# data[].attributes.body
The power of Bong’s film is that it never lets go of Mija’s purity of spirit, holding it up as a lesson many of us (particularly the meat-eaters) could stand to re-learn. Okja is, of course, a product—viewers know that about her before we even see her face. She’s a stand-in for all kinds of factory farming, and of routine inhumanities that result from systems of mass production or global trade. But Mija’s love for her isn’t naïve, or easily dismissed. Even the Mirando Corporation understands how valuable this affection can be—it’s why Lucy is trying to introduce Okja as a real animal people can understand, so customers won’t be afraid to fry her genetically enhanced flesh for breakfast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Netflix’s ‘Okja’ Is a Must-See Fable About a Super-Pig

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The sublime new film from Bong Joon-ho, who directed “Snowpiercer,” follows a young Korean girl’s relationship with a genetically enhanced farm animal.

# data[].attributes.body
"Despite the family-friendly poster of a giant pig and a little girl, and though it has many comic elements, it's an extremely intense, violent film about cruelty to animals in a world in which corporations wreak havoc on the planet."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Common Sense Media Review

By Renee Schonfeld, based on child development research. How do we rate?

Extreme peril, swearing in violent eco-fable.

Parents need to know that Okja isn't a movie for kids. Despite the family-friendly poster of a giant pig and a little girl, and though it has many comic elements, it's an extremely intense, violent film about cruelty to animals in a world in which corporations wreak havoc on the planet. After a brief intro to...

Based on 17 parent reviews

Tells about the greed of the Meat industry

This film educates people on greed, and animal welfare, it is an accurate description of how our society mistreats animals. It has great messages and role models, trying desperately to do the right thing and fighting for justice. There is some punching, hitting, mild blood, and shock prods. Nothing too graphic but it is all used in a way making it sad and meaningful. The biggest issue is probably the language, with around 30-40 F bombs, a bit more than expected some even seeming unnecessary. Overall this film educates others about important issues, and should be viewed by many.

Okja: fiction portraying non-fiction.

This movie is so touching. I personally believe that what companies do to animals is cruel and wrong. While I am still a meat eater I defend these animals. This movie, while not 100% realistic due to the fact of the nonexistent super pig, the movie shows fully the way animals are treated in places like this. I truly feel that people need to watch this. Animal lover or not. This actually happens to animals. It needs to be stopped. It is inhuman. This movie can show people, families, teenagers, that there is a way to help and there is a way to end the cruelty.

What's the Story?

To gain notoriety and universal support for its megalomaniac leader ( Tilda Swinton), the Mirando Corporation, a mammoth business with a checkered past, announces the arrival of the company's 26 superpigs in OKJA. Calling them "Mother Nature's Gifts" and the answer to the world's dwindling food supply, the adorable little pigs will be sent out to 26 countries to live with 26 families, and after 10 years of nurturing, the superest pig of all will return to NYC and be crowned. The 10 years pass. One of the enormous grown-up pigs, Okja, is living an idyllic life on a mountaintop in Korea with young Mija (An Seu Hyun, who breaks your heart) and her grandfather. The idyll doesn't last very long. Okja's progress has been charted, and the female superpig has been chosen to make the journey to New York City. When a small army of escorts, including TV celebrity Johnny ( Jake Gyllenhaal), host of Dr. Johnny's Animal Magic, arrives at their home, Mija is tricked and Okja is taken away from her. The steadfast girl gives chase -- all the way to Seoul, South Korea's capitol, where Okja's appearance and Mia's efforts to rescue her create chaos. Only a bizarre band of animal rights activists, led by Jay ( Paul Dano), appear to help her. Unfortunately, Mija is too trusting once again, and, once again tricked, she finds herself in dire straits. It's one narrow escape after another; until she's reunited with her precious Okja, Mija must face their greatest enemy: the Mirando Corporation and its harsh CEO. In New York City, the cruel intentions of the company are revealed and Mija must risk all once again to save her beloved friend.

Is It Any Good?

Alongside some outrageous comic performances and a lovely connection between a young girl and her giant pet pig lives a big, violent, imaginative ecological fable guaranteed to touch hearts. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho has created a timely movie with larger-than-life villains; a calamitous, one-sided depiction of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) as an optional food supply; and a traditional "prince fights a dragon to save the princess" story at its heart. In this story, the "prince" is a little girl; the "dragon" is Tilda Swinton in a dual role, and the "princess" is an adorably lovable enormous pig. The director and his team have mastered the art of combining satire with farce and then hitting hard with solid notions about man's greed and his ability to destroy everything beautiful in his path. For families hoping to enjoy the fable and its messages with their younger kids, Okja is far too intense, violent, and fraught with animals under siege to make that work. The film is for mature teens only.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Okja. Even though in its way this movie is a fairy tale, why is the violence so disturbing? How does the defenselessness of animals increase our empathy?

In what way or ways did this movie have a happy ending? In what ways did it not? What was your final takeaway?

Use your response to this film to find out more about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). What are some of the pros and cons associated with GMOs in our food supply?

Which positive character traits does Mija display?

Movie Details

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Extreme peril, swearing in violent eco-fable. Read Common Sense Media’s Okja review, age rating, and parents guide.

# data[].attributes.body
Essentially a pro-animal liberation movie, this becomes a pretty wild ride as the Korean child doggedly pursues the pignappers all the way to New York

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For 10 idyllic years, young Mija has been caretaker and constant companion to Okja - a massive animal and an even bigger friend - at her home in the mountains of South Korea. But that changes when family-owned, multinational conglomerate Mirando Corporation takes Okja for themselves and transports her to New York, where an image-obsessed and self-promoting CEO has big plans for Mija’s dearest friend. With no particular plan but single-minded in intent, Mija sets out on a rescue mission.

# data[].attributes.body
"Frankly, I agree with the French. Not necessarily in booing Okja—that seems rude—but it would’ve been nice had Okja opened in theaters before its life on television screens began. There, it would’ve been fairly branded with an R-rating, giving parents a proper warning regarding the kind of content that the film contains. When it simply shows up in one’s Netflix cue with its adorable pictures of a girl and her giant hippo-pig, parents and children alike might well click “play”—unaware that what might seem like be a light children’s fable takes some very dark turns indeed."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Forget this film’s quart-size protagonist and her whimsical pet pig. Okja is a jarring, unsettling and often difficult-to-watch story.

# data[].attributes.body
"Okja is a satire on corporate greed and how awful we are. I know people who stopped eating meat after they saw Okja." -May 18 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For 10 idyllic years, young Mija has been caretaker and constant companion to Okja - a massive animal and an even bigger friend - at her home in the mountains of South Korea. But that changes when family-owned, multinational conglomerate Mirando Corporation takes Okja for themselves and transports her to New York, where an image-obsessed and self-promoting CEO has big plans for Mija’s dearest friend. With no particular plan but single-minded in intent, Mija sets out on a rescue mission.

# data[].attributes.body
Click on the pink + icon at the bottom right of screen.

Click on the link tab at the bottom of the box that appears. Paste your URL link in and click 'save'.

# data[].attributes.body
Review in The New York Times

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The computer-generated Okja, left, and An Seo Hyun in "Okja." Credit... Netflix

Okja

NYT Critic's Pick

Directed by Joon-ho Bong

Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

2 hours

Okja is a most remarkable pig. As big as a medium-sized elephant, with a snout that looks more canine than porcine, she is slobbery and sometimes flatulent, but also loyal, gentle and brave. Okja is devoted, above all, to a girl named Mija. They have grown up together on a remote mountain farm that belongs to Mija's grandfather, inseparable companions in a classic literary and cinematic tradition.

But anyone familiar with that tradition - I'll mention "Old Yeller" and leave it at that - knows that stories of children and their pets are almost inevitably shadowed by tragedy and loss. The adult human world regards animals through a callous, utilitarian lens, as sources of food, labor or ornamental cuteness, a fact that "Okja," Bong Joon-ho's wonderful new film, takes to a dystopian but also an unnervingly realistic extreme.

The bond between Okja and Mija, who is an orphan, is the result of a contract neither one of them has read or signed. The pig is the physical and intellectual property of a multinational corporation, and as such she's destined not only for the usual slaughter but also for crass and cynical commercial exploitation. The girl, a serious and stubborn child (played with heroic dignity by An Seo Hyun), is fated to lose her only friend.

Okja | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix Credit... CreditVideo by Netflix

The audience already suspects as much. The first face we see belongs not to a cute computer-generated piglet but to Tilda Swinton, in braces and a blinding platinum bob. Her character, Lucy Mirando - chief executive of the Mirando Corporation, which she inherited from her father - steps in front of the camera to preside over the brightly greenwashed presentation of a diabolical initiative. A new superbreed of swine has been created, she says, and 26 shoats will be distributed to farmers around the world to be raised in sustainable, free-range conditions. After 10 years, they will participate in a kind of livestock beauty pageant, overseen by a popular television veterinarian played by an antic and abrasive Jake Gyllenhaal.

Image

Tilda Swinton as a chief executive in the food industrial complex in the film. Credit... Kimberly French/Netflix

The vet's arrival on Mija's granddad's farm, accompanied by Mirando suits and flacks (notably Yoon Jae moon and Shirley Henderson), signals the end of the film's pastoral interlude, a forest romp as lyrical and magical as anything by the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Mr. Bong has an eye for natural beauty, and also a kinetic and rigorous sense of motion. Once it leaves the countryside, "Okja" turns into a swift urban caper, full of chases and other action-movie set pieces. Mija sets out to liberate her beloved pig, and is joined (and also partly thwarted) by members of the Animal Liberation Front, an earnest, not-always-competent militant group led by Paul Dano.

The pursuit of Okja jumps from Seoul to New York, and ends up at a nightmarish meat-processing plant in New Jersey. Mr. Bong, one of the great visual storytellers working in movies today - earlier films like "The Host" and "Snowpiercer" have shown him to be an artist of Spielbergian exuberance and skill - never muddies the frame with extraneous stuff or slows the narrative with tedious exposition. The picture, which never stops moving, is dense with information and feeling. Barbs of satire pop up and are washed away on streams of strong emotion. It's all marvelously preposterous and yet, at the same time, something important is at stake.

A conventional name for that something would be humanity, since "Okja," not unlike "E. T.," is about how a young person achieves moral insight by connecting with and fighting for a nonhuman creature. Okja's oppressors, like E. T.'s, are part of a system that refuses to recognize her as anything more than a thing. In this case, that system is specifically the food industrial complex, and her tale is a clear and effective animal rights fable, or at least a protest against factory farming and genetic engineering. (Nobody advocates for the fish and chickens Mija and her grandfather eat at home.)

This might make the movie sound heavier and more dogmatic than it actually is. But if you have seen "Snowpiercer," a parable of global inequality set aboard a high-speed train, you know that Mr. Bong juggles delight and didacticism with exquisite grace. Rather than turn out cardboard heroes and villains, he savors the eccentricity of his characters, in the sheer weirdness of our ingenious and idiotic species. He is fascinated by the petty doctrinal arguments and personal rivalries in the ranks of the Animal Liberation Front and also by the boardroom intrigue within the Mirando Corporation. Keep your eye on Giancarlo Esposito, and your ear out for Lucy Mirando's sister, Nancy.

The human performers are all brilliant, but the movie belongs to its title character and her digitally conjured, genetically modified ilk. Okja is a miracle of imagination and technique, and "Okja" insists, with abundant mischief and absolute sincerity, that she possesses a soul.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Review: In 'Okja,' a Girl and Her Pig Take on the Food Industrial Complex (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Okja NYT Critic's Pick Directed by Joon-ho Bong Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi 2 hours Okja is a most remarkable pig. As big as a medium-sized elephant, with a snout that looks more canine than porcine, she is slobbery and sometimes flatulent, but also loyal, gentle and brave.

# data[].attributes.body
Podcast from BBC - Range of Viewpoints

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Food Programme - Eating Animals Part 1: The Future of Meat - BBC Sounds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

# data[].attributes.body
Trailer One

# data[].attributes.body
Trailer Two

# data[].attributes.body
Interview with Director

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SBIFF 2020 - Bong Joon Ho Discusses "Okja"

# data[].attributes.body
Special Effects