Looking for a sci-fi movie? “Space Sweepers” might be an option to fill your time, especially after finishing finals and projects. “Space Sweepers,” starring Song Joong-ki and Kim Tae-ri, is the first Korean space blockbuster movie that aired exclusively on Netflix last February. The story takes place in the year 2092 where Earth reaches the brink of becoming uninhabitable, leaving an organization called UTS to create an orbiting home similar to Earth.

What makes this movie interesting is that writer-director Jo Sung-hee wrote the story 10 years before its release. He started creating this movie after a discussion with his friend about the dangers of junk causing collisions in outer space. 

The movie starts with ‘noncitizens’ all across the globe working as space sweepers who collect space debris and sell it to a factory, creating competitive tension amongst the crews. The plot follows the spaceship, Victory, and the space crew consisting of Kim Tae-ho ( Song Joong-ki), Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri), Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu) and a robot named Bubs.

One day, they find a child named Dorothy while picking up a car floating in orbit, and they later learn from a news report that she possesses a weapon of destruction inside her body. The crew initially thought there may be a chance for them to earn money by returning the child. However, it turns out that Dorothy was injected with nanobots in hopes of combating her incurable disease, which gave her the ability to heal and communicate with nature.

As the story goes on, the crew member starts to get attached to Dorothy, whose real name is Kot-nim. They have the urge to protect Dorothy so she does not fall into the hands of James Sullivan, CEO of UTS, who planned to exploit Dorothy’s power for his own benefit to terraform Mars.

The storyline is unique and incorporates societal problems such as space environments, overpopulation and pollution, all the while keeping the audience captivated through action-filled and emotional scenes. The cast for the movie is extremely diverse, bringing the same diversity in languages used throughout the movie with scenes in English, Chinese and French.

The actors in the movie successfully engage viewers with the personality and development of their characters. The CGI is visually impeccable as it gets the viewers to immerse themselves in the world of space. The design of the spaceship and the robots are stunning, and it does not seem like a cheap CGI where you can see that it is edited and fake. All I can say is that after the rush of finals is over, “Space Sweepers” is worth streaming. 

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