‘Hope’ Director Fine-Tuned the Film After Cannes, and Critics Say It Worked!
Na Hong-jin’s massive creature feature, ‘Hope’, has gone through a whole lot of changes, and it sounds like the re-edit is a winner.
Na Hong-jin‘s The Wailing remains one of the best horror films to come out of South Korea (or anywhere else) over the last decade or so. It’s gripping, terrifying, and oh so devastating. So, when I learned the filmmaker had a massive new creature feature coming with Hope, I was ecstatic. Even more so after seeing the jaw-dropping trailer promising next-level action horror.
And then the reviews started coming out of Cannes.
While many critics lauded the film, they also lambasted the CGI creatures. Cue my disappointment.
See, as IndieWire notes, the filmmaker spent years putting Hope together, turning it into what has been reported as the highest-budgeted South Korean film ever made. Even then, it still needed work, apparently.
Since that premiere at Cannes, Na Hong-jin has gone in to make some changes. It sounds like they worked.
The re-edited version of Hope opened in South Korea and became the country’s fastest-grossing film ever with 2.6 million tickets sold within five days.
According to IndieWire, the Hope director came on their Toolkit podcast and went in-depth about his CGI creatures.
Stated Hong-jin, “50 to 60 minutes in, the creature animation, that’s also something that I tried to re-edit and work with more.”
IndieWire notes that “the individual changes to Hope are not enormous. The CGI work wasn’t overhauled and polished, as some had hoped. And removing four-plus minutes from a 160-minute Cannes cut isn’t all that radical. That said, the revised film plays far more smoothly. Na said he did the most extensive work in sound design, something viewers often underestimate in the viewing experience.”
Apparently, Na removed various scenes as well as shots. “ There’s a scene there where a crane is removing the body of the dead alien, and I took that out because I thought it was a bit redundant,” said the filmmaker. “And then there’s also a scene in the forest where Sung-ki [is] riding on horseback; he sees, in the distance in the forest, there’s some sort of flickering or shiny object, but I took that out as well.”