Yorgos Lanthimos’ macabre comedy ‘Bugonia’ ponders the possibility that Emma Stone is an alien. Keep reading for spoilers.
‘Bugonia’ trailer: Emma Stone goes on a wild ride in dark comedy
A high-profile CEO (Emma Stone) is kidnapped by conspiracy theorists who believe she’s an alien out to destroy Earth in the dark comedy “Bugonia.”
- “Bugonia” is the latest pairing of director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone.
- Teddy (Jesse Plemons) has a conspiracy theory that Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien determined to destroy Earth. But there’s a twist.
- The film’s ending is shockingly bleak. Here’s what that stunning conclusion means.
Spoiler alert! We’re discussing important plot points and the ending of “Bugonia” (in theaters now) so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
Emma Stone is digging her alien era.
In director Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark sci-fi comedy “Bugonia,” pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Stone) is kidnapped by conspiracy-theorist cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) because Teddy believes her to be from outer space and bent on taking over the Earth. That’s partly revealed to be true: Michelle is the Andromedan empress who’s infiltrated mankind but her intentions aren’t entirely bad.
Michelle’s introduction in the movie − starting off being awkward around her employees – “was so sort of perfect,” Stone says. “You don’t know whether that’s her being not human or her being an inhuman CEO.”
The cousins shave her head to keep her from communicating with her mothership (via hair), a vessel Teddy believes is coming in four days to coincide with a lunar eclipse. Teddy tries to force Michelle into admitting she’s not human. Truths are revealed and the situation turns explosively bonkers before a rather bleak finale.
These are the biggest spoilers from “Bugonia,” from Stone’s take on the ending to that fitting needle drop in the film’s final moments.
What happens in the ending of ‘Bugonia’?
The wild final act features Michelle explaining to Teddy that, yep, she’s a royal Andromedan and humans are a creation of her race, put on Earth after the aliens accidentally killed off dinosaurs in their arrival. But over millennia, mankind has evolved in unfortunate ways, as humans continually combat each other and poison the planet.
Michelle offers to take Teddy to her ship − via a transporter in her office closet − but he’s wearing a suicide bomber vest and he accidentally blows himself up. That’s the last straw, because Michelle decides it’s time to end humanity: On her ship, she pops the bubble on a model of Earth, leaving the planet suddenly full of corpses as everyone dies.
“Jesse always thinks I’m crazy for this,” Stone says, but Michelle “really does, I believe, want very much to save the world. It’s devastating to her in the end to have to make peace with the fact that they have become a poison to the planet and that the planet needs to move on. So even though there are some villainous moments within her, deep down, she does care about the promise of humanity and yet has been consistently disappointed by the reality of what people do to themselves and do to each other.”
For Stone, Michelle’s monologue that connects humans and Andromedans reflects a lot of real-world themes, “this draw to addiction and to destroying other people and destroying yourselves and poisoning everything, whether it’s yourself or the planet,” she says. “I do think a lot of that is true. There is a sort of death drive that can exist in our human form. But there’s also a great capacity for hope and positivity. It’s just which side is going to win out in any given moment.”
What’s up with Emma Stone’s full-body sweater in ‘Bugonia’?
With the Andromedans, Lanthimos says he wanted to come up with “something we hadn’t seen before, not a cliche science-fiction kind of visual.” Because they’re an ancient civilization, he wanted to use “a lot of organically created things” and even their mothership “looks almost like a sea creature in the depths of an ocean.”
Then there’s the Andromedan wardrobe, which consists of what looks like knitted full-body sweaters and a hat. “It was really incredible in its construction, but it was like a cage underneath and it trapped all heat,” Stone says. “We were on a soundstage, and so all of the Andromedans were like, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was so heavy. It had the look of cozy while being the polar opposite but so brilliant.”
Plemons’ most interesting accessory was more gruesome: A bust of his decapitated head goes flying when his bomb vest goes off, and he’s got “a great photo” of Stone holding it, “which I will cherish forever.”
What’s that song heard in the ‘Bugonia’ finale?
In its final moments, the movie shows scenes of dead people all over the world as Marlene Dietrich’s 1960s cover of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” plays in the background.
Screenwriter Will Tracy recalls hearing that tune as part of a playlist Lanthimos had going on the set, and at the time, the director wanted to “see how it feels,” Lanthimos says. “Everyone kind of felt that it was right.”
Lanthimos hopes the visual aspect of humanity’s end combined with the emotional underpinnings of the song inspires audiences to figure out their own interpretations of the stark ending.
“Like if they feel hopeful at the end or sad or hopeless or whatever, I think there’s room for everyone to decide for themselves or leave with a certain kind of feeling,” Lanthimos says. “And then think about it again and maybe find some hope if they didn’t originally.”
