The director and his stars talk stunt work, CGI scene partners and a divisive ending ahead of the alien epic's July 15 opening From left: Zo In-sung, director Na Hong-jin, Hoyeon and Hwang Jung-min attend a press conference for "Hope" following its press screening at Megabox Coex in Seoul, Monday. (Yonhap) "Compared to my previous films, I thought the level of violence here would be far lower — and that's how I wanted to make it," director Na Hong-jin said Monday.That may come as a surprise to anyone who has seen "Hope." Na's first feature in the decade since "The Wailing" is a creature spectacle of staggering scale, one that levels half a town and burns through enough ammunition to stock a small army.But for the director, who met the press after a media screening at Megabox Coex in southern Seoul, the mayhem was the point."This film is the exact opposite of 'The Wailing.' The story had to be felt through the action," Na said. "Without dialogue or description, the action itself had to carry what the film wants to say."Reportedly the most expensive Korean production to date, "Hope" unfolds in a remote harbor town near the Demilitarized Zone, where reports of a tiger on the loose throw the locals into a panic, before the truth turns out to be something far stranger and more violent.The film premiered in competition at Cannes in May, the first Korean title in the running since 2022. It opens here July 15 ahead of a planned North American rollout in September.The action peaks with a white-knuckle final chase — the toughest thing he shot, according to Zo In-sung. The actor plays Sung-ki, the huntsman cousin to Hwang Jung-min's small-town police chief."It wasn't just me — Hoyeon, who drove alongside, and Jung-min all had a hard time getting in sync," he said. "But as hard as it was, I think a truly great scene came out of it." The actor said he also logged three months of horseback training, at two or three sessions a week.Much of that work happened without scene partners. The film's extraterrestrials — played through motion capture by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton — would only arrive later in post."Acting purely on imagination, without a partner in front of me, was a first," Hwang said. "It had to be a calculated performance, worked out before the cameras ever rolled." Hoyeon, who makes her feature debut as no-nonsense local cop Sung-ae, said laser pointers stood in for her eyelines.The creatures took more than three years to design, the director said, yet their backstory surfaces only in the film's closing minutes — a swerve that some in Cannes found baffling.Na explained that the ending wasn't written to round out the story he'd been telling; he'd toyed with pushing the narrative deeper into the night before deciding he'd said enough. "It's an epilogue, plain and simple," he said, noting the story proper "ends in tragedy." Whatever remains unexplained, he considers the film whole: "It may not be a great story, but I believe it clearly stands complete."The cut has shifted slightly since its festival bow — some five minutes trimmed, three or four added back — and Na admitted he's still second-guessing one pivotal shot, which exists in nearly a hundred versions.Casting came up, too. Na wrote the police chief with Hwang in mind, a partnership dating back to a project that fell apart nearly a decade ago."It was an inevitable, natural casting," he said. Hoyeon came by way of Hwang's tip, and one two-hour conversation sealed it. "She already had, just as she is, the qualities I'd hoped for in the character," Na said.Near the end of the session, a reporter raised an incident at the film's Cannes press conference, where an unidentified journalist greeted only Fassbender and Vikander before telling the panel, "I don't know the rest of you," then asked whether the married couple had been hired as a package deal.Footage of the exchange spread across Korean social media, drawing accusations of racism. Fielding the question for the first time Monday, Na kept it short."Of course I was annoyed to hear that," he said. "But I didn't think it was a place where I could show it — and I'd rather not say any more about it."