⚠️ Major spoilers for Na Hong-jin’s HOPE (2026) below.
If you finished HOPE wondering who Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander were actually playing, you are not alone.
For much of Na Hong-jin’s sci-fi thriller, the aliens are deliberately difficult to understand. They speak an invented language, their relationships are not immediately explained, and the movie initially encourages us to see the strange creatures from the human characters’ point of view.
But by the end of the film, something important changes.
These creatures are not simply a group of random monsters invading Earth.
They have names, relationships, loyalties, grief—and even a royal family.
So who exactly are they?
The Short Answer
Michael Fassbender plays Ma’veyyo, a warrior connected to the alien royal family.
Alicia Vikander plays J’aur, an alien empress and the mother of Kali.
Taylor Russell plays Ai’dovor, while Cameron Britton plays Va’migere. The Cannes Film Festival’s official HOPE page confirms these character names, and recent coverage also confirms that Fassbender and Vikander appear as CGI-rendered extraterrestrial characters rather than ordinary human roles.
That makes the alien side of HOPE much more complicated than it first appears.
Who Is Michael Fassbender’s Character, Ma’veyyo?
Michael Fassbender plays Ma’veyyo.
He is best understood as a warrior and protector associated with Kali, the alien crown prince.
That distinction matters.
Ma’veyyo is not simply a giant creature chasing humans because he wants to kill them. Once we understand his relationship to Kali, much of his behavior can be viewed from another perspective.
He is trying to protect—or recover—someone important to him and to the alien royal family.
That helps explain one of the movie’s biggest tricks: HOPE initially presents the aliens as terrifying monsters, but gradually asks the audience to reconsider who the real aggressors are.
Director Na Hong-jin has explained that the aliens were intentionally designed as different-looking beings because they come from different planets but are united together.
So their radically different appearances do not necessarily mean they are unrelated species randomly gathered on Earth.
They belong to the same larger group.
Who Is Alicia Vikander’s Character, J’aur?
Alicia Vikander plays J’aur.
J’aur is one of the most important aliens in the story because she is connected directly to the royal family.
She is the empress and Kali’s mother.
This changes the emotional meaning of the alien storyline.
What initially looks like a monster movie gradually becomes something closer to a story about a family dealing with catastrophe and loss.
That is particularly important when interpreting the final part of HOPE.
J’aur is not simply observing what humans have done.
She has a personal stake in what happened to Kali.
Who Is Kali?
Kali is crucial to understanding almost everything the aliens do.
He is the crown prince, the son of J’aur and Emperor Ku’er.
He is also the figure Ma’veyyo is committed to protecting.
This means that the conflict between humans and aliens is not merely:
Humans vs. invading monsters.
From the alien perspective, it becomes something closer to:
A royal family and its protectors trying to deal with what has happened to their child and heir.
That perspective radically changes how the earlier violence can be interpreted.
Who Is Emperor Ku’er?
Emperor Ku’er is J’aur’s husband and Kali’s father.
He is therefore the emperor of the alien royal family.
His connection to the enormous ship near the end of the movie also helps explain why that sequence is more significant than a simple sci-fi spectacle.
The ship is tied to the aliens’ larger civilization and royal structure.
That is also one reason the ending feels much bigger than the isolated events around Hope Harbor.
The movie suddenly reveals that what happened in this small Korean community may be only one part of a far larger extraterrestrial story.
Who Are Ai’dovor and Va’migere?
The other major alien characters are also more than anonymous creatures.
Taylor Russell plays Ai’dovor, while Cameron Britton plays Va’migere. Their casting alongside Fassbender and Vikander is also listed by the Korean Film Council, while Cannes provides their alien character names.
Additional Korean promotional material reported by overseas film analysis identifies Ai’dovor as connected to Kali’s care and Va’migere as another member of the group.
Together, these characters make the aliens feel less like a conventional invading army and more like a small society with defined relationships and responsibilities.
Why Do All the Aliens Look So Different?
This is one of the most interesting details in HOPE.
The creatures do not all look like members of the same species.
That is intentional.
Na Hong-jin explained that the aliens were designed differently because they come from different planets but have joined together as one group.
That explains why some appear more humanoid while others look dramatically more monstrous.
Their physical differences are actually part of the world-building.
And it may become much more important if HOPE continues into another movie.
Why Are Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander Almost Unrecognizable?
Viewers expecting conventional appearances from two Oscar-winning actors may be surprised.
Fassbender and Vikander are not simply wearing alien makeup.
Their performances were transformed into CGI extraterrestrial characters, with performance-capture work forming an important part of how the creatures were created. Contemporary reviews specifically note that both actors portray aliens rather than conventional human characters.
That is why some viewers may finish much of the movie without immediately realizing which creature is being played by which famous actor.
It is also part of Na Hong-jin’s storytelling strategy.
If Fassbender and Vikander simply appeared as recognizable Hollywood stars, audiences might instinctively sympathize with them.
Instead, HOPE first makes them alien in the most literal sense.
Only later does the film allow us to understand them.
Are the Aliens Actually the Villains of HOPE?
This may be the most important question.
The easy answer at the beginning of the movie appears to be yes.
Humans encounter terrifying creatures. Violence follows. People die.
But HOPE gradually complicates that interpretation.
Na Hong-jin has built a story in which perspective matters enormously. As the movie reveals more about the aliens’ relationships and motivations, the audience is forced to reconsider events that initially looked like a straightforward alien attack.
The aliens have their own family structure.
They experience loss.
They protect one another.
And their actions have motivations that the human characters—and initially the audience—do not fully understand.
That does not automatically make every alien action morally justified.
But it does mean that “humans good, aliens evil” is far too simple an explanation of HOPE.
Why the Alien Family Tree Matters
Once the relationships are clear, the story becomes much easier to follow:
Emperor Ku’er + Empress J’aur
↓
Kali — Crown Prince
Around Kali are figures including:
Ma’veyyo — warrior/protector
Ai’dovor — connected to Kali’s care
Va’migere — member of the alien group
Suddenly, scenes that seemed chaotic begin to have emotional logic.
The aliens are not simply moving from one action sequence to another.
They are responding to events involving their prince, their family and their group.
The Bigger Meaning of the Aliens in HOPE
This may ultimately be what Na Hong-jin wants viewers to question:
Who is the monster when two completely different civilizations encounter each other but cannot understand one another?
At first, humans see creatures.
Later, we see names.
Then relationships.
Then family.
And finally, grief and motivation.
The physical appearance of the aliens has not changed.
Our understanding of them has.
That reversal is one of HOPE’s most interesting ideas.
And it also explains why the film leaves so much of the alien civilization unexplored.
Na Hong-jin has already confirmed that he has plans for a sequel, suggesting that the world introduced here is much larger than what we see in the first movie.
Final Takeaway
So, who are the aliens in HOPE?
They are not simply monsters that arrive in a Korean village.
They belong to a much larger extraterrestrial society centered, in this story, around Empress J’aur, Emperor Ku’er and their son Kali.
Michael Fassbender’s Ma’veyyo is a warrior connected to the crown prince, while Alicia Vikander’s J’aur is Kali’s mother and one of the central figures of the alien royal family.
Once those relationships become clear, HOPE becomes a very different movie.
The real mystery may not be “Why did the aliens attack the humans?”
It may be:
“What did the humans look like from the aliens’ point of view?”