If you had the chance to create your ideal heaven and live in it as an AI after you die, what price would you be willing to pay?

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Wonderland, the 2024 Korean sci-fi movie, written by Kim Tae Yong and Min Ji, was theatrically released on June 5, 2024, and made available on Netflix more than a month later on July 26, 2024. The Netflix synopsis for this movie states: "'Nation's first love' Suzy ("Doona!") plays a flight attendant who finds solace in an AI duplicate of her comatose boyfriend - until one day he wakes up."

Despite the Netflix synopsis implying that Bae Suzy's character and her boyfriend are the only main leads, Wonderland actually explores the lives of multiple individuals using AI technology to cope with the loss of their loved ones.

The first character is Ku Jung In, played by Bae Suzy. Jung In is a flight attendant whose boyfriend, Park Tae Joo (Park Bo Gum), is in a coma, with slim chances of recovery. To cope with the pain, Jung In gets an AI replica of Tae Joo, whom she talks to 24/7.

Next is Baili (Tang Wei). When Baili discovers her terminal illness, she subscribes to Wonderland's services and signs a contract to have an AI replica made after her death so her elderly mother and young daughter can find peace. She explicitly asks for her replica to be an archaeologist, her dream job that she left to become a highly-paid corporate employee.

We also meet Song Jeong Ran (Sung Byoung Sook), a poor elderly woman who seemingly has no family left. After her grandson Choi Jin Ku's (Tang Jun Sang) death, she gets his AI duplicate made by Wonderland. On the other hand, Lee Yong Sik (Choi Moo Sung), terminally ill in the hospital, is talking to Wonderland workers to customize his AI duplicate before he dies.

Lastly, there are Seo Hae Ri (Jung Yu Mi), the founder of Wonderland, Kim Hyeon Soo (Choi Woo Sik), her employee, friend, and love interest, and Sung Joon (Gong Yoo), an AI duplicate we know little about except that he works for Wonderland and greets the AI duplicates as they enter the AI world.

While the movie never fully explains the technology and fails to dive into much detail regarding this, we come to understand that multiple companies in the Wonderland universe use advanced AI technology to create replicas of dead or comatose people at the request of their loved ones. 

The purpose is simple: to help their customers talk to their beloveds. These AI duplicates live in a place called ‘heaven’, and the customers can customize these heavens and the AI duplicates to a certain extent.

Despite the name and the movie's effort to depict this AI world as a paradise, the entire concept seems more like a glamorized hell for several reasons.

The Emotional Exploitation of AI Duplicates

The process behind the creation of the AI duplicates is left to the imagination. The audience doesn't know whether Wonderland employees interview the family and/or the terminally ill patient to learn about their personalities and life before creating these AI personas, or if they use some neuralink-adjacent technology to copy and paste the personality and memory of the person onto their servers. 

However, one thing we do know is that even though most AI duplicates don't know about their death and think they’re just living their normal life physically away from their friends and family, these duplicates can feel emotions.

This theory is proven when, throughout the movie, Baili slowly realizes that she’s not real. Her memories start flooding in — she was never an archaeologist, she never spent time with her mother and daughter because she was always working, and she was dying before she woke up in this place resembling the Middle East. She misses her family, wants to meet them, feels complex emotions, and yet she is not considered human.

Baili's mother, who is struggling to accept this AI duplicate as her daughter, decides to deactivate her service.

With one click of a button, she deletes this AI person capable of love and yearning. In her defense, she didn’t know it was even possible for the AI Baili to gain consciousness. The same goes for Seo Hae Ri and Kim Hyeon Soo, who are surprised when they realize they cannot shut down Baili because she has gained consciousness.

Now that the characters know that AI duplicates are something adjacent to humans, one would think they wouldn’t deactivate them easily, as it feels something akin to murder.

However, later in the movie, after Jung In's boyfriend wakes up from his coma, she calls Hae Ri and Hyeon Soo, asking them to deactivate the AI Tae Joo, and they comply without hesitation. They also deactivate Choi Jin Gu as soon as his grandmother dies and cannot pay for Wonderland's subscription anymore.

A Capitalist Hellscape

Have you ever heard of a heaven where you have to pay for new clothes with money that you can’t even earn in said heaven? Well, the characters of Wonderland have.

Song Jeong Ran, an elderly woman who lost her grandson, subscribes to Wonderland because she wants to keep communicating with her last relative. However, the service that was supposed to bring her comfort suddenly turns into a capitalist nightmare when her grandson, Jin Gu, starts demanding she buy him better clothes, cars, and more.

To keep her grandchild happy, Jeong Ran starts working two jobs, just to buy items on a screen. The question is, why is the cost of these items not covered in the subscription? How expensive is it to code a pretty shirt or a cooler car?

Wonderland founder Hae Ri seems concerned for the grandmother when she sees her spending an immense amount of money on Wonderland and acts admirably when she offers to replace Jin Gu's old car with the one he desires for no extra charges. However, as she is the creator of this software, if she wanted to, she could make these items free for all. She helped Jeong Ran but there must be others like her that feel trapped by this consumerism. 

You Can't Run Away

From what's shown in Wonderland, once someone chooses the location of their own or their loved one's heaven, it cannot be changed unless the person paying for the subscription asks for it. For example, Baili's heaven is in the Middle East, while Yong Sik's is in Hawaii.

Tae Joo's heaven, which in my opinion is the worst, is in outer space. It’s a literal nightmare considering he’s alone in the satellite with no one to talk to except when Jung In calls him.

As we know from scenes shot from the perspective of AI Baili, the AI duplicates don't turn off when the call ends — they keep going with their day. This means Tae Joo is alone and has no one to talk to while Jung In is busy with her job.

Alone in Heaven

While  AI Tae Joo's situation seems horrible as he’s alone in space, Jin Gu in London, Yong Sik in Hawaii, and Baili in the Middle East don't have it any better either. The AI duplicates in their ‘heaven’ are the only AI duplicates, and everyone else is an NPC.

This is confirmed when Baili tries to run away from her heaven and all the people she thought were her friends and colleagues start glitching and repeating the same dialogue over and over again.

From Yong Sik's conversation with Wonderland staff, it’s confirmed that more than one person can go to the same heaven if they want to, but most people are alone there, surrounded by characters who will never fully understand them.

Even though the movie Wonderland had a good plot and the acting by the main leads was phenomenal, Wonderland's ‘heaven’ is certainly a hell. The AI duplicates, who are very much capable of feeling human emotions, are used by humans as high-tech products to cope with the loss of their loved ones, and not treated as the conscious beings they are. 

These AI duplicates, despite possessing the same emotions as humans, do not have the power to change the situation they are in, no matter how hard they try. Not only are their lives at the mercy of the people who pay for Wonderland subscriptions but their deaths are also just a click of a button away.

Edited by Chelsea Cheetham.

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