Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#18386
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Aaron Yoo works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Aaron Yoo appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Aaron. Wish Dragon is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chris Appelhans, Taran Killam, Jodie Foster and others, Aaron Yoo helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Wish Dragon (2021) as Pockets (voice) · 21 (2008) as Choi · Money Monster (2016) as Won Joon
Career snapshot
Ranked #18386 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2008–2021
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Wish Dragon
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Wish Dragon
Most frequent director
Chris Appelhans
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Chris Appelhans
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Wish Dragon — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Gamer, 21, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.
Most productive era
2010s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.62 films | 6.12 films | — |
| Action | 5.71 film | 4.81 film | — |
| Thriller | 5.71 film | 5.73 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.42 films | 5.32 films | 7.61 film |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.42 films | — | 7.61 film |
| Horror | — | 5.42 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
200821
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Choi.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2021Wish Dragon
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Pockets (voice).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
10 of 10 films
as Pockets (voice)
Directed by Chris Appelhans
as Pak Yong Qi
Directed by Taran Killam
as Won Joon
Directed by Jodie Foster
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Pockets (voice)
Wish Dragon (2021)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Pockets (voice) gives Aaron Yoo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Choi
21 (2008)
Performance score7.0
21 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Choi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Thom
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
Performance score6.9
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Thom is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Pak Yong Qi
Killing Gunther (2017)
Performance score6.5
Killing Gunther asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pak Yong Qi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Pockets (voice)
Start here. Wish Dragon is the clearest statement of what Aaron Yoo does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Aaron at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
21 (2008)
A deliberate change of key after Wish Dragon — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
A deliberate change of key after 21 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Money Monster (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Killing Gunther (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Money Monster — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jonathan Levine
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wackness
Peter Sollett
Director
1 film together
Notably Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Robert Luketic
Director
1 film together
Notably 21
Brian Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Gamer
Jodie Foster
Director
1 film together
Notably Money Monster
Taran Killam
Director
1 film together
Notably Killing Gunther
Chris Appelhans
Director
1 film together
Notably Wish Dragon
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Appelhans
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wish DragonRobert Luketic
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
21Jodie Foster
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Money MonsterPeter Sollett
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nick and Norah's Infinite PlaylistJonathan Levine
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The WacknessBrian Taylor
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GamerTaran Killam
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Killing GuntherSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Nightmare on Elm Street
as Marcus Yeon (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Aaron Yoo has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
21
as Choi
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
A Nightmare on Elm Street
as Marcus Yeon (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Gamer
as Humanz Dude
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wish Dragon
as Pockets (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
21
as Choi
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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