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Mija may seem like an improbable foe for the multi-national Mirando Corporation, but she follows in the footsteps of a long line of protagonists in the cinema of celebrated filmmaker BONG who exist on the fringes of society. Before Mija there was a band of destitute rebels facing off against the elites of a train in dystopian sci-fi Snowpiercer (2013), elsewhere in his work, a bickering family escapes the government and tracks down a mutation terrorizing Seoul to save a young girl in The Host (2006). All these protagonists, and the many others in the cinema of BONG Joon-ho, have one thing in common, the absence of power. And the only for way for them to move forward invariably involves clashing with authority. 

In his smaller films, the protagonists are investigators, whether real ones or amateurs, that navigate corners and dead ends, while his bigger films feature dynamos of energy that have to accomplish their missions by constantly moving forward on their feet. In Okja, the largest and most ambitious production ever handled by a Korean filmmaker, Mija becomes a force of nature against a much larger foe, though she does receive help from an animal rights group along the way. Snowpiercer presents us a righteous rebellion and The Host also focuses on a group being unjustly oppressed.

Yet the worlds of BONG’s films hardly offer a simple David vs. Goliath binary, where the weak are pitted against the powerful. Looking beyond his three blockbuster films, the other half of his filmography is far less black and white when it comes to its heroes and villains. These smaller films focus on characters in similarly difficult situations yet their actions are more morally ambiguous and show us just how flexible their scruples are when things don’t go their way.

In these films, as well as his blockbusters, the reverse then applies to those in positions of authority. Across his six films, establishment symbols are more often than not painted as figures of ridicule. An inept detective describes his colleagues as ‘sliding fools’ during a chaotic crime scene in Memories Of Murder (2003). That same detective is unable to catch a serial killer and his ineptitude carries over to Mother (2009), in which small town cops eventually jail the wrong person for the murder of a teenage girl.

BONG’s cinema starts in an apartment block, with an aspiring professor getting frustrated by the sound of a barking dog as he speaks to his friend on the phone. With a pregnant wife but without a job, and the kind of money and connections that would help him land one, the young man of Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) unleashes his frustrations on just about the only thing he has any power over, a small, yapping dog in his building. Later, a young woman working a dead end job makes it her mission to track him down.

Following Barking Dogs Never Bite and his breakout success Memories Of Murder, BONG entered a new realm of filmmaking with The Host. BONG’s creature feature was his first blockbuster title but beyond different production scales, it also proved to be a turning point for BONG from a narrative standpoint. His big-budget films avoid showing us protagonists with too many shades of grey and are instead more rooted in a kind of fantasy where the weak and disenfranchised are able to face up to those in stations of power. The Host became the most successful Korean film of all time when it was released (a title it would hold on to until 2014’s Roaring Currents) and while he returned to the caustic moral ambiguity of his first two films with Mother, a massive critical success, he went on to frame even bigger tales of the haves and have nots of society when he graduated to global filmmaking.

Four years ago, BONG’s tales took on a much larger perspective as bigger budgets and international casts afforded him the opportunity to tackle stories even more ambitious than what he had attempted with The Host. Snowpiercer and Okja bear many similarities, such as their production scales and multi-lingual casts, but also narratively as each is pre-occupied with the world’s self-destructive attitude to the environment and the corrosive influence of governments and corporations who hold on to too much power. Snowpiercer in particular puts forward an aggressive agenda as it hurtles through a crystal clear allegory of a society with strict social ranks that is forced to cannibalize itself for the benefit of those at the top of the rain, or in this case the front of the train.

In Okja, Mija, with her fanny pack and loud tracksuit, is a young girl who grew up a million miles from Seoul. Without a word of English (though she picks some up on the ride over), she travels first to her own capital and then to the nexus of capitalism and global culture when she learns her pet has been brought to New York. Yet while other characters in similar predicaments are easily overwhelmed by their new surroundings, Mija’s ignorance becomes a strength, as well walls and doors fail to create obstacles for her. She bursts through everything that comes her way, just as she freely runs through the rolling hills of her isolated home. 

Following its well-received bow in the international competition section of the Cannes Film Festival in May, Okja will go live on Netflix on June 28th, when it will be made available to the company’s 100 million global subscribers and counting in 190 countries. Following back-to-back big-budget international projects, BONG is reported to be returning to Korea for his next feature Parasite, a tale of a family caught up in an incident that will feature BONG’s Memories Of Murder, The Host and Snowpiercer star SONG Kang-ho in the lead. Given the project’s reported early 2018 start date, fans may not have to wait the usual 3-4 years for a new BONG film, and due to its smaller size, perhaps we can expect to see the filmmaker return to a more intimate tale of flawed protagonists following his pair of soaringly ambitious global blockbusters.