Oh Mickeys, What A Pity
My thoughts on Mickey 17
In the years before unveiling his award-winning international hit Parasite in 2019, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho made Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), a pair of outlandish anti-capitalist sci-fi satires that deal with everything from class struggles to politics to ecological issues in a bold, brash and cheerfully over-the-top manner with varying degrees of success—I found the former to be largely entertaining, if occasionally muddled, and the latter to be a strident mess, though an admittedly unique one. With Mickey 17, the long-awaited and long-delayed followup to his previous triumph, he has returned with yet another outlandish anti-capitalist sic-fi satire dealing with everything from class struggles to politics to ecological issues in a bold, brash and cheerfully over-the-top manner, this time presented on a budget dwarfing those of his earlier efforts. Also like those films, it is weird and messy and so in-your-face in the manner in which it takes on its various targets that it makes the similar future-shock epics of Paul Verhoeven seem subtle and restrained. That said, while it is undeniably ungainly and too much of a good thing at times, it still winds up working, mostly due to the inspired performance(s) by Robert Pattinson that is easily the funniest and freakiest work of his entire career.
Pattinson plays Mickey, a sad sack living in a not-too-distant future in which Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable and other faraway planets must be colonized in order to save mankind. For the moment, though, Mickey is less concerned with the state of the planet than of his immediate health, now that he owes a lot of money to a ruthless gangster due to the machinations of his friend, Timo (Steven Yuen). Needing to get away quickly, the two sign up for an extended mission to the distant ice planet of Niflheim to make it habitable. Alas, all the good jobs are gone by the time Mickey gets there and in order to ensure his place, he agrees—without really reading the contract, naturally—to become an Expendable, allowing his body to be scanned and memories stored before being assigned the most hazardous duties imaginable. When the inevitable happens and he dies, which he does a lot, he is simply replicated over and over with memories intact via a combination of a super-advanced printer and a slurry comprised mostly of the ship’s waste product. You have heard people claim that they have signed their life away after agreeing to a contract—Mickey has literally done just that.
As the main story begins, Mickey is on his 17th iteration and has just been left for dead for dead by Timo in a cavern on Niflheim filled with the weird, armadillo-like creatures that appear to be the planet’s dominant life form. However, through a surprising turn of events, Mickey 17 does not expire and eventually makes it back to the ship, only to discover that, assuming that he had died, Mickey 18 has already been printed up. This is disastrous because among the Byzantine rules regarding the copying process (which has been outlawed on Earth but deemed legal in space), there can never be two copies existing at the same time and if that does occur, both the copies and the original data are destroyed, meaning no more Mickeys.
Although the prospect of two Mickeys—the old one kind of sweet and schlubby and the new one a little more overtly alpha—holds a certain intrigue to both Nasha (Naomi Ackle), a space cop who is Mickey 17’s girlfriend (you know what I mean), and Kai (Annamaria Vartolomei), a colleague who discovers the secret and is willing to keep quiet as long as they can share, the only way that they can possibly avoid being eliminated is if they keep as low of a profile as possible. Inevitably, that falls through as both Mickeys inevitably find themselves up against Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the failed politician who runs the church/company in charge of the mission and who, along with his sauce-obsessed wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), is determined to rid Niflheim of the creatures—which he has dubbed “Creepers”—and transform the place into a paradise for only the best-looking and most superior of humans to inhabit.
Adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey 7 (the number expanded here in order to provide additional examples of Mickey’s haplessness), Mickey 17 is a film that has practically everything one could imagine on its plate—aside, of course, from subtlety and nuance and the results inevitably run the gamut from the sloppy to the sublime. In his efforts to cover all imaginable bases, Boon sometimes offers up intriguing notions and then doesn’t quite develop them in any meaningful way. Although there is a certain restrained genius in having Mickey, based on the available evidence, being the only person who was dumb enough to sign on as an Expendable, the fact that he is the only one means that the ethical concepts of printing people to do drudge work and the ways that such technology can be manipulated and misused—an obvious analogue for our current concerns regarding AI—are never really explored in any depth and are eventually abandoned entirely in the later stages in order to shift focus on the Creepers. Most of the themes that do turn up here are ones that Boon has explored in his earlier films and while the results may be slightly more articulate and cohesive than in those previous efforts, longtime fans of the filmmaker may be slightly disappointed in the fact that he is mostly repeating himself here.
Instead of trying to use his newfound clout to break new ground, Boon seems more concerned with making full use of his greatly expanded budget and on that level, Mickey 17 is an undeniable success. The film finds him reuniting with his Okja cinematographer, the legendary Darius Khondji, and, not surprisingly, there is not a single moment that I can think of that is anything less than spectacular from a visual perspective. Likewise, the production design from Fiona Crombie is equally impressive in the way that it conjures up a grim retro-future world that fits in with the likes of such classics as Alien and Delicatessen while giving it a distinct feel of its own. Boon also seems more interested at times in ensuring that the political satire does not go unnoticed at any point, mostly by allowing Ruffalo to chew up the scenery with a performance clearly inspired by a certain oleaginous politician of note that makes Gary Oldman’s turn in The Fifth Element see quiet and withdrawn by comparison. Is it funny? Sure, but it is ultimately a one-note concept that, much like the person who inspired the performances, gets more exhausting as things go on.
The best thing about Mickey 17–easily the key reason to see it—is the performance by Pattinson as the various Mickeys. Seeing him delivering an impressive turn is nothing new, of course—since getting free of the Twilight franchise, he has given impressive performances in films as varied as The Lost City of Z, Good Time, High Life (another bit of sci-fi strangeness from an international auteur), The Lighthouse and The Batman, but none of them came close to suggesting the inspired comedic performer on display here. As the multiple Mickeys, he manages to suggest both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in a turn that shows off a surprising flair for physical comedy to go along with the kind of quietly detailed character work that reveals slight variations to the various duplicates as they get further away from the original. Performances in which one actor is on-screen in multiple parts don’t always work—even with the best ones, you inevitably find yourself trying to find the seams needed to put them all together—but Pattinson is so good and convincing here that you find yourself forgetting all the effects tricks required to pull off the illusion.
Much like its title character, Mickey 17 is too silly and ungainly at some points, too strident at others and will no do frustrate those looking for something along the lines of another Parasite. And yet, it has a loopy, loony charm that Boon manages to maintain throughout despite the rambling nature of the narrative and while it may not come close to reaching the heights of the likes of The Host, Mother or Parasite, it is undeniably entertaining and certainly never boring. Besides, at a time when film projects, especially the more expensive ones, are becoming increasingly timid and unadventurous so as not to upset or offend potential viewers, the fact that Boon used his post-Parasite clout to produce an undeniably topical, overtly political and fairly expensive work of satire that probably has more to say about the world today than most of the films that took home Oscars a few days ago is undeniably cheering. More importantly, unlike such recent large-scale boondoggles like Captain America: Brave New World, you won’t find yourself forgetting it the minute that the end credits start rolling.