Bong Joon-ho just can’t get away from Parasites. I don’t think he’s particularly interested in trying.
Mickey 17, based on a novel by Edward Ashton, is a world away from Parasite in a way that might feel jarring to someone unfamiliar with the range of Bong Joon-ho’s work -including those who perhaps greenlit the movie, far and away the biggest, most expensive project the Oscar-winning Korean auteur has ever had the luxury to tackle. Yet it is also firmly in line with Bong’s thematic and tonal sensibilities, a man whose genre films speak as much to his acute outlook on society as his more grounded pieces. And he’s not a filmmaker prone to subtlety in this -he makes fairly brazen what his movies are about, even as he approaches them from different vantage points. This one just happens to be one where he is viscerally having fun, something that I don’t think has ever been more apparent in his career.
In his flirtations with absurdity, Mickey 17 is the first time in Bong’s filmography that the absurd has emerged more powerful, in spite of its corners of severity. Certainly compared to his other English films, there isn’t the same undercurrent of melancholy present, and it is a thrilling new experience to see him more wholeheartedly embrace comedy -with of course the assist of a ton of great collaborators, chief among them Robert Pattinson, who stars as the titular character -a simple-minded man who escapes debts on Earth by joining an interstellar colonial mission as an ‘Expendable’ -someone who goes on lethal assignments or is rendered a guinea pig for scientific experiments until they die, whereupon they are regenerated as a clone using Earth-banned technology. Four years into the mission, having arrived on the apparent snow planet Niflheim to eventually set up a colony, Mickey is on his seventeenth regeneration.
When we meet Mickey 17, he is on the verge of yet another death, only to his shock ...it doesn't happen. The point is made so often of how little value each Mickey's life is worth but then he finds himself in a circumstance where value is assigned to it, by first the critical native creatures that saved him and then gradually by Mickey himself -an impetus for self-preservation that ultimately unbuckles the order of things. And that is a serious threat in this world of strict conformity, enacted and enforced by the mission leader played by Mark Ruffalo -a failed authoritarian with a cult of personality intent on founding his perfect deep space colony.
It is perhaps a mark of Bong's keen perceptiveness that he managed to link Donald Trump and Elon Musk into a singular satirical monstrosity well before the two were joined at the hip in the real world. Certainly aspects of both are palpable in Ruffalo's performance of this Kenneth Marshall, whom he plays with broad vehemence to exceptional effect. In these familiar characteristics, which admittedly can be found in many figures around the world as Bong has insisted, there is no shying away from direct evils like eugenics and white supremacy, even while the character of their expression is roundly mocked. Everybody on the ship is defined by function over personhood -even sexual activity is kept in check for the purposes of some adrenalin calculus. Mickey is the only Expendable technically, but they are all expendables really -except of course for the privileged few.
One of the sharpest moments in the film comes when one of the early Mickeys operating on the outside of the ship loses a hand to a passing small asteroid and the hand is seen helplessly floating by the window of a restaurant where the wealthiest passengers are dining, completely oblivious to it. It's like a political cartoon, and that is somewhat the air Bong is going for here in his warped portrait of fascism's ambitions beyond the stars. All of it is ludicrously frank, aesthetically pointed, yet deceptively shallow. Bong spares no silliness in how he imagines the awkward function of this would-be colonial regime, but of course it is couched in disturbingly real trends of sentiment, which he both acknowledges and mocks decisively -especially towards the end as arrogant supremacist bluster is tested against Niflheim's inhabitant bugs, called Creepers.
And it is through these that Bong returns to his recurring 'monster' fixation, here in service of potent imperialism allegory. These giant crawling crustaceans are designed to be quite freaky on initial appearance -in line with the standard in-world view on them- but context renders them more complex, even cute eventually. They feel like cousins to both the bugs from Starship Troopers and the Ohm from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind -works I'm sure have influenced Bong. While he recalls some of the imagery of Okja in characterizing them, specifically the patent cruelty towards them of their human exploiters, he is wise and careful not to primitivize them, make them mere stand-ins for either animals or some "inferior" creature. In fact, he delights in characterizing their intelligence, as much as he delights in his concepts on the whole.
Keeping a comfortable distance from the ethical implications (whilst never entirely ignoring them), Mickey 17 plays boisterously in the sandbox of cloning. Bong freely admits he added ten lives onto Mickey's counter from the book purely so he could have more opportunities to creatively kill him in the first act. The process of cloning, referred to as "printing" is quite amusing, as it is all likened to the casual act of photocopying, complete with jokes around jams and missing trays. He takes a real interest in exploring the background of cloning, the taboo nature of multiples; and the technical aspects of portraying two Mickeys, once 17 returns only to find 18 has already been copied, quite clearly thrills him. Assuredly too, he recognizes the sex comedy antics that present themselves with two Robert Pattinsons roaming his world, and exploits that accordingly.
It's a detour of the film, and there is indeed less cohesive focus to Mickey 17 than some of Bong's other films. Steven Yeun appears as Mickey's friend and partner in crime Timo, and broadly disappears for a chunk of the movie until the mafia plot that led them to this mission resurfaces. And the movie's tone doesn't feel so radical -unlike Bong's other films it retains a singular temperature. But if he's adapted some tenets of his style, he hasn't sold it out to the big Hollywood machine. Principally he has maintained the eccentricity of his characters -one of his greatest staples. This isn't wholly down to him of course -he intersects with Pattinson at a point where the ex-heartthrob has been more and more leaning into the bizarre for his performance choices. And Mickey 17 is no change of pace, played with a mild demeanour and pubescent American accent that gives the character an immensely pitiable quality, contrasted against the confidence and gruffness of Mickey 18 -whom Pattinson can distinguish through mere poise. As his girlfriend Nasha, Naomi Ackie gets a terrific showcase; a strong, sexually interesting, passionate character, one-half of the first good romance in a Bong Joon-ho movie. By contrast, Ruffalo and Toni Collette as Marshall's domineering wife Ylfa, make for really hollow, discomforting partners, driven by very naked power-oriented lust that informs the cutting excess of their personalities. Everyone's a little bit weird, even Anamaria Vartolomei’s seemingly more straight-laced Kai, a 'pure specimen' in Marshall’s eyes who pursues Mickey in the aftermath of her girlfriend's death. Another slightly messy corner of the movie.
Such weaker episodes as well as stylistic allowances cause Mickey 17 to fall short of this filmmakers’ greats. Yet that’s a graded curve. A mediocre movie by Bong Joon-ho’s standards is worth a hundred legitimately mediocre blockbusters any day. The film is still intensely engaging and entertaining, incisive and funny in its satire, and original in vision, performances, and execution -that of a dozen Mickeys as well as the movie itself.
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