If you want to see the difference between big-budget American cinema and homegrown Korean movies, just compare the new Robert Pattinson star vehicle Mickey 17 to other less expensive Bong Joon-ho directorial efforts. Past Joon-ho masterpieces like Mother and Memories of Murder ended on haunting sequences either largely or entirely devoid of dialogue. Parasite grimly concludes conveying the reality that upward mobility in capitalism is an impossible notion that can only exist in your fantasies.
Mickey 17, meanwhile, leans heavily on expository dialogue to hand-hold viewers through its futuristic dystopian world. Its ending is more conventional while the production lacks the fieriest convictions of the greatest anti-capitalist works of Boots Riley, Radu Jade, and Lizzie Borden. When you’re working with lots of Warner Bros. money, even a master filmmaker like Bong Joon-ho can’t get a bit stifled. Still, even within these constrictions, Mickey 17 is still a movie from the genius behind Snowpiercer and The Host. This adaptation of the 2022 Ashton Edward novel Mickey7 is still a grimly humorous treat effortlessly exuding virtues (like great practical sets and stinging political commentary) eluding countless other American blockbusters.
20254 Earth citizen Mickey (Pattinson) exists in a futuristic world so run-down and ramshackle that it makes the Mos Eisley Cantina look like the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Gigantic doors always get stuck halfway through opening. Communicators are faulty. Endless natural disasters constantly plague Earth. No wonder Mickey wants to get off this planet, especially with a bloodthirsty loan shark breathing down his neck. As part of his plan to get mile away from Earth, he signs up for a multi-year expedition on a cult-ish spaceship to another planet. Here, he’ll work as an Expendable. This means Mickey will be endlessly cloned as a human guinea pig for the ship’s scientists to figure out how to survive the hardships of their new home.
Bong Joon-ho's script starts in media res with the 17th clone of Mickey, known affectionately as Mickey 17, preparing for his umpteenth death on the ice planet Niflheim. From there, Joon-ho jump around time as Mickey non-linearly narrates about various important facets about his life, including his romantic connection with fellow security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie). There’s several great gags in this stretch of Mickey 17, namely an outstandingly realized visual gag (told in a single-take) involving Nasha “Taking care of” a chump bullying Mickey.
Still, some of this material (namely exposition on how the cloning machine works) is a bit too redundant. It’s one thing if Mickey 17 wants to hop around the timeline for amusing dark gags or striking imagery. It’s more irksome when the screen is just filled with dry exposition. On the other hand, kicking off Mickey 17’s world in a “you may be wondering how I got here” style does ensure this film joins the exciting canon of motion pictures with late title card drops. Hundreds of Beavers, Babylon, and Drive My Car, y’all have company!
Mickey 17’s drier start is especially frustrating since, after that title card drop, the film’s most entertaining elements really begin to thrive. For one thing, audiences almost immediate after this title reveal get to see more of the adorable space critters Creepers populating Niflheim. Someone get me a stuffed animal version of these little guys right away, preferably with an Okja plushie. More importantly, Mickey 17 eventually gets to its primary conflict which involves there suddenly being TWO Mickey’s on this ship. Mickey 17 is now rubbing shoulders with Mickey 18. When multiple clones exist at once, they’re all supposed to be exterminated. Even for someone endlessly dying like Mickey 17, that’s a lot to process.
Once there are two Robert Pattinson’s on screen, Mickey 17 really comes alive. This veteran of The Lighthouse and Good Time has always been so deft with physicality, even dating back to his portrayal of Edward Cullen. Naturally, Pattinson has a ball subtly and powerfully communicating how radically different these two Mickey clones are. Much like Ewan McGregor’s dual performances in Fargo’s third season, Pattinson’s pair of Mickey’s truly resonate as two separate people. This pair of performances is a microcosm of how to differentiate the Jared Leto’s of the world from actually good actors.
Watching Pattinson’s meeker Mickey 17 play opposite the endlessly aggressive Mickey 18 isn’t just a delightful treat. His work also just excels in fleshing out Mickey as a character. Pattinson’s acting doesn’t constantly remind one of the actor’s larger star persona or “method acting” techniques meant to generate clickbait headlines. Instead, his deeply specific work is at the service of these characters and accentuates the wild atmosphere Bong Joon-ho is weaving. Like Nicolas Cage and Christopher Walken, Pattinson knows how to deliver outsized performances that are a boon to the movies they inhabit. That gift is put to endlessly entertaining use in an icy cosmic reflection of capitalism’s evils.
Pattinson and the other actors inhabit a slew of gorgeously rendered sets that make these spaceship interiors so extra tangible. Going the practical route for these backdrops really hammers home the lived-in grime of Mickey 17’s world. Plus, they’re a welcome departure from the distractingly artificial domains dominating the likes of Captain America: Brave New World. Tremendous production design isn’t the only way Mickey 17 happily departs from American blockbuster norms. It’s also a treat to see a blockbuster so explicitly enamored with skewering real-world fascism through villainous characters like failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa Marshall (Toni Colette).
The obvious parallels between Marshall and real-world political evil is Donald Trump thanks to the man’s speaking style and the red hats his fanatical followers wear. However, Joon-ho’s script gets a little more specific in codifying what makes these living embodiments of the “bourgeoisie” so wicked. For one thing, Marshall’s constant emphasis on the “purity” of the colony’s new icy home echoes the eugenics ethos coursing through so many fascist regimes throughout history. A willingness to define the Marshall’s as uber-religious, meanwhile, is a welcome respite from a Hollywood landscape that often asks for crucifixes to not even be adjacent to intense material. Even the Marshall’s bellowing “free at last, free at last” during a pre-meal prayer echoes how right-wing politicians constantly co-opt verbiage from Black people (see also: the phrase “woke”) for malicious, self-serving means.
These specific details don’t just make Mickey 17 a more politically audacious work than, say, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom settling for just having a villainous henchman saying “nasty woman”. They also lend a specificity to this world. Like Paul Verhoeven’s uber-arch satires Showgirls and Starship Troopers, Mickey 17 fixates on maximalist reflections of equally pronounced real-world horrors. This may be a land of cloning and Creepers, but it’s also one where, much like Earth, rich people have a seething contempt for the homeless. This eschewing of subtlety won’t be for everyone, but I found it delightful.
It helps, too, that this political commentary enjoyably manifests through absurdist comedy. Bong Joon-ho doesn’t just have hefty things to say about class and how white supremacy-coded evil endures into the future. He’s also got hysterical bits of physical humor to execute that only Pattinson could realize so well. An extended sequence with Mickey 17 navigating a posh dinner with the Marshalls is a sublime example of Joon-ho using political satire as a springboard for outstanding dark comedy. This whole set piece, which involves screams, a gun, and pthe otential jeopardizing of a valuable rug, harkens back to no less than Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel. Like that 1962 masterpiece, this Mickey 17 sequence uses outsized bizarre comedy to accentuate the darkness brewing barely beneath the surface of the 1%.
Mickey 17’s comedic instincts nicely range from searing political commentary to just realizing how amusing it is to watch Robert Pattinson stumble down some metal stairs. The wildly oscillating styles of humor crystallize an ambitious feature that lets its leading man’s freak flag fly. Naomi Ackie is also a blast in this production, particularly in portraying Nasha joyfully reacting to the sight of two Mickey clones. These better qualities are let down by a script frustratingly too in love with expository dialogue and an obtuse story structure. Mickey 17’s ending also desperately needed more severity and dark humor. This tidier conclusion, unfortunately, reflects the limitations of doing a capitalism critique within a $118 million budgeted feature. Even if it’s far from another Parasite or Mother, Mickey 17, despite being about clones, has plenty of distinctive charms.