Bugonia's Writer Details the Many Surprising Twists of the Latest Sci-Fi Film

Bugonia screenwriter the writer barely recalls what transpires in Save the Green Planet!. It's a little surprising, since he crafted the script for the director’s latest reimagining of the 2003 Korean dark sci-fi comedy. Rather than analyzing the source material for ideas, the screenwriter behind his previous work watched the movie once, jotted down some thoughts, and began writing.

“I watched Save the Green Planet once,” the screenwriter states. “I couldn't clearly recall the film in great detail. I didn't want to feel as though I had to be faithfully adapting or remaking or honoring another filmmaker's work. The fairest thing to both films was to have them exist independently.”

While the basic plot of a emotionally troubled man (Jesse Plemons in Bugonia) who kidnaps a business leader he’s convinced is an alien in disguise is pretty much the same in both films, the differences are significant. For one thing, the writer rewrote the executive character, played by a man in Jang Joon-hwan’s original, as a woman. (The director chose his regular partner the actress in the role.) The endings differ slightly too, in the way they address their central question: Is the character an alien in disguise or not really?

Tracy feels that answer is a bit irrelevant.

“I never was really focused on the surprise element,” he comments. “I didn't want the movie to just be a gadget that does one surprise, and then once it does that surprise, it's like: OK, well, what else does this toy do?”

Nevertheless, Tracy has a lot to discuss on the topic. The interview with the screenwriter touched on Bugonia’s finale and its implications, along with the methods he and the director collaborated to bring those twists to life.

Warning: Complete details follow for the conclusion of Bugonia.

Therefore, is Emma Stone an alien or not an alien?

In brief: Yes.

Just like in Save the Green Planet, the end of this version discloses that Stone’s character, a pharmaceutical executive named Michelle Fuller, is actually alien royalty in hiding. Once she manipulates her captor Teddy (the actor) into killing himself using her advanced device, Fuller beams back up to her alien vessel.

The reality that this is unexpected is a testament to Stone’s acting skills. During the two-hour film, she maintains suspense through a layered portrayal that may take multiple viewings to fully understand.

“She talked a lot about how it was the first time she had to give a performance where she felt she had to be conscious of people watching the movie a second time. How those rewatching are going to think,” the writer explains. "She was aware the upon a repeat viewing a person watches this movie, They know that I know that I'm… understand?”

He trails off, before adding, “Thus, her performance needed to reflect this awareness in her acting.”

Designing the aliens and their vessel

After the CEO ultimately shows her real identity, we get a quick look of her spaceship and other extraterrestrials before the film ends. Their vessel has a unique design, which Tracy shares was meant to look like a marine animal while steering clear of high-tech visuals.

“[The director] was really interested in almost like a jellyfish-type design for the spaceship, something very natural,” Tracy comments.

They should feel oddly kind of primitive or primitive.

The aliens' clothing is just as interesting as their ship: rounded dress-like garments made from large, ropey threads. Again, the aim was to go against sci-fi movie tradition.

“For the costumes, rather than being futuristic, they [were meant to|aimed to] appear unusually kind of primitive or basic, and yet also highly decorative and sophisticated, because it's such an intricate and elegant creation on those strange knit costumes,” Tracy says. He adds that Lanthimos “thought of it as being a extremely old society. He wasn't into the notion of any element being sleek and silver, or some ultra-modern cosmic vision.”

The end of the world (or only humanity)

Perhaps the most significant change between the new film and the original is that in the first version, the extraterrestrials react to their ruler's abduction and mistreatment by destroying planet Earth. Bugonia adopts a somewhat more nuanced approach, with its aliens choosing to snuff out all human life, while leaving the Earth and its other inhabitants intact.

“My intention to do in the script was a vision of the planet post-human existence,” Tracy explains.

In the film's conclusion, we see a sequence of scenes of life across the globe. All humans are deceased where they were located moments earlier, but the world continues. How viewers, are meant to interpret all this is up for debate. Does the conclusion of the film hopeful or pessimistic? Are people fated to perish or worth saving? Is the planet be better off without us?

Tracy isn’t willing to provide a clear resolution in any direction.

“Certain viewers find it to be a very bleak conclusion, or a sad finale, a hopeless ending,” he states. “Different audiences see it as being a oddly hopeful or happy ending. In my opinion there's different ways to read it.”

Bugonia is in select cinemas now, with a broader opening on Oct. 31.