Space Sweepers by Jo Sung-hee

   Space Sweepers 

     by Jo Sung-hee

After snatching a crashed space shuttle in the latest debris chase, Spaceship Victory's crew members find a 7-year-old girl inside. They realise that she's the humanlike robot wanted by UTS Space Guards, and decide to demand a ransom in exchange.

Space Sweepers , Jo Sung-hee started writing the story 10 years prior to the film's release, after a friend talked to him about the dangers of space junk. He said that "It started with the idea of space travelers collecting space junk. The film depicts the realistic cycle of poverty by showing the daily struggles of space sweepers. These working-class individuals are citizens of Earth who work a dangerous job that requires them to search for space debris in exchange for cash. 

Song Joong-ki as Tae-ho, Kim Tae-ri as Captain Jang, Jin Seon-kyu as Tiger Park, Kim Mu-yeol as Kang Hyeon-u and Park Ye-rin as Dorothy / Kang Kot-nim. Set in the year 2092, Earth has become nearly uninhabitable. Fleeing the sick earth, UTS corporation builds a new orbiting Home for humanity. But only a chosen few can ascend. The plot follows the crew of a space junk collector ship called The Victory. But their lives take a huge turn when they discover a humanoid child robot named Dorothy that’s known to be a weapon of mass destruction. Burdened with debts and wishes to fulfill, they get involved in a risky business deal and maybe something more than they might have imagined.

Tae-ho, once a child soldier, is on a search for his daughter (Su-ni); who was lost and ejected into space after a space debris collided with the station they were staying at. His sole life aim is to pay for the authorities' recovery team to locate her body tracker before she drifts out of orbit and gets lost in space forever. Tae-ho and Tiger carry Dorothy to a night club to collect the ransom, but she wanders off in the crowd. UTS soldiers have lain in wait, and a massacre ensues. Tiger and Tae-ho locate Dorothy when Soldier 01 zeroes in and shoots at them. Dorothy's eyes change color, and the trio are protected from the blast by a sort of force field around them. As a child soldier, Tae-ho was Soldier 01 at the age of 17. On one of his voyages, Tae-ho shot and boarded a ship that carried several fleeing non-citizens and killed them all. He noticed a baby still alive in the arms of a dead woman and adopted the girl. She rekindled his humanity and Tae-ho found himself unable to hurt others - as a result, he was dismissed from the force, made homeless and reduced to a non-citizen. After one year of homelessness, Tae-ho became desperate and gambled, neglecting Su-ni. She wandered away to find a snack, and while outside there was a debris impact that caused her to be blown into space, with Tae-ho desperately witnessing it from an airlock.

It’s a window into a possible future where humans economize recycling for money in a predictably polluted new area. It’s a future where we do not learn our lessons. The story splits up citizens and non-citizens; governance remains, and there’s a growing sense of a divided society, with the poor having to undermine systems to make a living. For all its fun, Space Sweepers is thematic and a reflection of society, but in modern times. Space Sweepers takes place in an all-too-plausible future where the Earth has been rendered almost uninhabitable by pollution and climate change. Those who can afford to have fled to space, with the wealthiest living in luxury on a colony owned by the UTS corporation. The less fortunate survive by fighting over space debris to sell as scrap metal. In terms of social commentary, Space Sweepers works best when it critiques systems rather than individuals. The central characters all defected from or rebelled against unjust institutions years before the events of the film. By the time we meet them, they’ve been beaten down by the economic and legal repercussions of their actions. 

Reviewed by: 

Neljun L. Calibo

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