‘Save the Green Planet’ Is the Manic, Conspiratorial Acid Trip ‘Bugonia’ Only Hinted at Being

While the modern queer director, Yorgos LanthimosFrequently associates and teams up with magicians Emma Stone On their wild, scheming extraterrestrial films, BugoniaThey took inspiration from a little-known source: a 2003 Korean film Save the green planet. If you walked away from Lanthimos’ deliciously weird and momentary movie wondering if it could get any weirder, its progenitor is definitely worth checking out.

Directed by Jang Jun-hwan, save the green planet’Its premise, adapted for the author Will Tracy BugoniaClosely informed his western remake. That said, unlike BugoniaWhich lets you coast in the cold on the promise that Lanthimos and Stone are making another slow weirdo, Save the green planet Don’t wait to get weird. It does this from frame one.

It front-loads his madness, proclaiming his brand of environmentalism to be less Greta Thunberg and more Giorgio Tsokalos, driven by a dead-serious belief in ancient aliens from Andromeda. It centers on Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun), a young man who kidnaps Kang Man-shik (Baek Eun-sik), a top Korean executive, believing he is part of a rogue alien reptilian invasion trying to take over Earth while working under the guise of the pharmaceutical industry.

As with any fringe conspiracy theory, the story soon escalated; Byeong-gu conducts gruesome experiments on Man-shik in his secluded basement torture chamber/film studio and tries to extract a confession out of execution.

to give of bugonia Pride as a remake Save the green planetIt almost goes without saying that there are small, obvious differences between the two films. instead of BugoniaThe pseudo-manipulative brother duo of redpiled Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and the bright-eyed and loyal-to-a-fault Don (Aidan Delbis), who threaten to force the truth out of Stone’s Amazon-esque executive Michelle Fuller, Byeong-gu, work with Sue by the hand of her daughter. (Hwang Jeong-min). They are united in their efforts to extract a confession from Man-shik, who they believe is intergalactic royalty, by any means necessary.

Other notable differences are that BugoniaIts scene-stealing cop, Stavros Halkias’ Casey, is there mainly for Nathan Fielder-coded awkward conversational laughs, when Save the green planet There’s a more advanced B-plot with seasoned detective Choo (Lee Jae-young) and green detective Kim (Lee Joo-hyun) as they track down Byeong-gu and piece together the deep-seated psychological motivations behind his scheming.

Lanthimos Bugonia Delightfully chaotic, dry-humored, and downright impressive—especially the wide shots of Plemons and Stone chewing the scenery—but it left me with the nagging feeling that it could have been weirder overall. It was sufficiently wacky from start to finish, almost assuring a blank check whether Teddy’s conspiracy proved true or false, an explosively entertaining climax was guaranteed. Still, it’s a more responsive “Aha!” Rather than “oh WTF” laughs and raised eyebrows glinting at the strangeness committed to celluloid. Save the green planet Delivers the right brand of extra weirdness.

Despite its wild tone, whip into intense Korean dramas like Kim Ji-won I saw the devil and Takashi Mike’s darkly comedic but ultra-violent style Ichi the killerZhang keeps his conspiratorial, manic thriller dream afloat without being tonally dissonant. If anything, the film unfolds layers like an infinite matryoshka doll, with more surprises and suspense in spades, to match its horror. the saw– Like a trap. The director’s erratic, experimental, and expressive handheld camerawork and naturalistic framing create a kind of visual synesthesia — ambiguous moods and meanings that create some of the wildest swings between slapstick absurdity and gut-punch drama committed to celluloid.

One of my favorite scenes is Byeong-gu’s full-blown scene Telltale Heart spiral, where she scrambles to hide the breath-taking evidence of her botched abduction. The undercover inspector grabs a casual drink and chats about aliens, unwittingly leaning into the man-chick broadcasting the CCTV — crucified in the basement dungeon, clear as day. Meanwhile, Man-shik’s hand emerges from a hidden socket, clawing desperately at the inspector’s boot, only for Byung-gu to smother it, while trying to pass as a normal guy who isn’t sweating over his fate as the savior of humanity and his machine to create DIILROM. revealed

Engaging in this comedy of errors, Soo-ni engages in some random nonsense, dressing up her Barbie doll while observing Man-shik, or walking a tightrope between her torture sessions and bathroom breaks. Either that or you’re witnessing Byung-gu’s delusions—daydreaming of himself as a kung fu hero with all his performing skills. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon As he pirouettes through the air and high-kicks his meth dealer. The film plays like a lucid acid trip where dreams and reality, revelations and hallucinations, teeter with each subsequent scene. All the while, the film refuses to reveal which one it is.

Save the green planet It feels less cruel and more sincere than its 2025 remake, even as it oscillates between overt goofiness and oppressively serious tone. Bugonia A prescient black comedy-like drama that pokes its way through modern paranoia on both sides—laughing equally at 4Chan-affiliated, QAnon-flavored conspirators and woke corporate executives who spout syrupy platitudes about inclusion while quietly wringing every last drop of labor from their workers. overtime). It’s easy to satirize fringe weirdos, who have long been the Internet’s favorite punching bag, while the executive class gets the safe treatment: flanderized, ironic, and meta-commentary-lite.

Lanthimos’s version allows the shoe to be dropped either way, leaving you satisfied whether the corporation is alien or not. You even feel a flicker of sympathy for Stone’s Michelle Fuller—her emotionally violent corpo-speak is so mildly antagonistic that it feels more like a culture parody than a character critique. For American viewers, Bugonia A laugh at Teddy’s eroding ideological divide: radical environmentalist who misses the forest for the trees to echo-chambered conspirator who probably never saw the forest to begin with.

Save the green planetConversely, not only does it allude to corporate evil—it goes beyond it Despite Byung-gui’s absurdity, you can’t help him. Meanwhile, Teddy’s chaotic adventures feel like a car accident waiting to happen, keeping you on the edge of your seat to see how bad his misadventures can get.

Western remakes often bear the burden of standing on the shoulders of giants, especially amid the constant proliferation of adaptations from Asian cinema. as Quentin Tarantino was once shocked“Great artists steal. They don’t pay tribute,” noting that he has stolen from every movie ever made. The same argument can be made for the western remake, which Bugonia Now joins frequent tribute-payer Spike Lee’s Maximum 2 Minimum-Despite the star power of Denzel Washington, Akira Kurosawa is a skinny example of a remake that can’t go toe-to-toe with the original. Some remakes simply don’t have long enough arms to box in the same weight class as the source.

This is not a dig at the out hint Bugonia or other remakes–Directors like Lee and Lanthimos need to figure out how to zero in on a single thread of the original and stretch it to fit their own cinematic soundtrack, whether it’s AI fears in the arts, conspiracy spirals, or the slow rot of corporate doublespeak to iron them out.

These films stand shoulder to shoulder with other 2025 anxiety-filled time capsules like Ari Aster Eddington and by Paul Thomas Anderson One battle after another— operates on the paranoia of being terminally online, politically jaded, and spiritually exhausted. So did Jung Save the green planetBut even louder and weirder, 2003 concerns itself with its own principles. And he clearly did it by stealing.

Jang Wilde mines the internet for celebrity sex-alien rumors and hoaxes 2001: A Space OdysseyIts monkeys and obelisks. More precisely, he flips distressIts dynamic, asking what the chimeras of his story might look like from the perspective of the kidnapper. It’s less plot-stealing and more joy-stealing, if there ever was a word. Lanthimos channels a kind of looting as well, less brazenly but deliberately Bugonia. It’s a quality that makes both films different enough to walk away with completely different takeaways, despite being, ultimately, the same story.

Want more io9 news? See when the latest is expected Marvel, Star WarsAnd Star Trek What’s next for the release? The DC Universe in Film and TVAnd everything you need to know about its future Who is the doctor?.