Mickey 17

Bluesky

We already know that Bong Joon Ho is not the subtlest filmmaker in the world. On the contrary, he is one of those who wear their worldview as an emblem: we know that he despises capitalism, but also has a lot of faith in the mankind, so he often poses as a benevolent Sociology 101 teacher whose starting position is an antiqued blend of Marxism.

Also, he is quite a capable genre – and not only genre – filmmaker, as well as a talented satirist with a good eye and perfect sense of timing, so his “lectures” serve as well-made, great or at least fun enough films, which is the reason why we could enjoy Snowpiercer (2013) and even let the chaotic Okja (2017) slide. Parasite (2019) was his big triumph – and the triumph of the two-decades surge in Korean cinema – since Bong persuaded us with his craft, heart and mind and made a layered masterpiece equally attractive to the critics, audiences and awards juries.

One would think that after that, he would have the whole world at his disposal, but Mickey 17, is a failure of almost epic proportions. Some of us had a hunch it could go that way: it started as an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey 7 even before the novel was published, so the script was based on earlier drafts, and after the shoot was finished, the film was stuck in post-production for two years. Judging by the abundant use of the narrator, it was also re-cut multiple times during that period.

Finally, it was premiered outside the awards context, at Berlinale, but only after an “avant-premiere” gala in London. Maybe the fact that Bong was a guest of honour at the festival helped to cover the tracks. A couple of weeks later, it was released globally and one week after the film had hit cinemas, it had covered barely half of its production budget, signalling that it will most probably become an expensive flop.

Running away from the psychopathic loan shark on the thoroughly f***ed up Earth, Mickey (Robert Pattinson) and his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) apply for the colonisation mission to the planet Niflheim, four-and-a-half years of space travel away from home. While the more resourceful Timo lands a job in the logistics sector, Mickey can only apply to be an “expendable”, a clone designed to perish on dangerous missions only to be printed out again the next day.

Cloning is considered unethical, so it is banned on Earth, but is allowed on space colonisation missions. The one in the film is led by the ex-congressman Kenneth Marshal (Mark Ruffalo), a tech billionaire and a televangelist, and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), the enthusiast for culinary arts. Needless to say, they are both racist and classist as f***.

After he has died 16 times from radiation poisoning or serving as a test subject for the vaccine for the alien virus, we meet Mickey’s 17th version, who is about to die on an exploration mission on the white, snowy and windy planet even before the proper colony is established. He fell into the cave, so it is presumed that he will be eaten by the domestic creatures dubbed creepers. When he somehow survives – since the creepers are not creepy and murderous at all – he goes back to the spaceship only to find out that the new version of him is printed. Not only is Mickey 18 a murderous psychopath devoid of empathy (unlike Mickey 17 who is thick as a plank, but nice and ethical), but it also can serve as grounds for mission control to end both of them and the cloning program if they catch them.

Luckily, the Mickeys can rely on the super-soldier Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who fell for Mickey 1 and stayed with the character throughout all the versions. But the Marshals want their colonisation programme to move forward by eliminating the creepers, after reaping their tails for Ylfa’s sauces, and they plan to use Mickey for that. On the other hand, he senses that they are intelligent and peaceful, but neither him, nor the security agents or even the scientists lead by Dorothy (Patsy Ferran) can persuade Kenneth Marshal to adjust his grandiose plans.

The key premise is interesting enough and can be swung in different directions, from examination of the ethics of cloning to a screwball comedy of hide-and-seek shenanigans on the spaceship. However, Bong seems more than satisfied with hammering the obvious points that capitalism treats human workforce as expendable and that colonisation under any circumstances is a crime.

He also takes big swings at the current state of things in American politics, given that Marshal is a cartoonish riff on both Donald Trump and Elon Musk – the way Ruffalo hams his role does not help either – but not a particularly funny or insightful one. The setting resembles a cross between the elements of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) with Bong’s own Snowpiercer (albeit pretty static) and Okja, even with some distant echoes of Parasite that never come through as they should.

However, there are two even greater problems with the dramaturgy of the film. The first is the notion that until the last third of the film the titular character is so dumb and aimless, which is further underlined with the use of him as an irritating narrator, that no viewer should care for him, while the question is how could he ever make an impression on Nasha who is almost perfect in any department. Pattinson does his best to make Mickey interesting, and the job he does gets even better when he gets to play two very different Mickeys.

The second problem is that Bong loses the thread in numerous half-baked sub-plots whose inflation takes its toll on the bloated runtime, while the inflation of the supporting characters takes its toll on the acting, which becomes so hammy it verges on cartoonish or simply phoney.

There are a couple of saving graces. The production design by Fiona Crombie along the lines of the “used future” and the creature design by Bong and his frequent collaborator Jang Hee-chul look impressively good when caught through the lens of the DoP Darius Khondji. Also, Bong is still capable of executing a darkly humorous montage sequence or two about Mickey’s lives and deaths or to envision and capture several action sequences that play out like “live action Looney Tunes”, which offer some much needed fun and relaxation to the already tired-out viewer. But even the technical qualities and a couple of disjointed funny moments cannot save it.