Chicken Nugget follows a woman who turns into a chicken nugget after entering an odd machine. Now her father and one-sided lover must join hands to bring her back to her human form. The film is currently streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Choi Sun-Man, the CEO of More Than Machines, is about to have chicken nuggets for lunch that his daughter Min-Ah is bringing, and his intern Ko Baek-Joong will be joining them.
While he goes to the bathroom, Min-Ah and Baek-Joong sit together and chat, when she notices the new cabinet-like machine. Baek-Joong says it relieves fatigue but they haven’t tried it yet.
She enters it anyway and presses the button that appears shortly. The last thing she says is “chicken nugget” while seeing one that Baek-Joong drops inadvertently. The machine begins whirring and creates smoke.
When the smoke clears, Baek-Joong opens its door to find that Choi Min-Ah has turned into a chicken nugget. Choi Sun-Man and Baek-Joong begin trying to contend with this absurd turn of events and figure out how to turn Min-Ah back into a human.
They start searching for Yoo In-Won the award-winning mechanical engineer who was studying this machine, and had another one just like the one that turned Min-Ah into a chicken nugget.
While they try and fail to search for the other one, Yoo In-Won’s nephew, Yoo Tae-Man steals the one at More Than Machine, along with Min-Ah.
Baek-Joong and Sun-Man go to get their Min-Ah back and meet Yoo In-Won, who turns back into a human three years after he was turned into a caterpillar and assumed to have disappeared.
Yoo In-Won wishes to continue his research and plans to surrender it to the owners of the machine, as well as the fate of the world, which he believes would be far better in their hands.
Yoo Tae-Man needs the machine to turn into his younger brother who has stolen many things from him throughout his life.
Meanwhile, the aliens who brought the machines with them 200 years ago and have been searching for them to go back to their planet, find out the location of it, and arrive there.
There’s a three-way standoff before Baek-Joong, Sun-Man, and the aliens defeat Yoo In-Won and Yoo Tae-Man. Sun-Man has to make an incredibly hard decision to ensure that both the aliens and Min-Ah get the chance to reunite with their families.
Fifty years later, when things do turn out unexpectedly sad, it’s time for Baek-Joong to make the hard decision. Chicken Nugget ends on the same day when the trio is about to have lunch together.
Ending explained:
Sun-Man’s decision
The aliens came to Earth on a tour 200 years ago. They lost the machines that let them turn into whatever they last saw before the machine was turned on.
They finally find it, 200 years later. However, the machine has lost the juice and can only be used for one last time. Meanwhile, an uncle-nephew duo and a boss-employee duo stand in their way of taking their machine back.
With the help of Choi Sun-Man the boss and Ko Baek-Joong the employee, the aliens defeat Yoo In-Won the uncle, and his nephew Yoo Tae-Man, who wanted machines for their personal gains and goals.
Choi Sun-Man wants to turn his daughter Min-Ah, who inadvertently turned herself into a chicken nugget, back into a human. However, the aliens want the machine to go back to their home planets and reunite with their families.
The aliens ideate that one of them takes Min-Ah with them to the planet and turns her back into a human, as well as recharges the machines, before returning to Earth.
This process would take only one day for the aliens but one day on their planet is 50 years on Earth. This means that by the time Min-Ah comes back, Sun-Man and Baek-Joong might not even be alive.
Sun-Man finally makes the tough decision to send Min-Ah with the alien named Baek-jung. Meanwhile, he decides to quit the company and hand it over to the full-time employee Kim Hwan-Dong.
Fifty years later
Fifty years later, Ko Baek-Joong is an iconic global sensation and is preparing for the final concert of his 50th debut anniversary world tour.
Kim Hwang-Dong went on to do great things for More Than Machines, which was joined by Yoo In-Won as principal researcher. After the passing of the two, Yoo Tae-Man took over as the CEO and the principal researcher.
Choi Sun-Man went to the wilderness to live in nature and keep himself healthy and fit to be able to see his daughter once again. Baek-Jung returns to Earth in his purple alien form.
He apologizes for bringing Min-Ah back but still as a chicken nugget. He explains that when he returned to his home planet, he found that the machines had been destroyed because a travel ban had been applied on Earth.
The ban was applied because Earth had created weapons of mass destruction. The machine he took with him is the only one left but he needed a whole other day to charge it.
But this would have meant that by the time he returned to Earth with Min-Ah, 100 years would have passed in Earth and nobody who knew Min-Ah would be alive by then.
Baek-Joong’s decision
With not much time left, the alien Baek-Jung tells Baek-Joong that there’s one way he can get Min-Ah back. It is by pressing the button on a device, which turns back time.
He can go back to any point in time he wants, but the time would be turned back for all people, none of whom would remember all that happened to them in these past 50 years. This also includes Baek-Joong too.
Baek-Joong wants to ask Choi Sun-Man before making the decision and calls him to his house. Sun-Man is still alive and rather fit but before he can meet Baek-Joong and see Min-Ah in the chicken nugget form, he dies.
Baek-Joong decides by himself and turns back time.
Choi Min-Ah returns, but is all really saved?
The day that Choi Min-Ah turned into a nugget plays out again.
She brings the nuggets to her father and Baek-Joong at More Than Machines, and a quick cut to the same machine with ominous music precedes before Chicken Nugget rolls the credits.
The alien has said that the memories of all people would be deleted once he goes back in time, and that their destinies would remain the same. He also adds that the change would be that Min-Ah’s life would be added to them.
This implies that events would play out differently for her. However, the shot of the same machine at their company before the film ends implies that the events may play out the same way as before.
This would cause a time loop of the same events playing out, which casts more than dubious clouds on the alien’s intelligence with the solution he proposed.
The scene at the end with Min-Ah, Sun-Man, and Baek-Joong plays out rather differently than the similar one at the beginning of the film.
Ultimately, it’s an ambiguous ending that leaves the fate of the protagonists up to the optimistic or pessimistic interpretations of the viewers.
Also Read: My Name is Loh Kiwan summary and ending explained