About Kevin in this article by Clothes On Film.]

HelloTailor: How much did you consider the idea of finite resources onboard the train? In the Tail Section, people were wearing whatever rags they had left after 17 years. I was wondering what kind of thought went into the idea of a world where you can't really obtain new materials for new clothes. Was this a major concern when you were designing the overall look of each train car?

CG: Yes, we talked a lot about how long the passengers had been on the train, where they’d come from, what random materials they would use to fashion practical clothing. In the Tail Section, the aging and distressing was quite heavy and their clothes were made of different parts of garments pieced together. They had to improvise with whatever materials they could find. Curtis' coat had layer upon layer of repairs.

The character Painter wore a poncho made from old moving blankets. He also wore a helmet with a lantern left over from the train utility-wear, to enable him to draw in his cage at night.

Chan, the kid who steals the matches and lights the flame, was the little thief of the Tail Section. We looked at pictures of child soldiers in Africa who attach small charms and amulets to their clothing to warn off evil spirits. Chan had all kind of stolen trinkets attached to his jacket.

While designing Gilliam and his team of martyrs, I was inspired by an image of an Indian street beggar. The martyrs had missing limbs, and the sarong idea was more practical and combined Eastern and Western elements.

In the prison section, Nam and Yona wear the darker-coloured intense black that we don’t see until we get there. Nam’s costume was inspired by train engineers from the early industrial period. We had discussed at length the global aspect to the mix of people on  the train, and this was elemental in the making of the film. The cast was international as well as the crew, and we did a lot of research into bringing details from different cultures into the wardrobe.

HT: Did you take inspiration from other dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies? Or alternatively, were there any particular aspects of the genre you were trying to avoid?

CG: I loved Tarkovsky’s Stalker, how the colour changes and becomes more intense in the two different worlds. But mostly we talked about how we wanted Snowpiercer to start off at a point of realism and not go in a futuristic sci-fi direction. I love Children of Men and how realism is strong in that movie.

I had designed different headgear for the axe soldiers. They were more like medieval-inspired helmets, but we decided to keep them simpler and in keeping with the theme of creating something from pre-existing materials or that could be improvised, so now the old ones look quite surreal.

HT: When you were creating the look for each of the main characters, how much input did the actors have? I read an interview with Tilda Swinton where she mentioned you visiting her house to discuss what her character would look like, so I'd be really interested to hear more about that. 

Also, I was wondering if she was intentionally designed to look slightly like Ayn Rand, which is a comparison I've heard from a few people already.

CG: I contacted all the actors and shared the research and design ideas for their character early on. When we fit John Hurt in London we tried out an outfit and he shared a great story about aging his own costume for ‘Midnight Express’. Some of the other actors schedules didn’t allow for early fittings so we had to share images via email and we Skyped a lot. 

In Tilda’s case, Mason’s look was so drastically different that we needed to have clothes and prosthetics made in advance in order to camera test. So we travelled to Scotland with a couple of suitcases of clothes, wigs, glasses and teeth and really had fun with the wardrobe, all while Tilda’s fish pie was baking, and we also got to enjoy the Scottish countryside.

I had collected pictures of dictators wearing elaborate uniforms and crazy hand-made medals. I hadn't looked at Ayn Rand specifically but I had collected some images of old ladies from that period who would wear their fur and look down their noses at people who were less better off, a bit like Thatcher. But now people are mentioning it, there are similarities to Ayn Rand .

HT: Could you tell me a little about the process for designing the lead character, Curtis? I remember reading that Chris Evans had to wear sleeveless shirts under his coat in an attempt to make him look less muscular and healthy. That made me wonder how much of an active effort there was to visually distance Chris Evans the actor (who is now so recognizable as Captain America) from Curtis the character.

CG: We talked and worked on Curtis' outfit for a while before Chris came to Prague. We wanted to make Curtis look very recognizable but at the same time anonymous, the common man who can't take the status quo any longer -- and yes, quite different from Captain America.

We did have to fight against his physique and had to cut away the under-layers, his t-shirt, shirt and sweater. We had so many multiples made without sleeves for different scenes.

Chris was available pretty early on to us. He wholeheartedly embraced his role and was in Prague rehearsing the stunt scenes, most of which he did himself. So luckily we were able to have more than one fitting and have more of his input, which was really helpful.

HT: Each of the individual compartments is almost like a little world unto itself, with its very own colour palette. Was there an unusual amount of collaboration with production and set designers for this film, or is it just simply more noticeable thanks to this kind of strong visual cue?

CG: I worked closely with Ondrej Nekvasil, our incredible production designer who himself was somewhat of a Wilford having built this amazing full-size train that was on a gimbal and moved and swayed. He had very beautiful detailed sketches and we talked a lot about the overall colour and tone of each car.

HT: Are there any little custuming details that you feel particularly proud of, that you'd want people to look out for on their second viewing?

CG: After all the dirt and destroying of clothes for the Tail Section, it was really fun working on the different  themes in the front cars. I was especially happy designing the costumes for the lounge-car, the set was opulent like something  from the Orient Express and I was inspired by one of my favorite periods in costume, the late Belle Epoque period. I was able to use very saturated colours and luxe fabrics, although unfortunately it is a very quick scene.

The other little fun moment that you already spotted is Tilda’s cameo in the club scene.

[A clip showing Tilda Swinton's hidden cameo in the club car scene can be watched here on YouTube. It includes some very fabulous eye makeup and an enormous wig.]

Previously: My thoughts on Snowpiercer.

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Summer convention schedule: LonCon3 and Nine Worlds.

I'm going to be at two conventions in August, both in London! The first is Nine Worlds (A.K.A. London Geekfest), a really fun-looking media and fan-culture convention on August 8-10. The second is LonCon3, the World Science Fiction Convention, August 14-18.

I'll be on several panels at each con, and while I suspect my Nine Worlds schedule is probably more relevant to this blog's audience than my WorldCon panels, hopefully some of you guys will be there anyway! Here are the panels I'll be participating in, if any of you are gonna be at WorldCon or Nine Worlds next month. :)

Nine Worlds
All of my panels at Nine Worlds are somewhere called "County B," which I assume will make more sense once we're actually at the convention center.

Friday
22.15 - 23.30, The Fanvid Phenomenon. I love fanvids, and am looking forward to learning more about the creative side of them from some actual fanvidders on this panel!

Saturday
22.15 - 23.30, Collaborative Fanworks. A couple of months ago I contributed to a Captain America fanfic written and drawn alongside several other fans, called Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film. It tells the story of various different (nonexistent) Captain America movie adaptations set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and has somehow led to me being on this convention panel about creativity and collaboration in fandom. IDEK, you guys. IDEK.

Sunday
09.00 - 09.45, Remixing the remix: The etiquette of transforming fanworks. This is a panel about remix culture within fandom, but since it's at 9am, I have no idea what it will be like. Hopefully I'll be awake and coherent enough to not make an idiot of myself, anyway.

13.30 - 14.45, Fashion, Costume and Inspiring Fans: three talks on fashion and costume. I'm doing a talk on movie costume design! This is undoubtedly the thing HelloTailor readers will be most interested in, and I'd really love it if any of you decided to show up. :)

17.00 - 18.15, Legitimacy and Monetization of Fandom. This is a really interesting topic for me because I write a lot about the media campaigns behind big-budget franchises like The Hunger Games and Marvel, which leverage the power of fandom to help publicise their movies. However, I'm also the managing editor of a publishing company that was crowdfunded by the fan community, so I have a personal perspective of the indie side of things. One of our authors, Erin Claiborne, will be on this panel too, as well as a couple of other panels throughout the convention. You'll be hearing more about her soon because her book is coming out this Autumn!

WorldCon/LonCon3
I know far fewer people at WorldCon than at Nine Worlds, so feel free to contact me (Twitter @Hello_Tailor is probably easiest) if you want to meet up or recommend a particular event!

Thursday
18.00 - 19.00, Capital Suite 7+12, The Superhero-Industrial Complex. REALLY psyched for this panel, where we'll be discussing Marvel's success with the mega-franchise model of releasing multiple movies set in the same universe.

Friday
15.00, Producer and Celebrity Relationships with Fans. This is a discussion panel and Q&A on the topic of actors, creators and celebrities breaking the so-called fourth wall between fans and celebrities.

Saturday
12:00 - 13:30, Capital Suite 3, Commercializing Fans. Another panel where I'll be appearing in my capacity as managing editor of Big Bang Press, discussing the intersection of fandom and business.

Monday
11:00 - 12:00, Capital Suite 16, The Internet and the Evolution of Fan Communities.


I'll also be appearing at GeekGirlCon in October, in Seattle. But I'll post more about that in a couple of months, once I know my schedule!

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Snowpiercer

Miraculously, Snowpiercer lived up to the many months of anticipation I've experienced since it was released elsewhere. My friends, I have been waiting a long time for this movie.

Every component part of Snowpiercer was another thing that I love to see in blockbuster entertainment. I don't just mean in the shallow, tropey sense that I love dystopian sci-fi, but in the sense that Snowpiercer is a straightforward adventure story that doesn't play to the lowest common denominator. It's simple, but it's not stupid. Its characters are people, there aren't any shitty moments of casual sexism or racism, and it's structured around a piece of interesting, thoughtful political symbolism that you could probably still ignore if you just want to watch Chris Evans Save The Day. 

A friend of mine had issues with the implausibility of Snowpiercer's setting, but I found it pretty easy to accept on its own terms. Like the contrived scenario in Sunshine (another sadly rare example of a good Chris Evans film), the plausibility of the premise was almost meaningless. No, you can't reignite the sun with a weaponized disco ball rocketship, Sunshine. No, it isn't feasible for an entire civilisation to spend 17 years in a perpetually moving train, Snowpiercer. But there were plenty of intentionally surreal touches there to remind us that director Bong Joon-Ho was well aware that the setting wasn't "realistic.". More importantly, the underlying metaphor was clear: Crash the train and risk killing everyone to gain freedom for a few, or maintain the horrifying status quo so that more people can survive in undeserved squalor.

Having now seen Snowpiercer in its original cut, I find it genuinely baffling that Bong Joon-Ho had such difficulty with his US/UK distributors, the Weinsteins. If you haven't been following this saga (which you can read about here), the film came out last year in Korea, Japan and parts of Europe, but Harvey Weinstein somehow decided that English language audiences would respond better to a "simplified" cut. A cut that is rumored to have removed something like 20 minutes of the original movie (including Curtis's monologue at the end), and included the suggested addition of an expository voiceover.

You know, just in case the central plotline of "get to the front of the train" was too complicated.

As a result of this distribution fiasco, the original cut has been trickling through festival screenings for months, with frustrated film fans resorting to crappy bootlegs and European DVDs until the Weinsteins finally deigned to give it a limited release in the US. The situation sounds like a total mess, particularly once you've seen the film in question. I went into the cinema expecting Chris Evans to have a far smaller and less appealing role, for large chunks of the dialogue to be in Korean, and for the whole thing to be far weirder and more ~arthouse than it actually was.

In truth, Snowpiercer is very easy to follow, and contains all the elements required for a successful blockbuster: a famous lead actor and excellent supporting cast, an interesting concept, and a well-paced balance between action scenes and emotional impact. (Although personally, I found myself in the unusual position of wishing there were fewer action scenes, simply because they didn't always seem necessary.)

The belief that Snowpiercer wouldn't appeal to "mainstream" audiences is kind of depressing, especially when you consider the way Hollywood markets The Hunger Games as tween-friendly entertainment. Obviously the Hunger Games movies are less of a commercial risk in that they're adapted from bestselling novels, but seriously: Snowpiercer is hardly any weirder or more traumatising, and it stars Captain America. An even more damning comparison would be Cloud Atlas, which actually was strange and often impenetrable, but still received a huge amount of public attention while Snowpiercer languishes in distribution purgatory.

Snowpiercer may make no sense on a logistical level, but the train's social structure is basically true to life. However, instead of going for the peasant/monarch society you see in many dystopian stories of this type, I was interested to note that there's no practical reason for the colossal divide between rich and poor. There's no evidence that the people in Tail Section are forced into menial labour or ground up into Soylent Green, for example. In fact, the only people with jobs are service workers like the train guards, food production, entertainment for the upper classes, and Tilda Swinton's politician character. The vast majority of passengers are idle, and the people with visible jobs all appear to be enjoying their work -- even the train guards, who are mostly portrayed as thugs and sadists.

The sole exception is the invisible slave labour of the children Wilford kidnaps and hides beneath his floorboards. Timmy's reappearance in the Engine scene was one of the most unexpected moments of the film, partly because when you hear that a powerful man likes to collect children, the immediate assumption is that it's for horrifying entertainment purposes. But instead, the reason was something even more shocking, because we don't expect it. Wilford has dehumanized those children without a shred of remorse, reducing them to a literal cog in the machine.

Rather than having the Tail Section slums-dwellers work on something that supports the rich, we see them being force-fed cockroaches and beaten into submission while the rich take drugs and party (or knit and stare out the window, if they're old). The most significant piece of set design in Tail Section is their squalid bunkbeds, where they spend most of their time when they're not planning insurrection or standing up to be counted. The fact that they're not being forced into some kind of workforce highlights how false the entire system is, because it's clearly just based on Wilford's crackpot idea of how human society should be "balanced" for optimum survival.

It's no coincidence that the man at the head of the train is a deified white patriarch, mirrored perfectly by John Hurt's Gilliam as the working class leader. Together, they keep everything aligned with their warped sense of "balance," and groom Curtis to become a similar leader once they're gone. The great thing is that despite his eventual heroism and self-sacrifice, Curtis really is a good choice of replacement for Wilford.

For all that we get to see that fantastic breakdown monologue at the end, we already know that Curtis is violent and fueled by revenge, that he doesn't trust himself as a leader, that he's the kind of person who would keep his followers in the dark in order to "protect" them (hello, cockroach soup), and that he would rather strategically capture an enemy than save the life of his best friend. Every one of these actions and character traits is understandable, but he's not sufficiently different from Wilford or Gilliam to give us much hope for a potential future with Curtis in charge. His rags-to-riches journey even mirrors what little we know of Wilford, who went from being a normal boy to the richest and most powerful man on the planet.

Wilford and Gilliam are the best kind of villain, because while they're clearly evil and manipulative and have no real care for human beings as individuals, they give every impression of having a near-religious belief in the "balance" of his train's self-contained ecosystem. Every good villain is the hero of their own story, after all.

The conclusive realisation isn't that Curtis has been tricked by Gilliam all along, but that there's no point in attempting to fight the system on its own terms (i.e. by Getting To The Front Of The Train). The only people who recognise the need for true revolution are Namgoong Minsu and Yona. And since this blog post has already careened into the territory of obnoxious undergrad political essays, I may as well describe Namgoong and Yona as what they are: Representatives of the counterculture and the marginalised. The prophets who have become reliant on mind-altering drugs because it's better than facing up to the truth that only they can see.

Snowpiercer is a post-apocalyptic movie about people who are obsessed with avoiding a repeat apocalypse in their ever-shrinking new world. They are hanging by their fingertips from the precipice of yet another disaster.

It's also a story about breaking points, and when Curtis and Yona reach that final moment at the front of the train, we learn that everyone's worst fear is little more than a fairytale. No one had even bothered to check whether the outside world was habitable again.

Once again, it's no coincidence that the central survivors this time round aren't Wilfords or Curtises, but are Yona and Timmy: both visually and thematically the polar opposite of the traditional ruling classes who took charge of the train 17 years ago. I love it all. Curtis is simultaneously a messianic cliche and a takedown of white saviour heroes, because the most important thing he does in the end is kill himself in order to save future generations from more of the same old bullshit.

Curtis is a product of the train -- in fact, the film makes sure to point out that he can't remember life before he was onboard -- and as a result, he's an asshole. He's a brutal killer, and he has no qualms about meting out petty punishments like making Mason eat a cockroach bar while everyone else eats sushi. The difference is that unlike Wilford and Gilliam, he recognises that he has been corrupted by his surroundings. His drive for vengeance and power is the tool that frees people who otherwise might never have escaped: Yona and Timmy, the two great innocents of the movie. But of course, if he'd lived on as well, he'd probably just have turned into another Wilford. 

Honestly, I could talk about Snowpiercer all day. I haven't even gotten into the film's visual beauty, or the way the revolution's journey progresses up the food chain from filth (cockroaches) through cleansing water to plants, then fish, and finally the atavistic party zone of first class passengers. There's also the unexpected humor, with Tilda Swinton taking on the role of darkly comic villain/minion, or the revolution pausing to gape at a classroom full of brainwashed but hilarious spoiled brats. If I have time then I'll write about the costumes in a later post, but for now I'll just live in hope that Snowpiercer will get a proper UK release so I can see it again some day.

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Next: My interview with Snowpiercer costume designer Catherine George.

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Article link roundup + BBC radio tomorrow!

Sorry I haven't posted the final part of my Captain America: The Winter Soldier costume review! I've been too busy for the past couple of weeks, but I should have time to write it soon. In the meantime, here's some other stuff.

BBC Radio: I'm going to be on BBC Radio Scotland's Culture Studio show on Thursday afternoon, talking about fan culture. I'll be live on air at about 3.30pm GMT+1, but if you tune in from the start of the show you'll hear some discussion of X-Men: Days of Future Past, and an interview with screenwriter Simon Kinberg. You can find the episode here on the BBC website, and I think you can listen online elsewhere with sites like Tunein.

Recent articles: A few of my recent Daily Dot articles may be of interest to you guys. First, the Ultimate Guide to Sebastian Stan. Second, my post-mortem of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season finale. Finally, my thoughts on the ultra-gothic new TV series Penny Dreadful, which I loved.

Fanfic: This is something of a departure from the kind of stuff I usually post on this blog, but I recently co-wrote a Captain America fanfic that takes the form of discussion, reviews and commentary on the various (fictional) Captain America movies that might actually have been made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself.

It's called "Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film," and I don't think it's too odious for me to say I LOVE THIS THING because 90% of it was written by other (much funnier) people. In particular, I love the parody of a slightly pretentious Sight & Sound article about a purposefully tragic French art film about Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Personally, I stuck to my strengths and wrote a HelloTailor-style review of a terrible 1980s action movie called Captain America and the Red Skull: a hilarious fiasco from start to finish. You can see the poster above, created by the very talented Neenya.

X-Men: I'll write about X-Men: Days of Future Past once I've seen it, but until then, here's a link to my costume reviews of X-Men: First Class.

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