Bugonia and the corporate alien

Thanks for tuning back into the BeX Files! I come in peace. 

Before pulling the file for today, I wanted to give a quick heads-up that my website got a much-needed makeover (thanks to Kyle for the help!). 

My portfolio is now updated to spotlight some of my favorite recent stories, like this one on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, or my beloved “Moon poo” article. I’ve also been doing a lot of fun interviews to promote First Contact recently which will be added to the book’s new page. Hope you check it out!

Moving on, today’s file is about Bugonia, the new film from director Yorgas Lanthimos and his latest collaboration with Emma Stone. 2025 has offered a deluge of alien blockbusters, from Superman to Predator: Badlands, but it’s not every day you get an alien arthouse absurdist comedy thriller (or whatever the heck this movie is supposed to be). Since Lanthimos’ previous film The Favourite (2018) is well, one of my favorites, I was stoked to hear that he was delving into the extraterrestrial realm next. 

There will be no plot spoilers in this write-up, but I will touch on the thematic undercurrents of the movie, which is based on the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! 

The story follows the kidnapping of the powerful CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone) by conspiracy theorists Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his disabled cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Teddy, a beekeeper who has fallen on hard times, believes Fuller is a member of a malevolent alien species called “Andromedans” that is responsible for a cascade of calamities on Earth, including the colony collapse disorder that has decimated his hives and livelihood. (Note to self: coin the term “hivelihood” as a portmanteau for apiary income). 

It’s a fun subversion of the classic abduction trope; in this version, the “alien” is the one who is whisked away by humans to experience humiliating captivity and harrowing experiments. But of course, with that premise, the audience spends most of the movie pondering the question: So, is Michelle actually an alien? Will Teddy—the epitome of a dislocated young man who has fallen through too many internet rabbitholes—be vindicated?   

I really did not like how Bugonia ultimately answered that question, but the film is still worth a watch as a sly rumination about alienation. Though the end blows it (in good and bad ways), Stone and Plemons are mesmerizing to watch throughout their intense confrontations, which expose both Teddy and Michelle as alienated from humanity—in large part due to where they sit on the continuum of wealth. 

Teddy’s poverty has accelerated his rejection of a shared reality in favor of comforting conspiratorial fringes, whereas Michelle is walled off from reality by her obscene wealth, built in part on selling neonicotinoid chemicals implicated in the decline of bees. It’s an ouroboros of late capitalist alienation. 

Indeed, Teddy hints early on that it doesn’t matter if Michelle is a literal alien, in spite of his convictions. Her corporate status, and the moral tradeoffs that placed her there, have rendered her inhuman regardless of galactic origin. Poor Don, played with exceptional care by Delbis, is the collateral damage in this standoff between the alleged alien and the alienated human.  

Without giving too much away, I wanted to share one of the exchanges in the film that I thought captured its best side. It’s your classic movie dinner scene featuring two beekeeping kidnappers and a suspected alien tied by the ankles to a chair with a freshly shaved head.

Michelle: I know you want there to be a master plan, Teddy. You want the bees to be dying so that it can be my fault and you don't have to think about the real reasons why species die. Immunodeficiencies, changing habitats, genetic factors, or sometimes a species just winds down.

Teddy: Winds down?

Michelle: Maybe something clicks in their heads and they just know, or they intuit, the utility of the entire enterprise.

I’ll close on that little tease! As always, send any thoughts or comments to thebxfiles@gmail.com. See you at the cosmic rest stop next Friday!