Festival programmer and film critic Tony Rayns claims that Harvey Weinstein is planning to trim as much as 20 minutes from Snowpiercer, while adding voiceovers to the beginning and end, before opening it in multiple territories including the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. It's not exactly something new for Weinstein, whose reputation for editing down his foreign acquisitions precedes him and is well-earned. Hey, he didn't get the nickname Harvey Scissorhands for nothing. It's the reasons Rayns gives for the decision which has ruffled a few feathers, saying "TWC people have told Bong that their aim is to make sure the film 'will be understood by audiences in Iowa ... and Oklahoma. Leaving aside the issue of what Weinstein thinks of its audience, it seems to say the least anomalous that the rest of the English-speaking world has to be dragged down to the presumed level of American mid-west hicks."
To put it bluntly, what Rayns means is that Weinstein thinks American Midwest folk are too stupid for the film. It doesn't sound particularly complicated, though, centering on the last remnants of humanity fighting to survive on a perpetually moving train as the outside world is destroyed by global catastrophe. According to the director, whose opinion on it we don't know at this point (Wong Kar-Wai didn't care his The Grandmaster was edited by Weinstein), the majority of the cuts will come from character detail in order to make it more of a streamlined action movie.
It's that last part that bugs me the most, because the last thing we need is yet another sci-fi/action movie. We've seen enough of those this year and few have been very good. Otherwise I'm finding it a little tough to have the same level of outrage that some others have. As I said earlier, this is just what ol' Harvey does, so why in the world would anybody think Snowpiercer would be the exception? He'll slice up Princess Mononoke but not Snowpiercer? Yeah, right. And as for the insulting comments about the American Midwest, that was all Rayns coloring his comments with personal opinion. And the deliberately inflammatory headline by Twitch certainly didn't help matters. So how about we wait and see how Snowpiercer turns out before getting all hot 'n bothered? Or at the very least wait until we know when it will be in theaters. Rayns says the U.K. will be protesting the changes, and Australia may follow suit, but what that means exactly is anybody's guess. It probably doesn't mean anything at all, and chances are we'll see the version of the film that Weinstein wants us to see. If it turns out to be a stinker because of his meddling, he'll feel the brunt of the backlash, as he should.
