By Lukas Prominksi / Staff Writer

Every year, there’s one movie that really impacts pop culture more than any other. 2022 had “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” 2023 had “Barbie” and 2024 had “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

Every one of these movies actually makes sense to be culture-changing. All of them are based on existing ideas that people recognize, and it makes sense that they would sell so many tickets… So why did this year’s “”KPop Demon Hunters” have such an impact?

It almost seems to defy logic; “KPop Demon Hunters” is an animated film based on no pre-existing media that took the world by storm this year. It has more views than “Squid Game,” “Wednesday” and “Stranger Things,” some of the most culturally significant television shows of all time.

Thinking about it logically, “KPop Demon Hunters” achieved this feat for three reasons: The film is on a streaming service most people have, the film has stunning animation and the film has catchy music.

Start with the first point: “KPop Demon Hunters” is on a streaming service that most people have. According to The Streamable, Netflix is the most subscribed streaming service across America. While Disney+ has 57.8 million subscribers in North America and HBO Max has roughly 60 million, Netflix has nearly 90 million of them across the same demographic. 

Because the film is so accessible to kids looking for something children-oriented to watch, it’s found an audience in young kids who want to later show their parents, siblings and so on and so forth.

But why specifically this movie? That brings me to the second reason the film has had such a big impact:  the animation.

Sony Pictures Animation, the animation studio that produced “KPop Demon Hunters,” has had some major hits lately. While they made plenty of B-movies throughout the mid-2000s and early 2010s, they really started to gain the public’s interest with 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

From there, through the critically lauded “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” and into 2023’s sequel “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Sony Pictures Animation has been bringing animation as a medium forward for the last several years. From the serious animation of the “Spider-Verse” films to the more cartoony “Mitchells” art style, they’ve revolutionized the use of the “2.5D” art style, a type of animation that uses 3D models to attempt to recreate 2D art, allowing for what appears to the audience as realistic depth perception within a 2D cartoon. It’s seemingly genius.

“KPop Demon Hunters” uses the same realistic art style of “Into”/”Across the Spider-Verse,” but instead of using flashing vibrant colors to amplify action sequences, it uses an almost Pixar-like skybox with pretty stars, lighting and effects throughout the air.

While people seemed to love the quick action scenes of the “Spider-Verse” films (especially given that Box Office Mojo calculates “Across the Spider-Verse” as the second-highest-grossing animated film of the year it released), it’s hard to deny that the creators, animators and modelers spent so much time on the look of “KPop Demon Hunters” that it rivals what many (IMDb, for example) consider to be the best animated film of all time.

These pretty skylines, beautiful lighting and great models are hard to ignore regardless of how well-versed in film someone is. Considering how jaw-droppingly pretty it is, it’s no surprise that children would fall in love with the film. I actually, however, don’t even think that’s the biggest thing regarding kids liking the film so much. The movie’s arguably biggest selling point (and what really skyrocketed it into popularity) is the music.

While South Korean pop (K-pop) has definitely seen American charts before (think BTS’ “Butter,” “Dynamite” and BLACKPINK’s “How You Like That”), it’s never been quite as ‘in-the-media’ as it is in relation to this film.

The film starts with an entirely original song by K-pop artists EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami. This trend continues throughout the entire film.

Every single song in the movie is sung by real K-pop artists who (after the movie’s release) are Top 50 Most Monthly Listeners list on Spotify. These charts are amplified by the sheer amount of word-of-mouth in relation to the movie. With children having backpacks and water bottles with characters on them and playing the music in the movie, they’re inadvertently convincing their peers to watch the movie.

What’s great about more and more children watching the movie is that they’re exposing themselves to foreign cultures while also having fun. Rumi, Mira and Zoey, the three leads in the film, are actually modeled after studying Korean culture, and side-by-side comparisons between the film and real life are everywhere online.

Without any one of these three things (the ease of access, the beautiful animation and the catchy music), “KPop Demon Hunters” wouldn’t have had nearly the same impact that it’s had in the status quo. Something that would have been nearly unthinkable even just six months ago is now our reality, which is actually a great sign for cinema as a whole.

Getting children away from cinematic universes and sequels and towards original ideas is a great way to potentially expose them to films that they wouldn’t have considered before and to expose them to different cultures.