Shim Hyung-Rae Talks About '디워' ('D-War')

It's the biggest Monster film in Korean History, D-War! Former Comedian and now Director Shim Hyung-Rae shared some thoughts about the film with Maxmovie. Here's some excerpts:

Maxmovie: You really seem like a confident person. Someone with no regrets and afraid of nothing.
Shim: Success and failure live all in your mind. If you think something is a success, it is, and viceversa. What's success, really? Making a lot of money? Making your dreams come true is a success.

Maxmovie: What does the title mean?
Shim: There are three ways to explain it. The first is 'Dragon Wars,' but if you put 'Dragon' in the title it sounds like a Chinese action film, so we just used the initial. It's also like the D-Day in Normandy, the most important day in the landing operations. And, finally, it's a Digital Fight. A fight between America (ed. Hollywood) and I.

Maxmovie: Where did you get the idea for the film?
Shim: It's a film with Anacondas. People know a lot about dragons, but very little about what kind of creature they are before transforming into their final state. Outside Korea, stories about the existence of these creatures are all different according to where you look. There would be no way of doing this if it weren't for Science-Fiction.

Maxmovie: Is there anything you've learned while making your previous film, '용가리' ('Yonggari')?

Shim: Without that film there would be no D-War. Back then we knew nothing about lighting, exposure, camera angles, models and texture. We really hit the bottom of the barrel. I also learned a lot about investment and contracts while people accused me of making a swindle. We just needed to do differently than with Yonggari. People kept saying Yonggari was a flop, that Shim Hyung-Rae was a conman and made money off this fraud... while they were talking I worked on D-War.

(ed. edited for spoilers)

Maxmovie: Which scene are you most confident about?
Shim: The living dragon going to Heaven. That's the highlight of the film. In the West they've only seen that in pictures or sculptures. In D-War we show the living dragons of the East. That part of the film hasn't been shown in the Trailer, either.

Via Maxmovie