The core of K-hero movies that are ‘unlike anywhere else’ is ‘family love’ [Sukyeong Entertainment Research Institute]

A scene from JTBC’s new weekend drama ‘Strong Woman Gangnam-soon’, which aired on the 7th. The girl, who had gone to Mongolia with her father, whose hobby was photography, lost her father’s hand and became a lost child, separated from her family. She was a girl who came to Korea to find her parents when she grew up in her 20s.

Even in Korea, she made every effort to find her daughter and granddaughter. Shocked by the loss of her daughter, her mother became a cash tycoon by slogging through her money, and her maternal grandmother became an equal reject. They use their own methods of money and personal revenge to implement social justice.

With the recent proliferation of Korean-style hero films, a new order in the home screen is being created, and analysis of the elements that define only Korean hero films is in full swing. First of all, there is an atmosphere where ‘family love’ is the biggest trend.

First of all, this is because hero films based on family love are doing well. ‘Moving’, which was released last August, garnered attention as it told the story of a father and daughter and a mother and son spanning two generations, which is rare for a hero film. The reason why the first generation heroes lived while hiding their identities and then revealed their powers was because of their fatherly and maternal love.

Additionally, the abilities of Bong-seok (Lee Jeong-ha), Hee-su (Go Yoon-jeong), and Kang-hoon (Kim Do-hoon) were awakened to prevent their parents, who worked hard for them, from being harmed. The confrontation with North Korea’s talented people served as an opportunity for their family narrative, which had been building up little by little over 20 episodes, to explode.

In the case of JTBC’s ‘Hip-Hope’, which recently ended, it was the story of a person with psychometric abilities who could read the memories of animals by touching their buttocks, but the reason he felt proud of that ability was his family. In particular, the main character, Bong Ye-bun (Han Ji-min), realizes her abilities even more when she learns the true feelings of her grandfather Jeong Eui-hwan (Yang Jae-seong), whom she felt was distant from her.

In other hero films with similar themes, the theme of ‘family’ was also deeply ingrained in the drama. The noodle restaurant employees in tvN’s ‘Wonderful Rumors’ are each ‘counters’, or grim reapers who exorcise evil spirits, but they live together as family and form a quasi-family. JTBC’s ‘Miracle Brothers’ features a person with the ability to transfer the pain of others and travel across time, but the reason he travels through time is to find his brothers, that is, his blood relatives.

These family-based hero films are based on personal events, such as wounds from war (Iron Man), the country’s policy of nurturing superhumans (Captain America), treatment of serious injuries (Doctor Strange), and the birth of a superhuman on a planet (Superman). He takes a different path from the American hero characters.

Although the main characters of Korean-style hero stories are often not revealed to others or are even worse off than other ordinary people, they have something in common: realizing power in an invisible place.

Director Park In-je of ‘Moving’ said in a recent interview, “We can’t keep up with Hollywood’s capital power, which spends 100 billion won per episode. “I needed a different idea to create a different emotion with a much smaller budget,” he said, explaining why he emphasized family love. Although it is not standard, it is a boxer’s ‘outboxing’ that will attack the hearts of the audience in a different way. In K-hero movies, it was ‘family love’.

Reporter Ha Kyung-heon azimae@kyunghyang.com