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Bugonia was recently nominated for several Academy Awards, including best picture. After seeing this film, I became interested in seeing the original film that Bugonia is a remake of, the Korean film Save the Green Planet!.
While the two films share the same premise, genre, and story, they differ greatly in tone. Bugonia was directed by Yorgos Lanthinos and adheres to his style of understated comedy. Save the Green Planet! (directed by Jang Joon-hwan) on the other hand, is much sillier and somewhat ridiculous. It uses its outlandish set design and in-your-face editing to entertain the audience and keep them focused on the message.
Bugonia made several small changes to Save the Green Planet!'s original story. Several characters are gender swapped, like the CEO (Baek Yoon-shik in Save the Green Planet! and Emma Stone in Bugonia). In my opinion, the change gives Bugonia a somewhat feminist undertone. It puts both the CEO and the bee keeper (Shin Ha-kyun in Save the Green Planet! and Jesse Plemons in Bugonia) in marginalized positions.
A similar theme can be seen in the choice to make Teddy (Bugonia's bee keeper) a conspiracy theorist. Many modern conspiracy theories (such as QAnon) have their roots in Alt-Right bigotry. It makes the audience less likely to believe Teddy as his judgement may be clouded by hatred.
Bugonia replaces Byeong-ku's (Save the Green Planet!'s bee keeper) wife, Su-ni, (Hwang jun-min) with a younger brother, Don (Aidan Delbis). This is where the plot somewhat diverges from the source material. Su-ni leaves the bee keeper for the circus around the midpoint of the film, whereas Don stays with Teddy the entire time.
Save the Green Planet! dedicates a decent portion of its runtime to following the detectives investigating the CEO's disappearance. This makes it feel a bit more like an action film than the thriller of Bugonia.
Bugonia removes a lot of the biblical imagery found in Save the Green Planet!, such as the CEO being crucified. This imagery adds to the idea that the Andromedans (the alien race in both films) are the regretful gods of the stories.
Bugonia and Save the Green Planet! have the same ending: the CEO is taken back to the mothership and makes the decision to end the world. The difference is that the world in Save the Green Planet! is blown up where in Bugonia, everyone quietly drops dead. Notably, Emma Stone's CEO seems more uneasy about her decision to end the human race where Baek Yoon-shik's CEO shows more anger during the decision. He seems at peace with his choice.
This moment encapsulates the two films. Where Bugonia is understated, Save the Green Planet! is bold. The films seem to stand in stark opposition to each other, yet they still convey the same message. They get the audience to question how far they would go to save the world and ask if the world is even worth saving at all.
