“For Anne, this was a movie about alcoholism. For me it was a movie about self-loathing and what happens when you do have that power,” Sudeikis said.

The Oscar in the first half of the film gives Gloria that aforementioned television and futon seemingly out of the goodness of his heart. The Oscar in the second half gives her an entire van of antiques to furnish her house — an attempt to make amends after pushing her and killing hundreds of people with his giant robot creature. “It’s the same character, that’s the thing,” Vigalondo said about the man we meet in the first half of the movie, versus the one who lashes out in the second. “There are not two Oscars.”

Oscar’s discovery of his own strange, grandiose ability dislodges something within him: a toxicity that had long been looking for any excuse to get out. It’s a metaphor the film revels in. “In America, as a straight white man, you’re given that power from the get-go in a lot of instances,” Sudeikis said. “And yet, when you add on to that power... That’s [like Abraham Lincoln said]: ‘Any man can overcome adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.’”

Gloria, after discovering her own connection to her monster, tries to get sober and separate herself from her all-nighters binge-drinking at the bar — an attempt to put a stop to the terror her drunken actions had been inflicting on Seoul. Witnessing her regaining independence, Oscar gives her a choice, if you can call it that: She can go wherever she wants, do whatever she wants, move back to New York even — but for every day she doesn’t report to him at the bar, he’ll exercise his connection to that giant robot and kill hundreds of innocent people.

“I know you think everything revolves around you, but it doesn’t anymore,” he says to her. “My life is just as amazing as yours now, for once.” He follows this statement with a telling declaration: “I’m done being Mr. Nice Guy.”