Why is this movie so good?
From the premise, you’d expect silliness. A trio of female KPop singers who are also demon hunters use the magic of their music to protect the world. The primary antagonists are–you guessed it–a demon boy band. The whole thing sounds like standard ridiculous kids’ fare.
And yet it’s become a cultural phenomenon unto itself.
The writing, acting, art, and music are all exemplary. Everything interweaves tightly. The songs aren’t just incidental–they take the emotion driving the story and punch it up to something transcendent. The artists poured their hearts into this production. There’s a soul to this story that few pieces of media can match. It deserves every accolade it’s gotten and more.
I saw a bit on social media yesterday asking folks, “If you had to convince aliens to not destroy humanity, what piece of art would you show them?” Yeah, at this juncture in time, I’d show them KPop Demon Hunters. Not just for the art aspect (for the music, animation, and symbology is all so good), but for the human factor.
This movie doesn’t shy away from our flaws, it showcases them. The characters make bad decisions based on inner fears and insecurities, go down roads of self-destruction and pain. But it’s how they resolve those things, how they accept themselves and come together, that shows the human condition at its best. Connection is what ultimately saves the world, brings the trio into a better future, and redeems one of the antagonists. This movie acknowledges the worst we can be and then teaches us that even at our worst, there is still always hope. Hope for ourselves, hope for the world at large, even hope for our enemies.
That hope, I think, is big piece of why this movie hits so hard. Right now, the world is on fire. Climate change is wreaking disaster after disaster worldwide. US democracy is crumbling. There is so much bleakness surrounding us right now that hope is all we’ve got. We have to stoke it, feed it, or we risk drowning in our own despair. Hope is the light that feeds the fight.
KPop Demon Hunters is exactly what we need exactly when we needed it.
This is what hope sounds like.
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