The Writer Details the Numerous Surprising Turns of the Latest Science Fiction Movie

Bugonia screenwriter Will Tracy barely recalls what transpires in Save the Green Planet!. That’s a bit of a surprise, given that he wrote the screenplay for the director’s new reimagining of the 2003 Korean dark sci-fi comedy. Instead of poring over the original script for ideas, the screenwriter behind his previous work viewed the movie a single time, took a few notes, and began writing.

“I watched the original once,” the screenwriter states. “I didn’t really remember the movie all that well. My aim wasn't to feel as though I had to be slavishly following or remaking or honoring someone else's vision. The fairest thing to those movies was to have them exist independently.”

While the basic plot of a mentally unstable man (Jesse Plemons in Bugonia) who kidnaps a business leader he’s certain is an extraterrestrial hiding on Earth is mostly the same in both films, the differences are significant. Firstly, the writer re-envisioned the executive character, originally male in Jang Joon-hwan’s original, as a woman. (The director chose his regular partner the actress in the role.) The conclusions differ slightly as well, in the way they address their shared core mystery: Is this person an extraterrestrial or not?

The screenwriter believes that answer is a bit beside the point.

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

However, he has plenty to say on the topic. Our discussion with the screenwriter touched on Bugonia’s ending and what it all means, along with the ways he and the director collaborated to bring those twists to life.

Spoiler Alert: Full spoilers follow for the conclusion of the movie.

Therefore, is Emma Stone an extraterrestrial or not?

Short answer: Absolutely.

Just like in the original film, the conclusion of Bugonia discloses that Stone’s character, a big pharma CEO named Michelle Fuller, is in fact a royal extraterrestrial in hiding. After tricking her captor the unstable man (Plemons) into ending his own life using her teleportation technology, she transports to her Andromedon spaceship.

The fact that this is unexpected is a proof to Stone’s acting skills. During the two-hour movie, she keeps audiences guessing through a layered portrayal that may take multiple viewings to fully understand.

“Emma frequently discussed how it was the initial instance she had to act where she felt she had to be aware of people viewing it again. What the repeat viewers are going to perceive,” Tracy explains. "She knew the second time someone sees this film, They are aware I am conscious of… understand?”

Tracy trails off, before adding, “So she had to be aware this awareness in her acting.”

Designing the Andromedons and their spaceship

Once Stone’s character ultimately shows her real identity, we get a brief glimpse of her spaceship and fellow aliens before Bugonia ends. Their ship has a unique design, which Tracy reveals was intended to look like a marine animal while avoiding high-tech visuals.

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

The goal was for them to seem strangely kind of primitive or ancient.

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

“For the costumes, instead of being advanced, they [were meant to|aimed to] appear unusually kind of primitive or primitive, and yet also quite ornate and sophisticated, because it's such an intricate and beautiful design on those strange knit costumes,” Tracy says. He notes that the director “viewed it as being a extremely old society. He disliked the idea of anything being sleek and silver, or some ultra-modern cosmic vision.”

The conclusion of the Earth (or only humankind)

Perhaps the biggest difference between Bugonia and the original is that in the original Korean movie, the aliens respond to their ruler's abduction and mistreatment by destroying the world. Bugonia adopts a somewhat more nuanced approach, with its aliens opting to eliminate all human life, while keeping the Earth and its other inhabitants intact.

“What I wanted to achieve in the screenplay was a depiction of the planet after humanity,” the writer says.

In the movie’s final moments, we see a sequence of scenes of existence across the planet. Every person lie dead where they were located just before, but the world continues. How viewers, are meant to interpret all this is open to discussion. Does the conclusion of the film hopeful or bleak? Are people fated to perish or deserving of rescue? Is the planet be better off without us?

The screenwriter isn’t willing to offer a clear resolution in any direction.

“Some people see it as a very bleak ending, or a sad finale, a hopeless ending,” he says. “Other people view it as being a strangely hopeful or happy ending. I think there's different ways to understand it.”

The film is in select cinemas at present, with a broader opening on Oct. 31.