{"id":156074,"date":"2025-10-31T22:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T22:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/156074\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T22:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T22:20:10","slug":"save-the-green-planet-is-the-manic-conspiratorial-acid-trip-bugonia-only-hinted-at-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/156074\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Save the Green Planet’ Is the Manic, Conspiratorial Acid Trip ‘Bugonia’ Only Hinted at Being"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the director of the modern weird, Yorgos Lanthimos<\/a>, teamed up with frequent collaborator and muse Emma Stone<\/a> on their wild, conspiratorial environmental-extraterrestrial film, Bugonia<\/a>, they drew inspiration from a little-known source: a 2003 Korean film called Save the Green Planet<\/a>. If you walked away from Lanthimos\u2019 deliciously odd and of-the-moment movie, wondering if it could\u2019ve stood to be even more bizarre, its progenitor is definitely worth checking out.<\/p>\n

Directed by Jang Joon-hwan, Save the Green Planet\u2019s premise, which writer Will Tracy adapted for Bugonia, closely informs its Western remake. That said, unlike Bugonia, which lets you coast in cold on the promise that Lanthimos and Stone are cooking up another slow-burn oddity, Save the Green Planet doesn\u2019t wait to get weird. It does it from frame one.<\/p>\n

It frontloads its madness, declaring its brand of environmentalism to be less Greta Thunberg and more Giorgio Tsoukalos, driven by a dead-serious belief in ancient aliens from Andromeda. It centers on Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun), a young man who abducts Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-sik), a top Korean executive, believing he\u2019s part of an insidious alien reptilian invasion trying to take over Earth while operating under the guise of the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n

Like any fringe conspiracy theory, the story soon escalates; Byeong-gu conducts grueling experiments on Man-shik in his secluded basement torture chamber\/film studio and tries to extract a confession out of the exec.<\/p>\n

Given\u00a0Bugonia\u2019s conceit as\u00a0a remake of Save the Green Planet, it almost goes without saying that there are small, apparent differences between the two films. Instead of Bugonia\u2018s bumbling pseudo-manipulative brother duo of the redpilled Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and bright-eyed and loyal-to-a-fault Don (Aidan Delbis), who threaten to force the truth out of Stone\u2019s Amazon-esque executive Michelle Fuller, Byeong-gu works hand-in-hand with his girlfriend, the charming, spacey Su-ni (Hwang Jeong-min). They\u2019re unified in their effort to extract a confession from Man-shik, whom they believe is intergalactic royalty, by any means necessary.<\/p>\n

\"Save\u00a9 CJ Entertainment <\/p>\n

Other notable differences include the fact that Bugonia\u2018s scene-stealing cop, Stavros Halkias\u2019 Casey, is mainly there for Nathan Fielder-coded awkward conversational laughs, while Save the Green Planet has a more developed B-plot with seasoned Detective Choo (Lee Jae-yong) and green Detective Kim (Lee Joo-hyun) as they track Byeong-gu and piece together the deep-seated psychological motivations behind his fringe machinations.<\/p>\n

Lanthimos\u2019 Bugonia is delightfully chaotic, dry-humored, and utterly captivating\u2014especially with wide shots letting Plemons and Stone chew the scenery\u2014but it left me with the nagging feeling that it could\u2019ve been even weirder on the whole. It was plenty bizarre from start to finish, with an almost blank check assurance that whether Teddy\u2019s conspiracy proved true or false, an explosively entertaining climax was guaranteed. Still, it elicited more reactionary \u201caha!\u201d laughs rather than \u201coh wtf\u201d mouth-agape smirks and raised-eyebrow gawking at the weirdness it committed to celluloid. Save the Green Planet delivers that exact brand of strangeness in excess.<\/p>\n

\"Save\u00a9 CJ Entertainment <\/p>\n

Despite its wild tone, whipping between intense Korean dramas like Kim Jee-won\u2019s I Saw the Devil and the darkly comedic yet ultra-violent style of Takashi Miike\u2019s Ichi the Killer, Jang keeps his conspiratorial, manic thriller dream afloat without seeming tonally dissonant. If anything, the film reveals layers like an infinite matryoshka doll, with more spectacle and suspense to show in spades, in tandem with its gruesome, Saw-like traps. The director\u2019s erratic, experimental, and expressive handheld camerawork and naturalistic framing create a kind of visual synesthesia\u2014blurring mood and meaning to create some of the wildest swings between slapstick absurdity and gut-punch drama ever committed to celluloid.<\/p>\n

\"Save\u00a9 CJ Entertainment <\/p>\n

One of my favorite scenes is Byeong-gu\u2019s full-blown Telltale Heart spiral, where he scrambles to hide the still-breathing evidence of his botched abduction. The undercover inspector drops by for a casual drink and chat about aliens, unknowingly leaning against the very CCTV broadcasting Man-shik\u2014crucified in the basement dungeon, clear as day. Meanwhile, Man-shik\u2019s hand creeps out from a hidden latch, clawing desperately at the inspector\u2019s boot, only for Byeong-gu to stomp it down mid-sentence, all while trying to pass as a normal guy who isn\u2019t sweating bullets at all over his destiny as humanity\u2019s savior, having his DIY makeshift toilet Andromedan torture device unearthed.<\/p>\n

Interwoven with this comedy of errors, Su-ni\u2019s on some random bullshit, dressing up her Barbie doll while monitoring Man-shik, or walking a tightrope between his torture sessions and bathroom breaks. Either that or you\u2019re witnessing Byeong-gu\u2019s delusions\u2014daydreaming himself as a kung fu hero with all the wire-performing skill of 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, revelation and hallucination, teeter with each subsequent scene. All the while, the film refuses to reveal which is which.<\/p>\n

Save the Green Planet feels less cynical than its 2025 remake and also more sincere, even as it oscillates between overt goofiness and oppressively serious tones. Bugonia plays like a prescient black comedy that both sides its way through modern paranoia\u2014laughing equally at the 4Chan-adjacent, QAnon-flavored conspiracists and the woke-pandering corporate execs who speak in syrupy platitudes about inclusivity while quietly wringing every last drop of labor from their workers before clock-out (making sure never to explicitly call it overtime).\u00a0The satire lands easier on the fringe weirdos, who\u2019ve long been the internet\u2019s favorite punching bag, while the executive class gets the safer treatment: flanderized, ironic, and meta-commentary-lite.<\/p>\n

Lanthimos\u2019 version lets the shoe drop either way, leaving you satisfied whether the corporation is alien or not. You even feel a flicker of sympathy for Stone\u2019s Michelle Fuller\u2014her emotionally violent corpo-speak is so gently antagonistic it feels more like a parody of culture than a critique of character. For American audiences, Bugonia is a laugh at the corrosive ideological split of Teddy: the radical environmentalist who lost the forest for the trees to the echo-chambered conspiracist who, perhaps, never saw the forest to begin with.<\/p>\n

Save the Green Planet, by contrast, doesn\u2019t just gesture at corporate evil\u2014it goes all-in on it. Despite Byeong-gui\u2019s absurdity, you can\u2019t help but root for him. Teddy\u2019s chaotic misadventures, meanwhile, feel more like a car crash waiting to happen, keeping you on the edge of your seat to see how much worse his misadventurous situation can get.<\/p>\n

Western remakes often carry the burden of standing on the shoulders of giants, especially amid the steady outpouring of adaptations from Asian cinema.\u00a0As\u00a0Quentin Tarantino once riffed<\/a>, \u201cGreat artists steal. They don\u2019t do homages,\u201d noting that he steals from every single movie ever made. The same argument can be made for Western remakes, which Bugonia now joins in the ranks of with frequent homage-payer Spike Lee\u2019s Highest 2 Lowest\u2014a skinnier example of a remake that, despite Denzel Washington\u2019s star power, can\u2019t quite go toe-to-toe with Akira Kurosawa\u2019s original. Some remakes simply don\u2019t have arms long enough to box in the same weight class as the source.<\/p>\n

Pointing this out isn\u2019t a dig at Bugonia or other remakes\u2014it\u2019s to trace how directors like Lee and Lanthimos zero in on a single thread of the original and amplify it to fit their own cinematic musings, whether it\u2019s AI dread in the arts, conspiracy spirals, or the slow rot of corporate doublespeak to iron them over.<\/p>\n

These films stand shoulder to shoulder with other 2025 anxiety-laden time capsules like Ari Aster\u2019s Eddington and Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another\u2014works steeped in the paranoia of being terminally online, politically scrambled, and spiritually exhausted. Jang did the same with Save the Green Planet, but louder and weirder, for 2003\u2019s anxieties and his own ethos. And he did so by stealing explicitly.<\/p>\n

Jang mines the internet for wild celebrity sex-alien rumors and\u00a0spoofs 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/a>\u2018s apes and obelisk. More pointedly, he flips Misery<\/a>\u2018s dynamic, asking what his chimera of a story might look like from the abductor\u2019s point of view. It\u2019s less plot theft and more joy theft, if there ever was a term. A kind of genre larceny that Lanthimos channels too, less brazenly but just as intentionally in Bugonia. It\u2019s a quality that makes both films different enough to walk away with entirely different takeaways despite, ultimately, being the same story.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the director of the modern weird, Yorgos Lanthimos, teamed up with frequent collaborator and muse Emma Stone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[27318,18,117,19,17,327,91113,23528],"class_list":{"0":"post-156074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bugonia","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-save-the-green-planet","15":"tag-yorgos-lanthimos"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}