Honored samurai, ruthless ronin, wayward vagabonds, shadowy ninja and helpless villagers... welcome.
Opening Volley
Last week I was off to Tokyo/Chiba for the 2023 winter session of Wonder Festival, the figure/garage kit event held twice a year at Makuhari Messe. I’ll be sharing some of the photos in the coming week(s). Until then, let’s jump into the Jung_E review.
Main Event
Jung_E is a Korean scifi thriller set against the backdrop of complete ecological collapse of the planet, orbital colonies, and a 20-year "civil" war between the Adrian Empire and the Allied Forces. Unfortunately, there isn't much context of the world in which the characters live outside of a few scenes (mostly at the end of the film), and the war* exists only in dialogue and the replay of the "final battle" of the Allies' "greatest soldier", Jung-Yi. (*Probably for the best as I can't imagine a more horrifying death in space than depressurized orbital habitats.)
Despite this contextual sparsity, the story is otherwise engaging and there are some incredibly dark, thought-provoking moments with regards to the mind cloning contracts. Without going too much into detail, the more precious a mind (people with specialized knowledge, talent, etc.), the better the contract. The creepy side being that with the increase of androids doing humanity's heavy lifting, a living person could potentially become surrounded and confronted by android versions of friends and family who have passed away. It's not just the doctors, lawyers, scientists and strategic masterminds who end up cloned, and those minds are not always pressed into the same jobs. Imagine going to the doctor, through a grocery store checkout line and a brothel all within a couple hours, and running into the same android each time... who may "be" anyone from your grandmother to your neighbor or even first crush.
It's chilling, and it left me with questions:
How much memory is retained by the cloned mind? Would they remember the people from their former lives? Are they informed that they are no longer alive and that they are now just cloned minds? What happens when they figure out that they aren't human?
Most science fiction films address this with the "erased memories" or "selective memories" trope. Jung_E does not, or at least, does not appear to because there are several scenes in which Jung_E clearly has Jung-Yi's(1) memories. Granted, this may be because she's still in experimental form and the team working on transforming her into the greatest fighting android of all time are working with raw data to refine it.
Either way, its a dark hole that offers a lot to the creative mind. THAT'S what I love most about this film -- it's ability to get me thinking in a creative way, and challenging me to create new worlds from the ideas it planted in my mind, because Jung_E wears its Ghost in the Shell inspiration on its sleeve like a badge of pride throughout the film.
It's obvious that the writer/director Sang-ho Yeon has something to say on the subject of mind cloning while giving us a pretty good popcorn flick at the same time. The storyline does take on all-to-familiar evil robot and evil corporation tropes at the end, but it's still enjoyable and I can’t recommend it enough.
1 - [T]he abilities and memories of Jung-Yi is named “JUNG_E.” The name is a wordplay on the mercenary’s name and a reminder of her extraordinary achievements in the field of battle. The “E” in the name most likely stands for electronic, as the AI-powered robots are modern and technologically advanced versions of Jung-Yi. -- TheCinemaholic
We never meet without parting
Next issue... Undecided.
Until then!
Made in DNA