Netflix Sci-Fi Movies That Deserve More Attention – /Film

Early in “Okja,” a young girl named Mija falls from a mountain while taking her giant genetically engineered superpig Okja for a walk. Okja struggles to pull Mija to safety via her rope leash, but is not quite strong enough. Then she sees a nearby stump of wood sticking out of the rock face. With a running start, Okja uses the stump as a fulcrum for the rope leash, throwing Mija to safety as Okja herself falls into the trees. Mija tracks down Okja, who is winded but unharmed on the forest floor, and gives her a big hug. A certain kind of viewer may struggle to suspend disbelief during this scene. Pigs are smart, but are they smart enough to use physics-assisted tools to save people from death? Perhaps not. Yet real life pigs have been observed using tools as of 2019. If pigs are smarter than they are given credit for, what does that say about the people who eat them?

Meat-eating is just one part of “Okja,” the film Bong Joon-ho made with Netflix before he took over the world with “Parasite.” “Okja” fearlessly mashes together Spielbergian sentiment, expensive special effects, and a blunt but effective satire of corporate politics. Tilda Swinton is there too, returning from a starring turn in Bong’s earlier “Snowpiercer” to play a different but equally memorable villain. At the time of its release, the critical consensus was that “Okja” was good but also just a bit too much. Certainly, Bong’s Korean language films like “Memories of Murder” and “The Host” remain his best. But don’t underestimate “Okja.” It perfectly captures the contradictions of late stage capitalism, setting the language of Ted Talks and Whole Foods against the cold, harsh reality of money changing hands from one person to another.