Bong has discussed working inside the kaiju tradition and then refusing its scale. The inherited idea is Honda's: a monster produced by a foreign power's carelessness with chemistry, which the authorities then mishandle worse than the monster does. The Host opens with an American military officer ordering formaldehyde poured into the Han River, which happened. The departure is size and focus. Godzilla levels a city; Bong's creature takes one girl, and the film is about her family being obstructed by quarantine officials for two hours.