How ‘Bugonia’ adapts Jang Joon-hwan’s ‘Save the Green Planet!’
Hollywood’s latest South Korean remake from director Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone is politically instructive
Emma Stone on set of "Bugonia."
Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Hollywood remakes of Asian projects are a dime a dozen—and vice versa—but once in a while, they make for fascinating case studies in transformation. Bugonia, the recently released fifth collaboration between Greek Weird Wave director Yorgos Lanthimos and actor-producer Emma Stone, is a prime example. The jet-black comedy drama is poised for various accolades this movie award season, but more importantly, makes for a brilliant and timely look at the effect of conspiracy theories on the American psyche. However, its screenplay by Will Tracy (The Menu) takes root far from American shores. The film is based on a South Korean movie that, although it shares the same kidnapping plot, takes a wildly different approach.
From writer-director Jang Joon-hwan, the 2003 sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet! follows a couple in over their heads—conspiracy theorist Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) and his circus performer girlfriend Su-ni (Hwang Jeong-min)—who kidnap the powerful pharmaceutical executive Man-shik (Baek Yoon-sik), believing him to be a psychic extraterrestrial. Kicking off with a kooky kidnapping in a parking garage, Jang’s film dresses its perpetrators in ridiculous trash bag outfits and hardhats adorned with homemade gizmos, before dropping his opening credit sequence set to a mile-a-minute version of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, covered by South Korean alt-rock band Transfixion. The film lives halfway between cyberpunk and actual punk, with a playful, tongue-in-cheek sensibility that lingers even when the comedy fades, and Jang slowly tunes up the underlying drama.
Save the Green Planet! can be hard to find (unless you know where to look), but it’s a worthwhile watch that occasionally plays like a jolt of electricity. With its parallel plot of a police detective closing in on the kidnappers, its story of ill-conceived interrogation (buoyed by personal tragedy) takes on the form of an action-thriller, and a race against the clock. It’s a fun movie in the simplest sense: a breeze to watch, and intriguing at every turn. Bugonia, however, is the more lurid kind of fun. It’s filled with irony and satirical schadenfreude, and a bit more bloodshed than fans of the original might anticipate.
For one thing, the remake features some key gendered inversions that make things edgier and more uncomfortable. The kidnappers this time are both men, apiarist Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), while their target is a woman, pharma CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone). At play here are contradictions of power, owing to the perpetrators’ strength and aggression compared to the waifish Michelle, whose position in the economic hierarchy provides an intriguing counterbalance. It also ensures that the men’s violence and torture take on distinctly gendered dimensions akin to domestic abuse, including and especially when they shave Michelle’s head—something Byeong-gu and Su-ni do to Man-shik in the original—believing it to be the source of her alien communication.
Additionally, Bugonia is also more explicit about the nature of its kidnappers’ relationship. Where Save the Green Planet! hints toward Su-ni being simple and childlike, Delbis’ Don is much more overtly framed as a character with intellectual disabilities (Delbis himself is autistic). This also positions the ringleader Teddy as more of a manipulator, despite the loving sincerity of their dynamic. The cop character also fulfills a wildly different function in Lanthimos’ remake—he’s played by podcaster and comedian Stavros Halkias, in a hilariously disturbing role—but these plot differences are, individually, mere details in the grand scheme of things. Their totality is much more instructive: Bugonia veers toward recognizable discomfort in a way that suits our current political moment.
In 2003, the average conspiracy theory existed at the fringes of society, making Byeong-gu a fascinating oddity. Today, with the online proliferation of QAnon, Flat Earther-ism, and perhaps most fittingly, the Reptilian Elite—the 2021 Nashville bomber believed in lizard people taking over the planet—conspiracy theories have taken on a much more mainstream flavor, especially in the United States. To those unfamiliar with any of these beliefs, it may sound like total nonsense, but similar to Plemons’ military character in Alex Garland’s Civil War, it’s not so much a hodgepodge viewpoint that makes Teddy dangerous, but rather, the conviction with which he acts on it.
In discussing the differences between the two movies, there is also the question of how they approach their respective final acts (you won’t find explicit spoilers here, but both versions are worth experiencing cold). Since Save the Green Planet! is more of a midnight genre delight, its twist jostles the ongoing plot, changing the nature of the film about two-thirds of the way through. Bugonia, meanwhile, dangles similar questions over its entire runtime, but rather than answering them as explicitly, relegates the very same revelation to a post-script of sorts, in a manner that makes it feel hallucinatory—as though we, the audience, have been sucked into the very same conspiracy as Teddy, in a manner inescapable.
Both films are effective and wildly enjoyable in their own ways, but given the time at which they were made, Save the Green Planet! is a film of observation, whose drama is rooted as much in the unfolding conflict as it is in pity for someone completely far gone. In Bugonia, while one might certainly sympathize with Teddy, he’s as much an anti-hero as he is a stark reflection of emerging 21st Century political mechanics we’ve barely begun to wrap our heads around. It is, in this way, a far scarier update than most remakes of its ilk, since it understands that the world in which its original was made may no longer exist. The present-day conspiracy-addled kidnapper doesn’t wear a funny hat you can spot from afar. He’s the median voter. He’s someone you might pass on the street, and not even know it.
Published on January 2, 2026
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter