‘I watched the film crash and burn at the box office’ – Jang Joon-hwan on Save The Green Planet!

It was in ear­ly 2005 that I first stum­bled across the unlike­ly image of a cos­tumed Kore­an man las­so­ing plan­ets in a fit of gid­dy mania in my local HMV. The DVD in ques­tion had ​‘Tar­tan Asia Extreme’ plas­tered on the head­er, and since I’d already shat my pants watch­ing Japan­ese chil­dren be put to slaugh­ter in Bat­tle Royale and Sadako crawl out of the TV in Ring, my curios­i­ty was piqued. Park Chan-wook’s ham­mer-blud­geon­ing Kore­an thriller Old­boy had debuted on the same label just one month pri­or, while Sym­pa­thy for Mr Vengeance and Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sis­ters were already both in the cat­a­logue. I didn’t know it then, but the first Kore­an Wave was splash­ing into the UK – and Save the Green Plan­et! was its most zany and genre-bend­ing flagship.

A gonzo cham­ber dra­ma draw­ing from hor­ror, sci-fi, com­e­dy and even mar­tial arts movies (for one bonkers scene, any­way), Save the Green Plan­et! was the sto­ry of a delu­sion­al bee­keep­er (Shin Ha-kyun) who kid­naps and tor­tures a furi­ous chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion CEO (Baek Yoon-sik), believ­ing him to be an alien from the plan­et Androm­e­da. Part­ly inspired by a ​‘90s con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry accus­ing Leonar­do DiCaprio of being an alien bent on seduc­ing Earth’s women in a bid for glob­al dom­i­na­tion, the movie offered a shot­gun blast of hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry colours, MTV-style edit­ing, and an unex­pect­ed depth of emo­tion. Despite ini­tial­ly flop­ping in its native coun­try upon release in 2003, it’s wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est Kore­an movies of all time today.

Save the Green Plan­et! returns to the UK for two rare big-screen out­ings in the weeks ahead via the BFI’s bumper ​‘Echoes in Time’ Kore­an cin­e­ma sea­son – so Lit­tle White Lies caught up with mav­er­ick film­mak­er Jang Joon-hwan to reflect on his wild­ly inven­tive debut. With Poor Things’ Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos hav­ing just wrapped shoot­ing a long-spec­u­lat­ed Hol­ly­wood remake (led by Emma Stone and Jesse Ple­mons), this riotous cult clas­sic is ripe for rediscovery.

LWLies: Save the Green Plan­et! was your debut fea­ture — what were your film­mak­ing ambi­tions at the time?

Jang Joon-hwan: I’d been class­mates with Bong Joon-ho at the Kore­an Acad­e­my of Film Arts – I was a light­ing tech­ni­cian on his grad­u­a­tion film, Inco­her­ence (1994), and he was the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er on mine: 2001 Imag­ine (1994). After that, I worked as an assis­tant direc­tor and then wrote a film script with Bong – which was made into Phan­tom: the Sub­ma­rine (Min Byung-chun, 1999). That’s when I decid­ed I should make my own film.

I first envis­aged a big project with a super­hero — but then I won­dered if I could take on a project of this scale on my debut. I decid­ed to cut back and to have only a lim­it­ed num­ber of spaces and char­ac­ters that appear, and the script I wrote from that was Save the Green Plan­et!. My ambi­tion was to cre­ate a sto­ry that was both com­pact and explosive.

The film is a real mish-mash of gen­res. Where did you draw inspi­ra­tion from?

I want­ed to con­vey aspects of all the dif­fer­ent films I had observed and expe­ri­enced up to that point — so there are lots of homages and par­o­dies. The most obvi­ous ones are films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. More hid­den are ref­er­ences to Blade Run­ner, Dressed to Kill, even The Birds by Hitch­cock – as well as Silence of the Lambs.

Else­where, I includ­ed ref­er­ences to children’s car­toons and the sci­ence mag­a­zines I’d read when I was young, as well as Japan­ese ani­ma­tion – and all these ref­er­ence points blend to cre­ate this melt­ing hot­pot of a film. There were sil­ly or child­ish or kitsch visu­al ele­ments inad­ver­tent­ly and know­ing­ly incor­po­rat­ed as well, so it gives the feel of being in a mag­ic eye. I was very relieved and grate­ful it turned out the way it did.

Two mag­net­ic char­ac­ters are at the core of the film. Was there a real-life coun­ter­part that inspired the defi­ant, cap­tive CEO Kang Man-shik?

When I was grow­ing up, South Korea was rapid­ly becom­ing an indus­tri­alised soci­ety, and it had this peri­od of huge growth that we achieved in a mat­ter of decades. With­in that time, there were numer­ous con­flicts and clash­es in the media — acci­dents and inci­dents lead­ing to argu­ments and fights, and some com­pa­nies even mobilised gang­sters called the gusadae to com­mit vio­lence against [protest­ing] workers.

I kept see­ing char­ac­ters like Kang Man-shik in the media, who could be full of avarice and exploita­tive of their work­ers – and so he became a sort of rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of this in a vil­lain-like way. Byeong-gu’s house, mean­while, is set in a coal min­ing town because images of the coal mine col­lapse and strike in the ​‘70s – which I saw on a black and white TV when I was young – remained vivid in my mind.

What about Lee Byeong-gu, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist kidnapper?

He was inspired by Annie, the char­ac­ter played by Kathy Bates in the film Mis­ery. I thought it was a real­ly fun film — but I won­dered, why was she being depict­ed as this evil bitch? I start­ed to won­der what a film would look like from Annie’s point of view, and about this very hurt and wound­ed char­ac­ter becom­ing immersed and absorbed in their own world.

After I saw Shin Ha-kyun in the [Park Chan-wook] film JSA and the [Jang Jin] film Guns and Talks, I thought he’d be per­fect to play this com­plex, mul­ti-faceted char­ac­ter who could show deep grief and vio­lence, a side that’s soft and gen­tle, and anoth­er side that’s incred­i­bly strong and per­sis­tent all in one body.

Save the Green Plan­et! pre­miered in Korea just weeks before major hits like Mem­o­ries of Mur­der and A Tale of Two Sis­ters. Park Chan-wook called it ​“the best Kore­an film ever”, and Par­a­site actor Song Kang-ho said he was ​“deeply moved”. What hap­pened next?

The crit­ics were extreme­ly enthu­si­as­tic — such a film had not come out of Korea before. How­ev­er, when audi­ences saw the film posters, I don’t think they real­ly under­stood what the film was about.

The peo­ple mar­ket­ing the film found it chal­leng­ing – it can be vio­lent or gory, slight­ly fun­ny, or with a touch of melo­dra­ma. But they weren’t hon­est about this. They just appealed to audi­ences that this was a com­e­dy – so when they went into the cin­e­ma, it con­tra­dict­ed their expec­ta­tions. I watched the film crash and burn at the box office. It was very painful.

In the West, it is con­sid­ered a clas­sic of New Kore­an Cin­e­ma. Did local audi­ences warm to it after the ini­tial release?

I was feel­ing very dis­cour­aged, but I noticed that I was being invit­ed to many inter­na­tion­al film fes­ti­vals – which was a sur­pris­ing and odd expe­ri­ence for me. I would meet the audi­ences and feel the enthu­si­asm and I could feel that Kore­an films were begin­ning to be loved by inter­na­tion­al audi­ences as well.

I won some big awards – not only abroad, but back at home, too: like the Grand Bell and Blue Drag­on awards [Jang won Best New Direc­tor at Korea’s two most pres­ti­gious film awards cer­e­monies]. It was like this film was in a coma, and became resus­ci­tat­ed by the inter­na­tion­al response — enabling Kore­an audi­ences to revis­it the film and watch it again. It was a very per­son­al and dra­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. It felt like I was com­ing back from the dead!

When did con­ver­sa­tions about a US remake begin to surface?

Talks start­ed in 2017 or 2018 after my film 1987: When the Day Comes was released. The over­seas team at CJ Enter­tain­ment sug­gest­ed we work on an inter­na­tion­al project, and imme­di­ate­ly I thought of Save the Green Plan­et! – if we made this film in a dif­fer­ent film sys­tem and with dif­fer­ent actors, it could be real­ly fun.

Direc­tor Ari Aster (Hered­i­tary) real­ly liked the film — he’d even par­tic­i­pat­ed in Q&As after screen­ings abroad, so we reached out. He told us he thought it would be very mean­ing­ful to remake it, and agreed to be a part of it.

We were pro­ceed­ing with me as direc­tor, and I col­lab­o­rat­ed with Amer­i­can author Will Tra­cy (Suc­ces­sion; The Menu) to write the script. We were try­ing our best to progress the project, but due to health rea­sons I wasn’t able to work for some time – so we con­tact­ed direc­tor Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, and that’s how we got here!

Why is now an inter­est­ing time to remake a film like this?

Of course, it’s very excit­ing and fun for me – but there is anoth­er way to think about it. Our tiny plan­et hasn’t changed very much, and it remains this very vio­lent world where wars are erupt­ing and peo­ple are fight­ing one anoth­er. In that way, I feel it’s also a shame!

‘Echoes In Time: Kore­an Films of The Gold­en Age and New Cin­e­ma’ is at BFI South­bank until 31 Decem­ber and includes screen­ings of Save the Green Plan­et! on 30 Octo­ber and 30 November.

The Lon­don Kore­an Film Fes­ti­val takes place at BFI South­bank, Ciné Lumière and Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts (ICA) from 1 – 13 November.