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As a fan of 1980s action movies and cheese I went into this one with pretty high expectations. All I ended up getting was inane dialogue, unlikeable characters, a paper thin plot with some self serious propaganda thrown in.

For a paper thin 80s action movie, Where was the action?? The only scene I enjoyed in this movie was the beach volleyball scene, since it aroused my curiosity on how much they lowered the net by so that Tom Cruise could actually spike a ball.

Perhaps this is one of those movies that you really had to be there at the time to truly get. Viewing it through a 2022 lens, it just reminds me of the starting template you get in Cliche Hollywood Film Maker Home Edition.

Okja is a straight to netflix movie from director Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), and like his other more famous piece of work Okja's core story exists within a world that is heavy with social commentary. While Parasite cast a rather complex web of characters each with their own motivations trying to navigate their way through the hub, Okja is a more straightforward tale of a young girl Mija and her gigantic genetically modified pet pig Okja and their struggles against a stereotypically soul sucking corporation "Mirando" headed by their CEO, the virtue signalling Tilda Swinton.

At its heart Okja is a story of the struggle between civilisation and nature, with Mija being the personification of nature. She is a young girl brought up by her elderly grandfather in his house atop a mountain in rural Korea, untainted by the reach and vices of the outside world other than for an old school CRT television. The home is shown as very physically very difficult to access, however through Mirando Corp's latest promotional campaign Mirando's various corporate lackeys manage to find Mija and Okja, hence beginning the movie's main plot and also metaphorically representing nature's long losing battle to avoid the trappings of civilisation.

The depiction of the world is dark, with both its people and environment at the mercy of the profit driven corporations. Amidst this, Bong paints Mija as the purity of nature, juxtaposing her ascetic surroundings and innocent bond with Okja against the cutthroat Mirando corporation, the crowded NYC/Seoul and even the pragmatism of her grandfather.

While the world and themes in this movie are dark and depressingly too close to real life for comfort, the characters are written and acted in a cartoonishly over the top way. From the bumbling image obsessed CEO of Mirando, the jester-like animal expert Jake Gyllenhall to the teenage girl with the pure heart and indomitable spirit Mija, all of these characters would not be out of place in a children's anime. I feel this was by design so that the movie could dilute it's level of seriousness and have more appeal to kids, if for no reason other than I can't see Jake Gyllenhall actually choosing to overact this way if he weren't directed to.

Before I saw this, if you told me Okja was Parasite set in the Disney universe and toned down to appeal to all ages I would have liked to watched it. So after watching it, I think that's pretty much what we got.