Showcasing more three-dimensional emotions than part 1
Easy to understand and fun with licorice characters
Dialogue focusing on explanations is still the same.
A scene from Part 2 of the movie ‘Alien+Human’. Photo provided by CJ ENM
Director Choi Dong-hoon’s extraordinary science fiction and magic feast, ‘Alien + Human,’ is back. Part 2 of ‘Alien + Humans’, which will be released on the 10th, overcomes the disappointment of the first part and delivers a message to the audience with a more three-dimensional emotional line.
There are phrases that are emphasized several times through the mouths of the characters. There is a saying in the Lotus Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, that says, “A person’s thoughts are organized by a person’s pilban.” ‘With every meeting there is parting, and those who leave return immediately.’ The relationship between Goryeo and modern Korea, spanning hundreds of years, finally blossoms in Part 2.
A scene from Part 2 of the movie ‘Alien+Human’. Photo provided by CJ ENM
The story begins with a 4-minute recollection of ‘Ian (Kim Tae-ri)’. Ian’s narration recalls the memories of audiences who had forgotten the previous episode. The robots ‘Guard’ (Kim Woo-bin) and ‘Thunder’, who previously trapped alien prisoners inside human bodies, pick up Ian from the Goryeo Dynasty to transport the prisoners and make her their daughter. Afterwards, Ian is raised in the current timeline, but the leader of the prisoners imprisoned in human bodies, ‘The Architect’, seeks rebellion and tries to spread ‘Hava’, the atmosphere of the star where they lived, to Earth. In the midst of a desperate crisis facing air pollution, Ian comes up with a trick to trap the designer in the past, and they become trapped in the past together. Part 1 also tells the story of ‘Mureuk (played by Ryu Jun-yeol)’, a simple-minded guru from the past, and has been criticized for being somewhat distracting.
Part 2 gradually collects the various devices scattered in Part 1. Although the production still moves back and forth between the past and the present, it is not very difficult to understand the movie through the stories of each character that we have become familiar with through the previous films. Ian’s goal of wanting to get his family back and return to the present intersects with Muruk’s serious concern about his own identity, completing a narrative. The licorice-like acting and dialogue of the freshmen Heukseol (played by Yeom Jeong-ah) and Cheongwoon (played by Jo Woo-jin), whose roles have increased, remind us of the joy of Choi Dong-hoon’s style of humor.
A scene from Part 2 of the movie ‘Alien+Human’. Photo provided by CJ ENM
The ‘Alien + Humans’ project had a production period of 387 days, the longest in Korean history. However, the first part of ‘Alien + Humans’, released in 2022, suffered a box office failure with a cumulative audience of 1.54 million even during the peak summer season. Director Choi Dong-hoon was known as a box office hit with the success of ‘Tazza (2006)’, ‘The Thieves’ (2012), and ‘Assassination’ (2013). When we met at a cafe in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the 8th, he said that after the box office failure of the first part, “I had a strong desire to make a movie that I would not regret,” and that “I went through 150 editing processes to produce the second part.”
Director Choi Dong-hoon, who said after filming ‘Alien + Human’, “I felt like I had become a new director,” compared ‘Alien + Human’ to “the child I love the most” among his works. Roy Orbinson’s song ‘In Dreams’, inserted in the second half, is a token of youth that he had promised to put in a movie someday, and also contains the message of ‘alien + humans’ (“We are always together, This is a song (in a dream).
A scene from Part 2 of the movie ‘Alien+Human’. Photo provided by CJ ENM
There are still some regrets in the movie that are not resolved. These are coincidences that are overused more than necessary, characters’ lines that focus on explanations, and the ‘Choi Dong-hoon’ style of speaking that the main characters ‘Ian’ and ‘Mureuk’ do not have. I think that if the foundation of Part 1 had been well established, Part 2 would have had greater power. However, the ending of Choi Dong-hoon, who says, “I devoted my youth to this movie,” is more interesting than expected. 122 minutes.
