Bong Joon Ho
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Brazil (1985)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017), Mickey 17 (2025)
Themes Visuals
…with costume designs and ideas reminiscent of La Jetée and Brazil—films that explore the perception of reality versus one's future.
…reminiscent of films like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil…
The latter is so named in an affectionate nod to an overt inspiration, Terry Gilliam, who conjured memorable sci-fi grotesqueries in Brazil and 12 Monkeys; the same courtesy could have plausibly been extended to Jeunet and Caro or Lang, whose similarly visionary futuristic pictures of spoilt humanity certainly influenced this one.
While Bong's movies are typically anchored in a greater degree of credibility than his contemporaries Kim Jee-woon and Park Chan-wook (the latter is a producer here), "Snowpiercer" reflects the expressive aspects found in all of their works as well as many others, with its dystopian elements echoing countless precedents — from "Brazil" (there's even a newly developed character slyly named Gilliam) to "Mad Max" and "The Matrix," as well as the mother of them all, George Orwell's "1984."
If the name "Gilliam" set off a little tremor of excitement when you heard it that is no accident because, with its combination of startling visuals, a head-spinning storyline and oddball characters that don't always conform to their presumed parameters, "Snowpiercer" is a film definitely in the vein of the works of the great Terry Gilliam , especially his 1985 landmark " Brazil " (which, funnily enough, also had a distributor that was originally unwilling to release it without massive cuts).
You can see the film’s nods to “Brazil” and other similar, less mobile dystopias — the secret of the food supply for the back-of-the-train passengers evokes “The Matrix,” while the need for the young to serve the state touches on everything from “Logan’s Run” to the tale of Minos of Crete.
No Other Choice (2025)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
influenced by Parasite (2019), The Host (2006)
Themes
Insomuch as the Best Picture-winner Parasite spoke to South Korea’s staggering wealth inequality, No Other Choice speaks to something equally essential…
One especially strange scene, in which Man-su, one of his targets, and the target’s wife wrestle on the floor for a gun, is reminiscent of Parasite in how the working classes are pitted against each other despite their shared struggles.
Unlike, let’s say, the class divide montage in Parasite, No Other Choice isn’t fixated with any neorealist depictions of poverty.
It’s not unlike recent Best Picture winner Parasite, from the filmmaker’s South Korean contemporary Bong Joon-ho.
Similar to Parasite, it asks you to sympathize with the lead character’s desperate plight without feeling like you’re cheering on the bad guy.
The film has been compared to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019), but No Other Choice is less about poverty and more about the middle classes trying to cling on to their status.
The story, like its titular gigantic pig-hippo, is a hybrid, nodding to kid-creature teams from E.T. to My Neighbor Totoro, while also dabbling in both farcical and sincere ecodrama.
These are charming scenes, reminiscent of “Pete’s Dragon” (as she tosses real fruit to the animated creature) and “My Neighbor Totoro” (right down to the way Mija naps on the giant beast’s belly), featuring great visual effects work on the creature, designed to look adorably dog-like.
In a first act that is strongly reminiscent of Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, Bong charmingly portrays the loving bond between Mija and Okja as they cavort about the forest, pick persimmons, of which Okja is particularly fond, and take naps in the shade with Mija cozily stretched out atop Okja’s massive stomach.
In many ways the film comes on like a children’s story, with scenes of Mija and Okja in an idyllic forest capturing in live-action the same sense of wonder as Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (“Spirited Away,” “My Neighbor Totoro”), whom Bong has acknowledged as an influence, before the action takes increasingly ominous, darker turns.
It could be called either audacious or misjudged when the final act takes us to a factory farm for giant pigs, where the film startlingly turns into something between My Neighbor Totoro and Le Sang des Bêtes.
Much as with Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer , the allegory is unmissable, without throttling the action.
As Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise so exquisitely pull the curtain back on humanity’s cruelest impulses, Urrutia embraces dystopian monstrosity through elementary necessities.
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s feature-length debut is a supremely confident genre mash-up that fuses the mysterious-prison conceit of Canadian classic Cube with the tongue-in-cheek social commentary of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer before slathering it all with torn strips of flesh and buckets of blood.
South Korean director Bong Joon Ho certainly didn't invent the class-based science-fiction parable with Snowpiercer , his acclaimed 2014 thriller about a bloody armed revolt on a speeding train arranged so the poor residents rot in the back and the rich elites luxuriate in the front cars.
The Platform is an incendiary commentary on the state of affairs around the world with a similar cry to action as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer.
While even admirers of The Platform upon those early screenings might have somewhat glibly summarized the film as a “vertical Snowpiercer ”, what we see now as March 2020 draws to a close and The Platform is about to become readily accessible to self-isolated and quarantined audiences is something altogether weightier.
Soylent Green (1973)
Directed by Richard Fleischer
influenced Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017)
Themes Plot
The sci-fi genre has been clogged lately with films that run the gamut between young adult soap operas to a film like “Snowpiercer” that is reminiscent of a future akin to that of the future shock of “Soylent Green” or to a lesser extent the latest “Purge” offering.
Snowpiercer‘s comic book origins are most apparent in these moments, and references to everything from Dark City to Takeshi Miike to Soylent Green can be found littered everywhere else.
Metropolis (1926), The Time Machine (1960), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Soylent Green (1973), Blade Runner (1982) and Dark City (1998) all were forerunners of The Hunger Games , Divergent , and even the Transformer series.
The post-apocalyptic film has been done many times before – “Soylent Green,” “A Boy and His Dog,” “The Mad Max” trilogy, “Waterworld” are just some.
Some might say that “Okja” is a mash up of moments from such films as “Lassie,” “King Kong,” “Mighty Joe Young,” “Soylent Green” and, even “E.T.” And, in a way, it is.
The Wailing (2016)
Directed by Na Hong-jin
influenced Memories of Murder (2003), Snowpiercer (2013), Parasite (2019)
Themes
Films like Oldboy, Mother, I Saw the Devil, The Handmaiden and The Wailing – but a small cross-section of critically-acclaimed twisty and dark Korean imports – reveal the inner monologue of a country foisted repeatedly into rapid change.
All three concoct a devious scheme to oust the Park’s housekeeper Moon-gwang (Jeong-eun Lee, "Okja," "The Wailing"), inherited by the Parks from the home’s architect, to make way for mom Chung-sook (Hyae Jin Chang, "Secret Sunshine").
La película también es prueba contundente de que el cine coreano actualmente produce algunas de las voces más interesantes del séptimo arte en la actualidad, con esta siendo la parte alta de un movimiento al que han contribuido películas como “The Wailing”, “Train to Busan”, “The Handmaiden” y “Burning” en años recientes.
Director of Photography Hong Kyung-pyo ("Snowpiercer") uses natural lighting and stylish camera work to complement Hong-Jin's vision.
His work on Snowpiercer was as successful at helping establish a natural lived-in quality, the bonus effect here is that The Wailing’s fantastical moments earn a real kick and a bonus element of discomforting reality.
He and his crew — particularly cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo ("Snowpiercer") and production designer Lee Hwo-kyung — also create a compelling and foreboding atmosphere that finds scares in the most everyday of places and scenarios.
It's the recombinant offspring of all those science-fiction pictures of the 1950s and '60s in which exposure to atomic radiation (often referred to as both "atomic" and "radiation") or hazardous chemicals (sometimes also radioactive) results in something very large and inhospitable: "Them!" (giant ants), "Tarantula" (giant spider), "Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People" (giant fungi), "The Amazing Colossal Man" (giant bald guy), "The Giant Behemoth" (giant behemoth -- both giant and a behemoth, but more precisely a radioactive ocean-dwelling Godzilla clone), "Frankenstein Conquers the World" (giant Frankenstein's monster atomically regenerated from the beating heart of the original monster after the A-bomb is dropped on Hiroshima), and so on.
This South Korean box-office monster is an overlong but lively descendant of such antique beastie features as "Godzilla," "Them!" and "Monster From the Ocean Floor" (all from 1954, the launch year for irradiated cinematic mutants).
We all remember the many mutant monsters created by atomic radiation in films of the 1950s, the best of the lot being the giant ants in "Them!"
While Bong's movies are typically anchored in a greater degree of credibility than his contemporaries Kim Jee-woon and Park Chan-wook (the latter is a producer here), "Snowpiercer" reflects the expressive aspects found in all of their works as well as many others, with its dystopian elements echoing countless precedents — from "Brazil" (there's even a newly developed character slyly named Gilliam) to "Mad Max" and "The Matrix," as well as the mother of them all, George Orwell's "1984."
You can see the film’s nods to “Brazil” and other similar, less mobile dystopias — the secret of the food supply for the back-of-the-train passengers evokes “The Matrix,” while the need for the young to serve the state touches on everything from “Logan’s Run” to the tale of Minos of Crete.
Watching it, I was reminded of the first time I experienced The Matrix or District 9. Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all too rare sensation that you've just witnessed something you've never seen before...and need to see again and again.
They’re bribed into aiding the revolutionaries with the highly addictive hallucinogenic drug kronole, which adds Alice In Wonderland and The Matrix to the long list of pop-cult references Snowpiercer conjures up.
With shades of Brazil and The Matrix , Snowpiercer shifts between social satire, superb action sequences, and a vaguely philosophical "The train is, like, a metaphor for civilization , man" bent.
Metropolis (1927)
Directed by Fritz Lang
influenced Snowpiercer (2013), Parasite (2019)
Themes Visuals
Los primeros no tienen una genuina intención de buscar la superación, sino la aspiración simplemente de reemplazar a su interlocutor en el disfrute del bienestar: una lucha de clases, por lo tanto, muy diferente desde el punto de vista marxista, pero que conduce al mismo resultado: el choque violento y sin corazón, como lo mostró Fritz Lang en Metrópolis (1927).
Metropolis (1926), The Time Machine (1960), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Soylent Green (1973), Blade Runner (1982) and Dark City (1998) all were forerunners of The Hunger Games , Divergent , and even the Transformer series.
The movie projects as outlandishly blunt a social metaphor as any movie since Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis envisioned a futuristic New York wherein the workers lived and labored in a realm below the subway while their rulers cavorted in rooftop gardens higher than the Empire State Building.
If Bong movies like Memories of Murder and Barking Dogs Don’t Bite established a fondness for the edge of 1970’s American cinema, and The Host adopted the paranoid wonder of young Spielberg, Snowpiercer forages for sustenance in the work of cinematic sci-fi pioneers like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, showing a particular fondness for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
This is something of a trend, as Bong’s movie joins with such recent works as “Elysium” and “The Hunger Games” series to be among the most class-conscious science-fiction epics since Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” which was released in 1927, as if in anticipation of the imminent worldwide economic depression.
El posapocalipsis ferroviario parece surgir artísticamente de la conjunción o confluencia imaginativa de tres poetas visionarios tan genialmente irreductibles como Dante (su poema La Divina Comedia), Fritz Lang (su ambiguo filme anticipatorio Metrópolis 27) y Ernst Jünger (su premonitoria novela crítica velada pero toleradamente antihitleriana El trabajador 32), al primero se le debe la excelsitud mantuana de esa invención de círculos infernales que son vagones que son secciones del tren (sección de cola, sección de cuarentena, sección de prisión, sección de agua, sección de frente), pero también la añoranza del bistec, del rostro materno, de la tierra olvidada o jamás vista, del póstumo cigarrillo y el postrer cerillo, o de las balas hace años extintas; a Lang y a su paradigmática parábola distópica se le debe sin duda esa atroz segregación plástica de los irremediables trabajadores esclavizados en geométricos grupos compactos para recibir sentados el indoctrinamiento nuestro de cada…
An ambitious and stylish sci-fi epic, its vivid production design brings to mind Brazil and Blade Runner, with narrative tinges of The Truman Show and Children of Men.
Metropolis (1926), The Time Machine (1960), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Soylent Green (1973), Blade Runner (1982) and Dark City (1998) all were forerunners of The Hunger Games , Divergent , and even the Transformer series.
If Bong movies like Memories of Murder and Barking Dogs Don’t Bite established a fondness for the edge of 1970’s American cinema, and The Host adopted the paranoid wonder of young Spielberg, Snowpiercer forages for sustenance in the work of cinematic sci-fi pioneers like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, showing a particular fondness for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
Echoing the dystopian brilliance of Blade Runner and Brazil and beset by remarkably similar studio wrangling over the final cut, Snowpiercer is an audacious, immersive and nightmarish masterpiece.
Ya sea por el desolado paisaje polar que se observa fuera del tren, el alucinante diseño de escenografías que hacen de sus interiores un deleite visual o por el maravilloso elenco multi nacional, el trabajo más reciente del coreano es tan puntual en lo que quiere significar, tan dinámico en su realización y tan estilizado en su visión que no cuesta trabajo imaginar un futuro (esperemos menos distópico que el aquí presentado) en donde la película se convierta en un referente como trabajos de la talla de la ya mencionada The Matrix u otros clásicos como A Clockwork Orange y Blade Runner.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Okja (2017), Parasite (2019)
Themes Plot
This has resulted in a number of great films over the year—the true-life serial killer investigation “Memories of Murder” (2003), the “Godzilla”-inspired monster movie epic “The Host” (2006) and the elaborate train-based dystopian sci-fi saga “Snowpiercer” (2013)—and even on the rare occasions when he has slipped—I confess to not being much of a fan of his odd “E.T.” riff “Okja” (2017)—his mistakes have at least had the good manners to be as ambitious as his successes.
It’s also because it’s a relationship we recognize from the other children’s classics to which it easily compares (“E.T.” being the obvious touchpoint), and possibly even, if we were very lucky kids, from our actual childhoods.
The very notion of blending an ET-style heart-warmer with a sometimes graphic exploration of industrial-scale food production practices might be a challenge too far for most tastes.
Some might say that “Okja” is a mash up of moments from such films as “Lassie,” “King Kong,” “Mighty Joe Young,” “Soylent Green” and, even “E.T.” And, in a way, it is.
On the one hand, it is a film that is clearly trying to hit the same sweet spot that “E.T.” did 35 years ago and there are a number of moments here that are indeed as magical, both technologically and emotionally, as anything that Spielberg whipped up back in the day.
The movie’s underlying premise — child bonds with otherworldly beast and defends it from cruel adults — easily calls to mind “E.T.” or “Pete’s Dragon,” but Bong bends the formula into his own agenda.
Runaway Train (1985)
Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky
influenced Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017)
Visuals Plot Themes
At which point “Snowpiercer” sheds the close-quarters claustrophobia of the first half (which nods to such classic cinematic railway fare as “The Narrow Margin” and “Runaway Train”) in favor of a more expansive vision.
It’s a tradition that runs from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat to the likes of Cube and The Raid (for static, or relatively static locations); and taking in Speed , Runaway Train , Air Force One , and Lars von Trier’s Europa (closed spaces that actually move).
The quest of the bedraggled tail-enders feels like a bloody “The Wizard of Oz” set on a “Runaway Train,” with each section they assault a revelation.
Then there’s Andrei Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train and the hellbent rapture of Denzel Washington and Chris Pine trying to brake the runaway in Tony Scott’s Unstoppable.
If you must, it’s Runaway Train meets Brazil — Kurosawa and Gilliam, together at last.
His Snowpiercer remade Kurosawa’s Runaway Train into an Orwellian allegory.
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Directed by Ruben Östlund
influenced by Parasite (2019), Snowpiercer (2013)
Themes Plot
Triangle of Sadness is a clunkier Parasite. Both films seek to critique the chasm between the rich and the poor and show how out of touch the wealthiest people are when it comes to the most basic of tasks.
In this particular scene, there is something very Parasite-esque about the filming, designed to accent that beneath every “low” class is still an even lower one doing far more grunt (read: bitch) work.
During this act, Östlund keeps the camera mostly static and in medium-wide shots, slowly building tension and mixing influences from everything from "Titanic" to "Parasite" and Jordan Peele's "Us" for chaotic and delightfully gross results.
Se restando a tempi recenti può venire in mente Parasite (che però per tono e messa in scena non c’entra davvero nulla)…
Like the train in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013), this ship of fools serves as a concrete metaphor for the class system…
It’s best going into act three without knowing too much, so I’ll just leave it at this: Parasite meets “Gilligan’s Island.”
The final act’s resolution—reminiscent of Starship Troopers but lacking its satirical bite—feels rushed and overly tidy.
At times, Bong gets a little too close to the same territory covered by Starship Troopers, but the effect is more potent in 2025 than Verhoeven’s classic.
It’s Bond’s Moonraker meets Groundhog Day meets Multiplicity with Starship Troopers thrown in for good measure.
…it doesn't even play like a standard genre trope, but specifically like a blend of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the film version of Starship Troopers…
Train to Busan (2016)
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho
influenced by Snowpiercer (2013), The Host (2006)
Plot Themes Visuals
MONTREAL — In what will undoubtedly be called “Snowpiercer”-with-zombies in countless reviews (well, including this one), director Sang-ho Yeon’s “Train To Busan,” making its North American premiere at Fantasia Film Festival, has a hook that sells the sizzle in a few short words: On a train hurtling across South Korea, passengers must fight to survive against horde of zombies.
As an allegory of class rebellion and moral polarization, it proves just as biting as Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi dystopia “Snowpiercer,” while delivering even more unpretentious fun.
Equal parts “Snowpiercer” and “World War Z,” the film introduces itself as the rare pastiche with enough personality to feel like something new.
(If you’re looking for that, there’s always Snowpiercer.)
The bullet train environment is the major selling point for Train to Busan, and like Snowpiercer, the film wrings out much of its momentum from a sense of visual progression.
There are echoes of Snowpiercer in the film’s depiction of societal collapse.
Marshland (2014)
Directed by Alberto Rodríguez
influenced by Memories of Murder (2003)
Plot Visuals Themes
In that vein, it has something in common with Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder , and for both of those films a working knowledge of contextual concerns helps a lot in engaging with the twisty plot.
The winner of ten Goyas (including Best Film, Director and Lead Actor) takes visual and tonal inspiration from the work of David Fincher, and from rural crime films like Memories of Murder , but retains a strong grasp on its specific cultural and political milieu.
Spanish auteur Alberto Rodríguez’s latest release, Marshland , easily holds its own with the stalwarts of this fascinating and cinematically rich subgenre, which includes the likes of David Fincher’s Zodiac , Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder and Chris Gerolmo’s Citizen X .
At times the plot teasingly recalls Joseph Losey's The Servant and Pier Paolo Pasoloni’s Theorem , poison-tipped parables about cunning social outcasts staging stealth home invasions against upper-class hosts.
Taking cues from classics of domestic intrigue such as Kim Ki-young’s “The Housemaid” (1960) and Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” (1963), they send this domestic drama vaulting into satire, suspense, terror and full-blown tragedy.
As with his fantastic 2006 monster mash-up The Host, Bong knows how to sneak a bigger allegorical message into his manic whirligig celluloid contraption—Okja feels like Fast Food Nation as directed by Terry Gilliam with The Smiths’ Meat is Murder playing on the soundtrack.
Okja is basically an R-rated kids' movie that remains exciting and engaging enough throughout, with brutal images of animal slaughtering that will both remind the audience of Fast Food Nation and perhaps even convince them to turn vegetarian.
What begins as a tranquil buddy movie finishes up in the blood-soaked slaughterhouse where Okja is due to end her days; it’s as though My Neighbour Totoro had morphed into Fast Food Nation.
While it starts with the gentle human-animal dynamics of “Babe,” it eventually arrives at the polemics of “Fast Food Nation,” revealing a movie eager to please and editorialize at the same time.
The climactic slaughterhouse scene reaches beyond the urgency of Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and Eric Schlossers Fast Food Nation .
Rather, it’s a murky fusion of parent and peer reminiscent of Roy and Lilly Dillon in The Grifters.
High-Rise recalls the simplistic social symbolism of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer—it’s Class Warfare 101.
It’s like Snowpiercer (real estate stands in for a post apocalyptic train), with Jeremy Irons’ all-powerful Mr.
Lo mejor está todavía por venir pues los personajes de Jump/Wheatley/Ballard son bizarros por ser familiares, desde el arquitecto hasta la estrella pop, desde el ama de casa oprimida hasta el exitoso hombre que nos guía por este laberinto de elevadores que multiplican rostros que se parecen siempre a los de alguien más -y piensen aquí en la frivolidad turbia de American Psycho (EUA, 2000)- y son ellos quienes a pesar de la debacle anunciada (Snowpiercer se asoma más de una vez, aunque sin la potencia estética de Wheatley) deciden quedarse en el edificio, en el sistema y reproducirlo aunque nada pueda soportarlo.
It’s simplistic to label “High-Rise,” Ben Wheatley’s retro-futuristic tale of class warfare, a vertical “Snowpiercer.”
Watching High-Rise, I was reminded of the many other, better films that have tackled class anxiety in a similar setting: George Romero’s Land of the Dead , Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie , Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer and (at the top of this particular class) Fritz Lang’s Metropolis .
Hace un par de años, el público fue sorprendido por la adaptación a cines del cómic Le Transperceneige que, en las manos de Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Mother) se convirtió en la alegórica El Expreso del Miedo (Snowpiercer).