Robert Pattinson as both Mickey 18 and Mickey 17 in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17
Alex Brannan extols the virtues of Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s unfairly maligned follow-up to his Oscar-winning smash Parasite.
Bong Joon-ho, the long-treasured South Korean filmmaker whose films whimsically dance around the boundaries of genre, received perhaps his biggest acclaim after his 2019 film Parasite (released by Neon in North America) found crossover success. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, then it steamrolled at the Academy Awards, where it won in four categories, including Best Picture.
Bong’s follow-up to Parasite was a much-publicized English-language film made by Warner Bros. and starring the studio’s latest Batman, Robert Pattinson. Buzzy though it was for this star-director combination and the post-Parasite anticipation, it was also hampered by discussions of its costly price tag and its shifting release date, a result of the union strikes in Hollywood in 2023. Discourse on the film post-release was not much better, as Warner Bros. quickly moved the film out of theaters and into at-home premium video on-demand (PVOD) offerings. Matt Belloni at The Town argued that this short window — Mickey 17 was released on PVOD just 18 days after opening theatrically — hurt the overall perception of the theatrical market. A later segment in the same show saw Belloni and guest Lucas Shaw discuss whether flops like Mickey 17 signaled that Warner Bros. was “f-ed.” Arguably, these conversations also hurt the perception of Mickey 17, a difficult-to-market sci-fi comedy not based on a highly recognizable IP which cost $118 million before marketing. Reporting that characterized it as a box-office flop likely did it no favors in the secondary market.
The Bong Joon-ho problem (which is more of a blessing than a curse, if you ask me) is that his films may share thematic resonances, but they are formally and generically diverse. Selling the casual moviegoer on Mickey 17 as being “From the Director of Parasite” may produce dissonance in terms of what viewers will come to expect from the film. The two films are simply too dissimilar to market one based off the other (unless you want to sell your corporate, $100+ million aspiring blockbuster on the titillating promise of anti-capitalist messaging).
In truth, Mickey 17 has a lot in common with Parasite (and with Snowpiercer and Okja). Many Bong films are about the haves and the have-nots, and the infrastructures that are scaffolded around both parties such that the haves can continue to have and the have-nots…well, you get the idea. The system of exploitation in Parasite is deceptively simple and propped up by a devilish wit. Mickey 17, in contrast, depicts a seemingly complicated machinery of capital and control. The faux complexities of the cogs simply obfuscate a straightforward reality.
Mickey (Pattinson) is an “Expendable” on a colony mission to the inhospitable planet Niflheim. His job is to be a guinea pig for all manner of deadly things one could encounter there. He can do this job, because he has literally signed his life away to the corporation of wealthy eccentrics Kenneth and Ylfa Marshall (Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette). Mickey’s brain is uploaded and housed on a server, so that his body may be killed only to be reborn from the science fiction equivalent of a 3D printer.
The refrain Mickey hears throughout his time on the ship is, “What’s it feel like to die?” The answer, expectedly, is: not great. But the question-askers don’t really care what the answer is. They are merely fascinated by the concept of a human whose function is to be continually exploited. The awe is plastered on their faces — an awe derived from a joy that it isn’t them who have to snuff it in the cold wastes of Niflheim. They’ve already divorced the human from the clone; the Expendable, as far as they’re concerned, cannot feel, even as he can experience death.
Mickey is a crucial cog in the machine. Without him dying (and dying and dying) from exposure to the planet’s surface, the colonists would have no vaccine to the deadly virus that floats in the atmosphere. As a day laborer with no pension, no capital, and no future prospects, Mickey is doomed to be recycled for the sake of others’ benefit. He reaps no reward and receives no credit.
The metaphor here is quite literal in execution.
With all this setup of socio-economic hierarchy and the exploitation of the powerless by the idiots in power (maybe idiot and a half, if you add the Marshalls together), one could mistake the film for a didactic drama with lofty satiric ambitions. And this is before mentioning the ethnic cleansing plot point.
Instead, the film is a zany comedy housing some of Bong’s silliest conceits to date. Intersecting subplots involving “multiples,” illicit drug trade, and a love quadrangle result in a breathless screwball sequence (the concept of “love thyself” is a theme of this film, but it really comes to the fore in an unexpected way in this section). This in turn ramps up into a heightened assassination plot that plays out in operatic slow motion. The lengthy sequence exemplifies both the film’s exciting pace and its erratic plotting.
Bong tirelessly works to keep all these plates spinning and more. It doesn’t all hold together, frankly. The script is bouncing around to so many moving parts that it is difficult to fully settle into Mickey’s predicament. Still, he is the central beating heart of the picture, and in the best moments, we get glimpses of Bong’s humanism. The third time Mickey is asked about the feeling of death, it finally comes from a character who not only empathizes with Mickey, but who also understands herself what the pain of grief feels like. The film doesn’t have the time to dwell on the nuances of this moment. Still, the lesser film wouldn’t include it at all.
The audience is never confused as to which Mickey is 17 and which is 18, because Mickey 17 is a slightly buffoonish, lovable loser with his heart on his sleeve and his broken ego melted down into the soles of his shoes. 18, ever Mickey 17’s foil, is an aggressive and mean-spirited sort who could at first be mistaken for an amoral psychopath. 17 is the character to root for, the one who must learn to forgive himself and firmly stand up for what he believes is right. 17 spends most of the movie letting dastardly characters walk all over him and take advantage of his willingness to serve (again, everything circles back to exploitation). Mickey 18 is the active protagonist that 17 wants to be, but 18’s impulsiveness also gets all of our principal characters arrested on a laundry list of criminal charges. In the end, 17 and 18 work together as two halves of an Expendable whole. Loathe though he is to admit it, 18 has the same beating heart as 17.
It all sounds quite pat when put to paper, but Bong’s love for his characters keeps the rather surface-level hero story from being crushed under the brutal weight of the soulless bureaucracy and steel-toed boot of authoritarian rule that characterize the film’s industrial sci-fi setting. And Bong’s humanism is also funny. I’m a sucker for a quality minor interaction between characters, the sort of brief dialogue that a studio executive would likely want left on the cutting room floor. When Mickey 17 is being subjected to a brutally violent disease that will kill him in 10 minutes, the rebellious scientist Dorothy (Patsy Ferran) tells him that he is the most special duplicate of all, because he will have lived the shortest life. It is a moment that is both filled with pathos and contains a comedic irony.
These types of moments are what make Mickey 17 enjoyable. Without them, the satire would be dour, too “of the moment” in a superficial way. The film being a woolly thing with ambition and heart and occasional hilarity is what distinguishes it as a Bong film, even if it is no Parasite (and, really, what is?).
Mickey 17 is screening at the IU Cinema Friday, September 19, and Saturday, September 20, as part of the New Americas Cinema series.