I am once again thankful to director Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite,” “Memories of Murder”) for bringing his creative visions to life in his newest–and first English-language film, “Mickey 17,” a Sci-Fi black comedy based on the novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton.
In the not-so-distant future, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Steven Yuen) are unable to pay a loan shark and flee to space on politician Kenneth Marshall’s (Mark Ruffalo) spaceship.
Timo secures a spot as a pilot, while Mickey is the only “Expendable.” His job is to die for the sake of medicine and be regenerated each time.
An interesting lead-in to the title card, Mickey’s backstory is deeply disturbing, but hilarious. The unfortunate circumstances of Mickey and Timo’s situation were so absurd that I couldn’t help but laugh at small details.
When they land on the ice planet Niflheim, Mickey is tasked with bringing back a tardigrade-esque native creature. He fails, but the medical team regenerates him because they thought he died in the snow. Now there are two living Mickey’s. Are they the same person? Which one is the “real” Mickey?
Based on Derek Parfit’s teleportation paradox, Bong Joon Ho expertly navigates the ethical questions that come from cloning while balancing the absurd comedy of being a clone.
Only a Sci-Fi dark comedy could handle the emotional intricacies of a woman wanting to have sex with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s clone.
With a stacked cast–Robert Pattinson, Steven Yuen, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette–it’s no surprise that the acting is phenomenal.
While heavy-handed with the political commentary, Mark Ruffalo’s “Trumpisms” and Toni Collette’s role as his clueless but harmful wife were easy to root against.
A minor but unique meditation on the politics of food and its role in violent colonization, Bong Joon Ho layers the ethical bones of the narrative with modern political issues.
But “Mickey 17” wasn’t all great.
I have never read the original novel this movie is based on, so this may be a pitfall of the source material, but the female characters are underdeveloped.
With a runtime of 137 minutes, the movie had plenty of time to develop the story and expand on the love interest, Nasha. But instead, her job on this quasi-religious spaceship is mentioned once. After that, her job is relegated to emotionally regulating Mickey from bullies and between regenerations. Bong Joon Ho is capable of writing complex female roles, so I’m disappointed to see him miss the mark on ‘Mickey17.’
The other female characters are less memorable but necessary to the plot, which is more than some Sci-Fi adaptations can say.
Going back to the political implications of the movie, the religious ties that this politician’s spaceship has to a mysterious church are surface-level. Halfway through the film, the ulterior motive of the church is revealed. It was so basic and overt that I audibly laughed.
I wish audiences could have seen more about the sinister nature of the story before this reveal. It felt like low-hanging fruit to reveal something that is completely forgotten for the rest of the movie.
Overall, I recommend this movie to all my fellow fans of weird fiction. There’s some controversy about Warner Brothers only keeping “Mickey 17” in theatres for 10 days before releasing to streaming, but Bong Joon Ho’s success lies in his storytelling and not his box office profits.