This article contains spoilers for Bugonia.Anyone looking at any of the promotional materials for the Oscar-nominated sci-fi comedy Bugonia can safely assume the movie’s tone, if not its plot. After all, it’s the latest collaboration between idiosyncratic Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, who previously starred in The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness. The poster and trailer prominently featured Stone’s character Michelle Fuller staring out at the camera, her head shaved and her body covered in white goo. Clearly, it seemed like Stone would once again give a brave, weird, and otherworldly performance in another Lanthimos oddity.Bugonia is weird, there’s no doubt. And Stone certainly gives it her all, allowing herself to be vulnerable and disparaged on screen. But the most impressive part of Stone’s work is the humanity she brings to Fuller, enriching the film’s themes and establishing her as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood today.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});A Real Human BeingA remake of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan, Bugonia follows conspiracy theorist Don (Jesse Plemons) as he and his autistic cousin Teddy (Aidan Delbis) kidnap high-powered CEO Michelle Fuller. Don is convinced that Fuller belongs to an alien race called the Andromedans, and that she uses her position atop the pharmaceutical corporation Auxolith to transform Earthlings into slaves, a plot he uncovered by studying the planet’s dying honeybee population.Against expectation, Stone is at her broadest in the first act of the movie, before Fuller gets abducted by Don and Teddy. She sashays into boardrooms and stumbles while recording a video on work/life balance as if she’s in a Saturday Night Live skit about girl bosses. None of these scenes give credence to Don’s theories, but they do establish Fuller as an unlikable, out-of-touch rich person. Even the scenes in which Teddy and Don abduct Fuller are played for laughs, with Stone varying between precise martial arts moves and frantic flailing to escape her attackers.As soon as she wakes up in Don’s basement to find her head shaved and her limbs in chains, Stone changes her approach. Initially, she allows Fuller to register some shock and confusion as she tries to make sense of the situation. Next, she plays a woman very used to getting her own way, as Fuller lays out, in very plain language, security protocols for Don and Teddy. Finally, after realizing that Don truly believes that she is an alien, she plays sympathetic and understanding with him, even as she insists that he’s wrong.In the span of five minutes, Stone gives her character three different communication styles. But none of them goes over the top, none of them involves the easy hysterics that a lesser actor would use when playing an abductee. Instead, she keeps playing real, playing it like she’s a human interacting with humans—which is the entire point of the movie, even if it’s not the point of the scene.Compassion in the ChaosAs in the original Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia ends with a terrifying reveal. Don and Teddy were right. Fuller is an Andromedan, and she has been using her company to experiment on humans. However, her people were not, in fact, turning humans into slaves. Rather, Andromedans created humans in their image, an act of apology to the Earth after accidentally killing off the dinosaurs. As much as they hoped the humans would flourish on Earth and make it better, the Andromedans watched in horror as people destroyed the planet and each other. Fuller has been on a mission to guide Earth’s residents toward enlightenment and happiness. But they just keep acting like Don, wallowing in hatred and fear.After a wonderfully retro sequence in which Fuller returns to her ship, declares the Earth experiment a failure, and pops the atmosphere, we’re treated to shots from all around the world, all immediately dead after Fuller’s actions.While that ending is indeed darkly funny, and could be read as mean-spirited, Lanthimos and his screenwriter Will Tracy retain a sympathy toward people, even deeply flawed people like Fuller’s captors. Beyond the inherent sweetness in Delbis’s performance, there’s the reveal that Teddy’s mother (Alicia Silverstone) has been in a coma since she participated in a drug test for Auxolith. Even a shocking admission by local sheriff Casey (Stavros Halkias) that he molested Teddy when they were younger comes across in deeply sad, humane ways. It never justifies the harm that Casey did, but it acknowledges that a flawed human being acted upon another human being.Taken together, Bugonia plays like a wild plea for people to be good to the planet and to each other, to stop acting the way we’ve been acting for millennia. But that plea would be easily laughed away if Stone ever allowed the viewer to dismiss her as a weirdo, as something wholly unknowable and unrelatable. Instead, Stone retains Bugonia‘s empathetic core by keeping Fuller as a real person.Real Award-Worthy WorkOf the 10 films nominated for Best Picture, Bugonia feels the most unlikely. Yes, The Favourite and Poor Things established Lanthimos as an Oscar player, but a film involving kidnapping, alien invaders, and the end of the world hardly feels like it fits alongside One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, or Sinners. Yet, its message is just as relevant as any of those, urging for systemic change and compassion.That message would fail without Stone’s work as Fuller. Even though she faces a stacked Best Actress category, against four other women who have done incredible work, no one had a challenge quite as demanding, or succeeded so marvelously, as Emma Stone, truly one of the best actresses of our generation.Bugonia is now streaming on Peacock.The post Bugonia Cements Emma Stone as One of the Greatest Actresses of Her Generation appeared first on Den of Geek.