By Finnlay Victor Dall
When it comes to Bong Joon-ho’s stories – especially his English-language releases – his villains (and their fellow elites) tend to create solutions for problems they themselves created and vice versa. Snowpiercer’s Wilford from 2013 retrofits a luxury train to house what’s left of the world’s population after an attempt to reverse luxury-driven climate change with the dispersal of a CW-7 chemical causes an eternal winter. Meanwhile in Okja (2017), CEO Lucy Mirando and her titular Mirando corporation breed several superpigs to create a more “ethical” form of meat consumption, relying on a single species for every style of meat at any price, only for the same old brutal practice of factory farming – with its overcrowding and mass slaughter – to return.
In the case of his latest film, protagonist Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is both the solution and problem to those above him. His work answers many of life’s most pertinent questions, but in the process, raises a fair few ethical questions in their place. Unwittingly signing up for the “Expendables” program to escape a debt, Mickey receives the job of a lifetime (or several lifetimes) as he becomes the main test subject for the planet Niflheim’s colonisation project. After having his consciousness uploaded to a meaty hard drive and his body scanned, Mickey is killed by all manner of things: infectious diseases, cosmic radiation, spaceship debris, and food poisoning. But the lab never quite runs out of Mickeys, as they can always print more.
Well, 1-16 might have died, but Mickey 17 will be different. Left for dead on the ice cold planet by his pilot and former friend in debt Timo (Steven Yeun), 17 is saved by the squishy alien mammoths who call Niflheim their native land. When he arrives back on the colony’s spaceship, he crashes into bed, grateful to finally rest. That is, until he finds his replacement, Mickey 18, lying next to him. Now considered “Multiples”, the pair prepare to face a fate worse than death: complete erasure.
Despite what its dark undertones may imply, Mickey 17 is a straight up comedy, and a great one at that. Disgraceful politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) may think he’s running a tight ship, but its rattling on descent, and rising dissent, say otherwise. And with a fascist priest of neo-Christianity (Daniel Henshall) in his left ear, and a calculating and sauce-obsessed wife in his right (Toni Collette), he can barely mumble his way through a speech; much less lead a colony of Übermensch. Ruffalo exudes that slimeball’s energy perfectly.
Improving on his descent into stupidity from Poor Things (2023), he licks his veneers, checks every third word with his wife, and whimpers into coughing fits like a toddler. Collette plays off him wonderfully, acting just smart enough to be one step ahead of her husband while being just a few steps behind everyone else.
Pattinson meanwhile shows off his range by playing Mickeys 17 and 18 different enough that you can tell them apart and see their tortured souls bleed on screen. Yet, his accent is a far cry from the specificity of his The Lighthouse (2019) dialect, and even with the heightened comedic tone, his cheesy narration over every single scene grates the ear. Bong does well to pair him at times with Yeun, whose weaponised incompetence, similar to his role as animal-rights activist K from Okja, creates this great dynamic between him and Pattison, as Timo becomes a mini obstacle for the more timid 17 to overcome.
Bong’s props and set design are on point once again. Every meat hard drive and blood filled tube has a level of detail that most other productions would struggle to render. He has a penchant for giving his antagonists a mouthful of prosthetics. Whether it’s Tilda Swinton’s false teeth and braces or Ruffalo’s horse-like veneers, he always finds a way to make his villains’ attempts to remain young laughably pathetic. On the other hand, the native “Creepers” of Niflheim are cute and fuzzy despite their many tendrils. And while their darkened, snow-filled exteriors don’t exactly make them feel as tangible as superpig Okja, Bong continues his streak of making us cry for his imaginary creatures.
However, while the world of Mickey 17 feels full, and Bong’s satire is the wittiest it’s ever been, it is also the film with the director’s most poorly written female characters. When Mickey boards the four-year expedition, Security Agent Nasha Barridge (Naomi Ackie) is the only person who makes life worth living. And for the most part, their initial relationship together is solidly built. But an ensuing love-triangle (or square) brings the plot to a painful crawl. And Nasha’s confrontation with fellow Security Agent Kai Katz not only fails the Bechdel Test (which may be a tongue in cheek rule that not every film need pass, but for cases like this it really should be a requirement), it somehow manages to objectify both Mickey and the women in the same breath. At least Nasha and the Mickeys stick the landing by the third act.
If Parasite (2019) was a warning about the stark future ahead of us, now that it’s here, Mickey 17 seems to be Bong’s way of letting us laugh in the face of it. With a talented cast and a darkly funny world that tests the film’s premise to its absolute limits, it’s a film worth dying, and dying, and dying again to see.
Mickey 17 can be seen in cinemas now, including with the Melbourne University Film Society at our IMAX cinema outing to see it next Wednesday March 12th at 7:10 pm (check your emails, members, for more info, or stay tuned for posts on social media).
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY FILM INQUIRER 