Korea's beloved sci-fi story is hitting the screen. Is the animation up to it?

"Pilgrims" is built on the two things Korean cinema just can't seem to pull off.

On paper, that's a recipe for disaster; on screen, it gets about halfway to proving otherwise.

Start with the sci-fi problem.

Koreans have proven time and again they can do period epics, gangster pictures, zombie thrillers — you name it — but science and speculative fiction remains the white whale.

Homegrown titles of the past few years, from the lavishly mounted "Space Sweepers" to the 28-billion-won belly-flop "Th ...