Sometime during these last few weeks, I decided to watch the movie “Peninsula”, the sequel to the internationally-acclaimed “Train to Busan,” the highest grossing South Korean film of 2016. “Train to Busan” introduced a beautiful zombie story with heartful characters, strong social criticism, and thrilling action, while of course maintaining what I describe as the pompous and extravagant drama of Korean cinema that everyone loves.
Of course, there were lofty expectations for the sequel to such a performance, expectations to deliver the same passionate characters, social criticism, thrilling action, and of course the “Korean drama.” A theatrical release during the COVID-19 pandemic is understandably difficult, andwith double the budget, Peninsula could only find half of the box office success of Train to Busan.
That isn’t to say it was a flop: the movie put up strong numbers, and Peninsula became the highest grossing local-language title ever for IMAX in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam in 2020. The movie had riveting action scenes with unique, grotesque monsters and thrilling car chase sequences, a genre and media language that translates to any international audience.
I believe Peninsula Director Yeon Sang-ho made a difficult bargain for his international success.Yoon traded the heart, the tears, the soul of Train to Busan and Korean cinema for the guns, cars, and explosions of international blockbusters. The normalcy of the protagonists of Train to Busan, emotional human beings who must battle with strife and anguish, is replaced with the one-dimensional “action hero” of Peninsula, where the depth is low and the stakes are unconvincing.
In the movie, the Korean peninsula is decimated by the outbreak and in a post-apocalyptic scenario, while the rest of the world, free of the outbreak, looks at them with anger and pity, as they are the diseased population. Our protagonist takes a job from Chinese mobsters to obtain millions of cash in Korea, where he is rescued by a group of survivors he abandoned at the beginning of the outbreak. In the end of the movie, the group of protagonists are rescued by a United Nations helicopter and extracted from Korea.
The movie, with all its fast-paced action and thrilling car stunts, to have the survivors saved by the Western-dominated UN, feels just like the movie it was made to be: not for me. The movie was not made for the pride of South Korea, but more so the spotlight of international cinema. It’s sad to see such a movie series that brought pride and joy to the community put our peoples in another position of inferiority where they are either massively slaughtered or saved from the greater West from being slaughtered.
Asian peoples are commonly treated as expendable, as cannon-fodder for the great progress of Western characters. I also happened to rewatch Marvel’s Deadpool 2 over the weekend, which I enjoyed, but couldn’t help but smirk that the opening sequence included the main character whimsically wiping out a bathouse full of Japanese men, and the only other Asian character in the movie was a girl with exotic pink hair who takes a great liking to the white main character (Sorry Deadpool).
With Yoon being a Korean film maker and these other referenced movies being Korean-American directed, it can feel like my criticism is misdirected. However, the movie looked to have a very intentional international audience.
With such a disregard to Asian representation in cinema, Marvel movies should not feel “off the hook” for the shoddy attempts at representation they have with Shang-Chi and the sprinkles of Asian sidekicks they have through the movies. But why shouldn’t Yoon be able to make his own “Marvel” blockbuster action movies with huge explosions?
Take for example, the movie Crazy Rich Asians. The movie was considered a great leap for Asian American representation in cinema, but faced criticism for displaying the Asian experience as rich and extravagant while many Asian Americans have a much different experience.
Are these films like Crazy Rich Asians and Peninsula setbacks for Asian American representation? I think they are far from that. I love movies like Train to Busan and Peninsula, with very real cultural premises, and I love movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Peninsula, which aren’t bad, but they get to be whatever movie they want. Cultural identity should not be ignored in any manner, but these film makers should be allowed to showcase these extravagant extremes for their pure entertainment rather than the accuracy.
I’m glad that Asian American filmmakers can create cultural masterpieces and have the capacity and space to make guilty pleasure movies and everything in between. Asian creators should be allowed to succeed, fail, and whatever we call the middle. Peninsula should still be celebrated for the Korean zombie flick it is. So when I watch Minari this weekend, I cannot wait to see what Director Lee Isaac Chung and The Walking Dead’s then token Asian Steven Yeun can create.
