I agree. The opening scene is very clumsy, much like the “Sir, there may be inhabited villages in the area you plan to bomb” scenes in Welcome to Dongmakgol. I could care less if the USFK are ‘blamed’ for the creature, but it would have been better if the scene hadn’t been so poorly written. Despite the complaints about it being “in the very first scene!” by the end of the movie you’ve forgotten all about the beginning of the film, and remember instead the thrills and chills created by the monster, and the actions of a family. Perhaps the reason Haisan and Metropolitician tried to ‘downplay’ the anti-American ‘angle’ and stress the dramatic aspects of the film (and its skewering of certain aspects of Korean society) was that they had, y’know, seen the movie - unlike most of the people criticizing it.

Perhaps a follow-up with the media expert is in order, to find out if he greatly underestimated the draw of the anti-American angle.

Right. When that scene at the beginning finished, people walked out of the theatre in droves. After that it was clear that the recent nonstop marketing of a film by a well known director, with top actors, a scary looking monster, well done special fx, and good reviews at Cannes had little to do with drawing people into the theatre. They just wanted to see 3 minutes of a poor Korean underling getting ordered around by his nasty American superior so they could get their victimization fix for the week.

In the film’s prologue, a high-ranking U.S. officer oversees the illegal dumping of toxic chemicals into the Han River, and it is not only a hint to how the mutant is born but also a criticism of the real accident in 2000.

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Oh, you mean when 80 liters (21 gallons) of formaldehyde were dumped in the Han in 2000? I am sure that that was the largest discharge of chemicals ever to hit the Han since the Korean War. I am sure no Korean company has ever dumped anything toxic in the Han in all those years.

Hypocrites.

Poetic justice, I’d say.