Gorilla in the mix

A  bat-wielding gorilla who gets drunk on soju arrives in Thailand this week aiming to win the hearts of fans more accustomed to falling in love South Korea’s boy band idols.

The primate is question is Mr Go and he’s the star of director Kim Yong-hwa’s new film, which is loosely based on the 1985 Korean comic “7th Baseball Club” by Heo Young-Man.

It tells the story of young circus trainer Wei Wei who is forced to allow her bat-swinging gorilla Ling Ling to be drafted into the Korean Baseball League after her adopted grandfather, the circus owner, dies in the Great Sichuan Earthquake, leaving behind an insurmountable debt. 

Ling Ling is renamed Mr Go and quickly becomes a star, leading his team to victories. Meanwhile, Wei Wei and sports agent Sung Choongsoo (Sung Dongil) are so stunned by the big hit that they fail to notice Ling Ling’s knee injury.

The director and star jetted into Bangkok last Thursday night to promote the film, which is a co-production between South Korea’s Showbox/Mediaplex studios and China’s giant Huayi film studios.

With a budget of around US$22 million (Bt660 million) of which Huayi contributed $5 million, the movie has bypassed the restrictive regulations of the Chinese film industry and became the top grossing South Korean film on its first day of China release, netting a cool 12.2 million yuan (Bt62 million). 

Part of the attraction for Chinese fans is that the film starts off in China and features wonder kid Xu Jiao, who shot to fame play

 ing Stephen Chow’s son in “CJ 7” eight years ago. Now 16, Xu Jiao remains much in demand as an actress with her more recent roles including “Mulan” and the 2011 Taiwanese film “Starry Starry Night”.

“She’s perfect for the role. I don’t cast actors for their looks. I prefer to look for a smart actor with a natural acting style who fits the character like a glove,” says Kim, the man behind such blockbusters as “Take Off” and “200-Pound Beauty”. 

Unlike most animal-human stories, “Mr Go” isn’t a tearjerker but rather a feel good film that has the audience leaving the cinema with smiles on their faces.

Xu Jiao says that her character reflects the way in which most people control animals rather than taking care of them with love. As a kid who grows up in the circus, Wei Wei uses a whip to make both Ling Ling and another gorilla Lei Ting obey her orders. 

“Wei Wei is a tough girl. She has to confront obstacles to keep the circus alive and look after her fellow orphans,” she says.

While Thais are aware of the Japanese love for baseball, fewer realise that the same passion exists in South Korea. The KBL is very real and several Korean talents play in the Major League in the United States. Ryu Hyun-jin of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Choo Shin-soo of the Cincinnati Reds make brief cameos in the film.

Japanese superstar Joe Odagiri is also part of the cast, portraying the charismatic Japanese baseball club owner who tries to buy Mr Go for his team.

Playing against a computer-animated gorilla would be tough for any actor but Xu says that she managed just fine “thanks to the director, who showed me exactly what he wanted to do by acting it out first”.

Kim and VFX supervisor Jung Sung-jin spent time at large zoos in both the US and Japan before finally deciding to model Ling Ling on a male gorilla named Haoko at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo. The next step was to send in an animation team to observe him. 

“Part of Ling Ling’s character in based on me while the facial expression is inspired by my favourite actress Moon Geun Young,” he laughs.

Xu also interacts with Ling Ling’s stand-in, actor Kim Heung-rae, for the motion-capture scenes. To overcome the differences in physiology, the animators used a process called “retargeting”, which translates human body ratio to that of a gorilla.

Kim, who also owns visual effect company Dexter Digital, brought together animators from all across South Korea to work on the film but still managed to spend just 10 per cent of the budget demanded by most Hollywood movies in producing more than 1,000 special effects shots.

“Mr Go” is the first South Korean film to be entirely shot in stereoscopic 3D, and it’s done by the same visual effects company that worked on “Transformers” and “Alice in Wonderland”.

 

AMAZING APE