Mickey 17
Films & TV
“A frenetic, twitchy and uneven ride to the planet Niflheim, complete with sometimes wry, sometimes heavy-handed observations on mortality, corporate greed, meat consumption and love, there’s still plenty to ponder in this film’s overarching exploration of cloning, including how our ethical and legal frameworks will accommodate such technology,” says anglican focus journalist Ben Rogers
After the global acclaim and multiple prizes — including Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International Feature Film, as well as the 2019 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival — of his previous class exploration drama Parasite, Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho returns to English-language filmmaking with kooky science-fiction blockbuster Mickey 17.
Reviving the social satire and sci-fi flavours of his English-language features, Snowpiercer and Okja, Mickey 17 speculates on a future planet earth hurtling towards environmental disaster, prompting interplanetary colonisation and deep space exploration to save humanity.
Enter the goofy yet affable Mickey — played with much gusto by Robert Pattinson — keen to escape the clutches of vicious loan sharks back on earth, and agreeing to join a multi-year space mission to an ice planet commandeered by a megalomaniacal former politician-cum-industry-titan (a not-so-subtle dig at President Trump and Elon Musk).
Eager to get onboard and outta dodge, Mickey skips reading the fine print of the role he’s signed up for during the flight and soon discovers he’s agreed to become an “Expendable”, a process where he’ll take on the most dangerous operational tasks with death a near certainty only to be cloned repeatedly once his former self inevitably perishes.
Per the title, we meet Mickey during his latest iteration, having gone through numerous catastrophic demises involving radiation poisoning, printer errors during cloning and attacks by pathogens on foreign planets.
While Parasite may have been celebrated for its stinging critique on Korean class warfare and societal inequities, it was exquisitely crafted in terms of its script and a masterclass in narrative structure and dialogue. Mickey 17, adapted from the 2022 Edward Ashton novel Mickey7, is a far looser proposition, happy to indulge in grating political commentary and rapid tonal shifts while trying to pack in enough blockbuster action spectacle to justify the $100 million-plus budget and entice audiences stumbling upon a Pattinson-starring sci-fi flick.
A frenetic, twitchy and uneven ride to the planet Niflheim, complete with sometimes wry, sometimes heavy-handed observations on mortality, corporate greed, meat consumption and love, there’s still plenty to ponder in this film’s overarching exploration of cloning, including how our ethical and legal frameworks will accommodate such technology and what it says about the disposability of human life once we can print-on-demand newer versions of ourselves.
There’s certainly gallows humour around the various ways previous Mickeys die during the mission, some of which is not for the squeamish. Still, we’re left with a lingering sense that these Mickey “expendables” are ciphers for today’s underclass of exploited workers around the globe relegated to dangerous jobs for little pay in service of grandiose infrastructure projects — think of the thousands of workers who perished building 2022 World Cup stadiums in Qatar.
With an obvious nod to Paul Verhoeven’s often misunderstood action satire Starship Troopers, as well as half a century of science fiction cinema, Mickey 17 is undeniably a Bong Joon-ho film. However, unfolding in a whirlwind of fragmented ideas and pointed socio-political jabs, is a thrill ride reduced to hyperactive stimulation and strained humour, undermining coherent narrative momentum.
After the superb storytelling and technical brilliance of Parasite, it was always going to be a hard act to follow, but Mickey 17 will probably be remembered as a minor curiosity rather than a bona fide classic in Bong’s filmography.
Mickey 17, rated M and directed by Bong Joon-ho, is a new Blu-Ray release.
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