Mickey 17 - Double the Robert Pattinson, Double the Fun
Bong Joon Ho’s followup to "Parasite" shows that he is sticking to his roots.
Bong Joon Ho is one of the best and most consistent filmmakers actively working today. Starting with his first feature Barking Dogs Never Bite in the year 2000, Bong developed his reputation over the past two decades with a consistent string of films that balance entertainment with indie sensibilities over a variety of genres. You never really know what Bong Joon Ho is going to make next, which is an increasingly rare quality to have as a filmmaker in the 2020s where niches and IP are more important than ever. All of this increasing prestige climaxed for Bong in 2019 with Parasite which grossed a whopping $262,608,117 worldwide off a budget of only $11.4 million and earned 3 Oscars, including best picture, director and original screenplay.
It was surreal watching the fervor around Parasite as if Bong Joon Ho had just arrived on the scene even though he’d been making films of equal quality for 19 years. Alas though, Bong had officially received approval from Hollywood leading to Warner Bros. offering him a budget of $118 million to make Mickey 17, by far the largest budget Bong has ever worked with. It is therefore disappointing to see the relatively low opening performance this past weekend, grossing only about $53.3 million worldwide. After watching the movie, however, I can’t help but wonder what Warner Bros. expected. Mickey 17 follows in the director’s other English language science fiction film’s footsteps (Snowpiercer and Okja) delivering an offbeat comedic political satire full of uncomfortable and downright horrifying moments. While the marketing painted a picture of a fun sci-fi romp, the reality is far stranger.
Mickey 17 follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) who signs up to join a planetary colonization campaign in order to escape a psychopathic loan shark on Earth. Aboard the expedition, led by a disgraced Trump-esque politician (Mark Ruffalo), Mickey’s job is to be an “expendable”- essentially a lab rat used to perform dangerous jobs and die over and over again for the sake of science. Each time he dies, Mickey is reprinted with his personality slightly altered and memories intact. While that is the simple setup to the movie, the film is jam packed with many more characters and plot lines that all play out simultaneously, including but not limited to: a romance, an alien hostage negotiation, and the continued threat of the loan shark. While it sounds convoluted, Bong makes it work, allowing each character to have their own mini objective. The humor therefore comes from the chaotic ways each of these mini stories collide against each other offering dynamic sequences with impossible to predict outcomes.
Eventually though this proves to be the film’s Achilles’ heel. At some point, all the separate plot lines and characters need to converge into a satisfying ending that allows a unifying idea to emerge. While Mickey 17 manages to stick the landing, it unfortunately sacrifices many of the elements that make it unique to do so. The second half of the film is shockingly conventional compared to its first half, delivering a hammy third act that plays out without much conflict or suspense. Jokes are reused, scenarios are dragged out, and an overall stretching of the material is present for the sake of superficially amping up the “importance” of the drama.
Despite this, the film remains incredibly watchable due to Bong’s innate knack for characters. Robert Pattinson and the whole cast are delightful to watch, specifically Naomi Acki as Mickey’s lover, Nasha, and Toni Collette as the sauce loving “Karen”, Ylfa. Everyone performs with the lightness of a tight community theater troupe with no one ego stealing the scene from another. This is shocking considering the cartoonishness of a lot of the characters and the wacky, borderline slapstick antics they get into. The film also exudes a genuine warmth that prevents the film from ever feeling like an exercise in dystopian depression. The characters may be stuck in an unimaginable capitalist hellhole but they themselves are not helpless and are very capable of taking action.
Mickey 17 shows that the success Bong Joon Ho reached with Parasite has not changed him all that much. The budget may be bigger but the film lacks the concessions such a mainstream effort typically includes (that is except for a regrettably conventional third act). Bong is not in the game for prestige and will continue to stay true to his instincts and make whatever movie interests him most.