Alienoid: Return to the Future

That phrase "return to the future” sure sounds like you could build a successful science fiction franchise around it, right? In fact, the first Alienoid was an entertainingly wild ride, incorporating superheroes, magic, time travel, and alien invasions. Like any aspiring franchise, it ended with a major cliffhanger, but nobody minded, because everything that led up to it was so cool. We will pick back up with Earth’s ragtag but superpowered defenders in 14^th Century Korea, where they must obtain the “Divine Sword” to save the present-day Earth in Choi Dong-hoon’s Alienoid: Return to the Future, which opens this Friday in theaters.

To save Earth in the future, the AI “Thunder” must regroup with little Ean in the past. It is sort of like “going home” for the girl, because Thunder and his humanoid counterpart “Guard” found her orphaned there some 600 years ago, while they were chasing a renegade time-traveling alien criminal.

You might want to revisit the review for the first film, other reviews, its wiki page, and any other resource you can think of, because there was a lot going on. Long story short, alien criminals have been imprisoned inside Earthlings. Ususually, neither the host or the captive are aware of the situation, but when the alien “wakens,” oh boy, is there ever trouble.

Back in our time, there is a full-scale alien uprising going on. They plan to takeover Earth by poisoning our atmosphere. The only off-switch is the Divine Sword that Ean is looking for in the past. She has grown up to be the mysterious “Girl Who Shoots Thunder,” who made such an impression on Murak, a clumsy but powerful Taoist Dosa magician.

In the first film, the modern-day scenes worked a lot better than those in the past, largely because of the dopiness of Murak and the shtickiness of Heug-seol and Cheong-woon, a couple of mage-grifters, who start out as Murak’s rivals, but become his allies. Fortunately, they will find two new allies, the Satoichi-like swordsman Nong-pa in the past, and his future descendant, Min Gae-in, a customs service investigator, who can bust the aliens for not paying their tariffs.

The first Alienoid was probably the best superhero movie of the last five-years, because it was a fresh and original alternative to the stale Marvel and DC worlds. Return to the Future is still fun, but it often feels like a Marvel movie, because it mostly consists of costumed characters fighting each other in a one crazy, confusing set piece after another.

Unfortunately, it largely blows up the surrogate father-daughter relationship between Guard and Ean that was the glue that held the first film together. However, you have to give Choi credit for several hugely ironic twists that actually make a lot of dramatic sense.

Alienoid is still head-and-shoulders better than the last dozen or so Marvel and DC movies, but it loses some of the special chemistry of the first film. Nevertheless, it is impressive to watch Choi pull off so much galactic-scale lunacy. Recommended for fans of the first film, but not as a stand-alone, Alienoid: Return to the Future opens this Friday (1/26) in theaters.