Poor, poor Mickey Barnes. The protagonist of the movie Mickey 17 lives a grim existence as an “expendable,” a employee aboard a spaceship whose solely job is to die repeatedly for the sake of human progress. Mickey, performed by Robert Pattinson, is subjected to deadly viruses, uncovered to radiation, and requested to sit down in a chamber of nerve fuel, simply so he can report on his personal deterioration till he loses consciousness. Generally, he’s not even lifeless after they toss his physique into the incinerator that melts him into natural goop—goop that’s then fed again into the MRI-like machine that may print a brand new copy of him, so he can undergo all of that once more.
But if Mickey’s life is suffocatingly bleak, Mickey 17 is something however. Relatively, it’s a wacky, satisfyingly unusual romp that additional reaffirms Bong Joon Ho as a singular filmmaker. The director isn’t the type to inform a one-note sci-fi story; his earlier style efforts, equivalent to 2013’s Snowpiercer and 2017’s Okja, work properly due to their elasticity, juggling the comedic with the macabre, the absurd with the intense. Primarily based on a novel by Edward Ashton known as Mickey7, Bong’s adaptation is his first main Hollywood studio venture and his costliest film so far, budgeted at practically $120 million.
The value tag reveals: The world constructing is intensive, involving large-scale units and spectacular visible results, and the forged options superstars and character actors alike. But Mickey 17 feels intimate on the identical time; it rigorously research a protagonist whose morality transcends his bodily being. That such sentimentality can come throughout in a narrative as disturbing as Mickey’s might sound illogical. However, as Bong instructed my colleague David Sims in 2019, “I all the time really feel it’s extra enjoyable when I attempt to persuade the viewers of one thing that doesn’t make sense.”
Not a lot of Mickey 17 is sensible at first blush. Set within the yr 2054, the movie takes place largely on an icy planet known as Niflheim, the place a fascist politician named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, doing absolutely the most) and his equally outrageous spouse, Ylfa (Toni Collette), have landed in hopes of creating a colony. Niflheim, although, appears uninhabitable, so the couple, their supporters, and their staff—a few of whom are petty criminals fleeing Earth—stay aboard their docked ship, turning it right into a compound. Mickey is the crew’s guinea pig; after moving into hassle with a mortgage shark, he signed as much as be expendable so as to escape sure dying. (That he utilized for a job requiring him to die anyway is principally as a result of he didn’t learn the job’s phrases and situations. Once more: poor, poor Mickey Barnes.)
The Marshalls deal with Mickey like trash, even if he’s the only one who may help advance science and at last set up their settlement. The movie begins with the seventeenth copy of Mickey doing what he’s come to imagine he does finest—that’s, dying—earlier than hopscotching between the previous and current to inform a deeper story: that of a bunch of people that assume they’ve made a clear break from their pasts, solely to find how tough reaching contemporary begins might be. Amid all of it, Mickey perishes again and again, till an accident causes two Mickeys to be alive without delay.
This plot level permits Bong to slyly underline the way in which people can repeat themselves. Many scenes echo earlier ones: Every Mickey falls for a lady named Nasha (Naomi Ackie), and every Mickey tends to passively settle for his destiny. The slimy ne’er-do-well Timo (Steven Yeun), who roped Mickey into the loan-shark snafu and had the identical concept to run away into area, can’t cease making under-the-table offers. The Marshalls intend to make Niflheim what they name a “planet of purity,” the place they’ll freely implement eugenic insurance policies. However their expedition is filled with already disgruntled staff; the identical grievances that they had again house are seeping into the ship’s confines.
Bong has circled comparable themes in his different work, and any fan of the director’s movies will acknowledge the shared DNA. Mickey 17’s examination of the cruelty of social stratification instantly brings to thoughts the Oscar-winning Parasite, whereas its depiction of the sexualized perversity of upper-class extra has hints of Snowpiercer. A subplot involving Niflheim’s indigenous creatures—roly-poly-like critters the Marshalls dub “creepers”—highlights the significance of environmental preservation, which made me consider Okja, Bong’s fable about manufacturing unit farming. Mickey would possibly as properly be a human model of that movie’s porcine titular character, a prized possession and a genetic marvel held captive by over-the-top totems of greed.
Bong proves to be exact as ever, although, which retains the film feeling distinct from his others. In Mickey 17, he creates photos which are immediately memorable: Throughout certainly one of Mickey’s deaths, his physique slams towards a automobile’s airbag in gradual movement, glass shattering round his head. Throughout one other, his hand will get lower off and spins by outer area previous one of many ship’s home windows, droplets of blood trickling behind it. Now and again, a contemporary Mickey slips out of the regeneration machine and tumbles slickly onto the ground like a fleshy alien. A few of the extra jarring sequences stay amusing regardless of their brashness: At one level, for instance, Mickey narrates a stunning vignette—a couple of psychopath on Earth who printed a number of copies of himself to hold out grisly murders—with the resigned, cautious tone of an workplace employee. That deliberate depth retains Mickey 17 participating even because it swerves (generally messily) into its plentiful twists.
The movie’s biggest asset, although, could also be Pattinson. The actor’s delightfully offbeat efficiency anchors the story in an endearing humanity. His decisions border on cartoonish—just like the nasally, quivering voice he offers Mickey—however they’re particular sufficient to make his character’s plight really feel recognizable. Mickey is the important thing to the expedition’s success and the dweeb subsequent door—he additionally embodies the paradox on the heart of the movie: that quests for “purity” are fools’ errands, cosmic jokes that yield solely extra flaws, conflicts, and issues. People might eternally search self-preservation and perfection at any value, Mickey 17 suggests, however what makes folks human isn’t their physique. It’s their soul.