Bong Joon Ho’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film “Parasite” is a welcome reminder that Bong’s features (especially those in English – preceded by “Okja” and “Snowpiercer”) have always been excited to stretch and expand the limits of their genre as much as possible. The science-fiction comedy “Mickey 17” moves through various genre trappings, modulating dizzying and sometimes competing tones turning its futuristic science-fiction setting into a site for romantic persuasions, chaotic political satire, and hapless heroes.
In many ways “Mickey 17” feels very much like the kind of blank-check venture that could only come after wild success. The film is a 118 million USD budgeted comedic satire set in the hazy future featuring an inept, but popular, leader who embarks off Earth with a spaceship of humans on a quest to colonise the planet Niflheim. Except, rather than being centred on the major dynamics of the quest the film is really about an ill-fated human (Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes) whose financial worries leave him opting to leave Earth to avoid a loan-shark with his friend Timo (Steven Yuen). The escape comes at the expense of his life, in a way. Mickey agrees to join the mission as the sole “Expendable”, whereas Timo is able to enlist as a shuttle pilot. Using technology banned on Earth, Mickey will put himself in varying stages of fatal danger allowing himself and his memories to be cloned and regenerated on each death for the good of the ship.
Along the way, a romance develops between Mickey (all versions) and Nasha (Naomie Ackie), a security agent on the ship. When the 17th iteration of Mickey experiences a surprisingly non-fatal encounter with Niflheim’s life-forms (tardigrade-like lifeforms called creepers), his unlikely survival is compromised by printing a new iteration – Mickey 18. Suddenly, “Mickey 17” careens into an absurdist comedy as Nasha and two Mickeys try to survive an increasingly chaotic and unhinged spaceship, especially when Mickey’s 18th iteration is not as joyfully sanguine as his 17th counterpart.
Bong began working on the script even before the source, Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey7” was completed in early 2022 and there’s the sense that he has spent much time building the peculiarities of this futuristic world. Fiona Crombie’s production design of the futuristic space-world follows familiar patterns in how it goes about populating this space. But even in its familiarity, the sense of detail and focus in establishing the tactility of this world is immediately evident. Early stretches of the film move through months and years with overhead narration covering shots of the world of this spaceship, and it is notable how Bong is more enamoured with the human interactions of the world than the scientific ones. And it’s why “Mickey 17” is most dependent on the comedic brilliance of Robert Pattinson at its centre
Pattinson has long established himself as one of the more exciting of his contemporaries. His one-two-three punch of tortured souls in “Good Time”, “The Lighthouse” and “The Batman” are possibly the strongest trio of his career thus far, a trio of sharp dramatic turns. But Pattinson has always been known for his impish willingness to be funny, even if the humour is mostly relegated to interviews. “Mickey 17”, bold and daring and strange and silly sees Pattinson in a different register that still manages to feel like a natural summation of an actor willing to put themselves out there with a wonder and abandon that feels wonderful to watch. There’s no sense of self-awareness in Pattinson’s comedic endeavours the way one might recognise an actor affably turning themselves into a foolish figure as a way of being “in on the joke”. Instead, Pattinson’s performance sincerely and tenderly finds a well modulated performance in Mickey’s hapless – from vocal tics to facial expressions, from vocal cadence to the way he drapes his body against a wall.
By the time “Mickey 17” reaches its primary crisis of revealing the second Mickey, Pattinson has already blessed the film with a formidable leading performance. The doubling only offers him a chance to up the ante. It’s the kind of performance that keeps on righting anything ambient in the film when he appears on screen. Any metaphors of colonisation, fascism or autocracy feel less essential when Pattinson appears onscreen to provide “Mickey 17” with his charm offensive. It’s a constant that both complicates and problematises the satirical beats of the script.
If Pattinson finds the gentle comedy needed to meld the varying strands of “Mickey 17”, then Mark Ruffalo’s turn as Kenneth Marshall – the egomaniacal politician leading the ship – loses it, though. Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) are the sharpest parallel to the satirical roots of “Mickey 17” and they are surprisingly among the film’s weaker aspects. Bong has denied any focus on a particular politician, but it’s difficult not to find traces of Donald Trump’s behaviour in the way Ruffalo opts to play is domineering politician. Ruffalo, building on his loutish turn from “Poor Things” and Collette, falling a bit too easily into the wheelhouse of her narcissistic wife from “Knives Out”, are playing the satire too broadly robbing their scenes of the lightness of touch “Mickey 17” conjures elsewhere. They are not so much playing people as they are playing thinly drawn concepts of unappealing humanity and it undermines a lot of what’s best about Bong whose characters tend to jump off the screen with a vividness that counters any flat literalism in writing.
It’s a potential gap in Bong’s own writing where “Mickey 17” is less adept in its assessment of capitalist rot in the future and is better as a gently exploratory look at a world not so different from ours. Instead of being especially biting or insightful with its social critiques, “Mickey 17” is best when it warmly and congenially explores the absurdities of life on a spaceship. There’s an element of the lived-in hijinks of this that might make sense as a longer work allowing us to luxuriate in the weirdness. Ruffalo and Collette are unusually stilted, the other performers approach the peculiarities of this world with ready abandon. Ackie, for example, is stuck in a role with more screen time than legibility and yet she meets Pattinson’s zany energy carving something believably sweet if not wholly tender out Nasha’s dynamics with the Mickeys. Yuen, in his brief spots, is delightfully unhinged as a turncoat friend and Steve Park is delivering enough carefully modulated looks of judgement as the head of the ship’s security team to complicate the exciting final act.
“Mickey 17” in many ways becomes a movie about its energy and its vibes. Are you willing to partake in its disarming silliness and acquiesce to its zany candour? When Pattinson is on screen, I cannot imagine being able to resist and when Bong’s visual expression finds the slyness of a visual joke even amidst the literalism of its mocking world-politics, it’s clear that even a work so frenzied in its chaos comes from a master who is able to harness it all. By its end, “Mickey 17” is able to settle as an amiable and well-meaning comedy centred by a comedic performance for the ages, or at least for the year. Robert Pattinson really is the real deal.
Mickey 17 is playing in cinemas
