Justin Chang

speaker

1,518 appearances 49 recordings 2 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 3d ago

Justin Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 26 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 4.

Appearances

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Fresh Air · Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones / Remembering singer Cassandra Wilson · 18 Sep 2026 podcast

Like the Steven Spielberg who made Jaws, Na knows that the less we see, the scarier things are. voice-verified

Indeed, it's a bit of a disappointment when we finally do get a clear look at the monsters, who resemble creatures out of a zombie apocalypse video game circa the early 2000s. voice-verified

But this isn't a deal-breaker. voice-verified

The CGI may be third-rate, but Hope has some of the most exhilaratingly sustained action scenes I've seen in years. voice-verified

Na has a strange ability to juggle nerve-shredding realism with an outlandish, almost slapstick level of violence. voice-verified

Watching his characters tear through the streets with a monster in a hot pursuit is like watching the Steve McQueen classic Bullet, a Mad Max movie, and a Looney Tunes cartoon rolled into one. voice-verified

and there's an extraordinarily beautiful sequence in the woods, in which the pursuit takes place on horseback, that has the majesty of a western. voice-verified

There are lengthy stretches of downtime, during which we get to know the people of Hope, most of them prickly types with salty mouths and big guns. voice-verified

The character development is minimal, but the performances stick with you. voice-verified

Chang Ho-yeon of Squid Game fame is terrific as a plucky police deputy who's a demon behind the wheel. voice-verified

and Cho In-sung is hilarious as an irascible hunter who stares down one of the aliens and turns out to have more lives than Wile E. Coyote. voice-verified

As for the aliens themselves, Nod deliberately keeps us in the dark and off-balance in terms of who they are, where they come from, and what exactly they want from planet Earth. voice-verified

It's worth noting that they are played by well-known Hollywood actors including Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell. voice-verified

though it's hard to recognize them under so many layers of CGI, especially given the incomprehensible language they speak. voice-verified

Part of me wondered if Na were making a wry commentary on the inequities of blockbuster filmmaking by pitting his Korean ensemble against a bunch of better-known Hollywood stars. voice-verified

But then in the final minutes of Hope, a truly bizarre narrative reversal occurs. voice-verified

Let's just say that the movie squeezes an entire film's worth of backstory into five minutes and suggests there's more to these extraterrestrial beings than we might have thought. voice-verified

The movie ends on a laughably abrupt cliffhanger, but one with a touch of self-awareness. voice-verified

Na has already said in interviews that he's planning a sequel. voice-verified

Will the next movie clear up some of our confusion? voice-verified

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