2003’s ‘Save The Green Planet’ getting Hollywood remake, which gives me chance to air old grievances

2003 film Save The Green Planet is getting a Hollywood remake, according to recent news, and while not many readers will either remember it or care, the most important thing is that I do. Though why I do is also important.

CJ ENM announced on May 9 that “Save the Green Planet” will be remade in the United States. Director Jang Joon Hwan, who directed the original film, will be in charge of directing, while CJ Vice Chairman Lee Mi Kyung will be in charge of the overall producing. Ari Aster, director of film “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” will produce the remake, and the script will be adapted by writer Will Tracy, who wrote the HBO drama “Succession.” Lee Mi Kyung said, “What I learned from the success of ‘Parasite’ was that audiences around the world communicated with and were entertained by works that were not limited to genres within a large theme. Jang Joon Hwan is a director who can express that, and I am very happy about the decision to remake this movie.”

So yeah, the plot is basically as described in the synopsis provided.

“Save the Green Planet!” is about a man named Lee Byeong Gu (Shin Ha Kyun) who believes aliens exist. He is convinced that Kang Man Shik (Baek Yoon Shik), the head of a chemical production company, is their leader, so he kidnaps the CEO in order to force him to stop the planned destruction of the planet before it is too late.

But that kinda undersells the whole thing a bit?

*Spoiler Alert*

It was movies like this that made me stop judging Korean films of the era by their posters, cause I thought this was gonna be like a light dramedy or something. Instead it comes off a lot more like a psychological thriller with some horror elements, as the main character is revealed to basically have been killing for years and keeps the remains of his victims and shit for “research”.

So yeah, it got quite real quite fast, painting this guy as a serial killer whose delusion is that he’s actually saving the planet by killing aliens. It was quite enthralling and effective in this goal and I was gripped.

Eventually the main character dies in the end, and unfortunately the twist came.

When the aliens do arrive and beam up the executive aboard their ship, we learn he is in fact the alien king himself. Disgusted and angered by the torture and corruption and evils of the world, he deems Earth a failed experiment and blasts it from creation.

I remember being disappointed by this, for reasons others have apparently also agreed with and explained. But most notably because director Jang Joon Hwan‘s inspiration for this was originally Misery but from the kidnapper’s POV. It was brilliant at that, and then went off the rails at the end for no real good reason and kinda ruined it all.

Thus, for once, I’m excited to see if Hollywood changes anything. I assume they’ll go with something about humans destroying the environment, instead of an alien attack, or something along those lines, but I’m hoping they keep it as a psychological thriller and somehow make the ending more cohesive and something that feeds the rest of the plot instead of destroying it.

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