‘Mickey 17’ Review

‘Mickey 17’, Bong Joon-ho’s long awaited follow up to 2019’s ‘Parasite’, opens with the titular Mickey (Robert Pattinson), lying at the bottom of a snowy cave on a faraway planet as monstrous creatures watch him and lurk forward. This moment might as well be interrupted by a record scratch, as it leads into voiceover narration from Mickey about how he got here. Much of the first thirty minutes of the movie is committed to this narration, an inelegant exposition dump establishing all of the characters, backstories, and the setting. This opening is representative of the strengths and weaknesses of this film: great performances abound, and this science fiction setting feels unique and interesting, yet there is just so much ground to cover that none of the themes or characters are developed in a satisfying way.

Mickey 17 as a character, is the 17th iteration of Mickey Barnes, who is working as an expendable on a mission to colonize the planet Niflheim, led by the failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Yifa (Toni Collette). An expendable, as explained in the opening narration, is a person who is able to die in the name of scientific research, again and again, being re-printed after each death while maintaining all of the memories of his previous selves. Mickey volunteers for this punishing job as a means to escape Earth, where he and his shady friend Timo (Steven Yeun) were indebted to a sadistic loan shark. On this colonizing ship, he meets and falls in love with Nasha (Naomie Ackie), a security agent for the mission, and finds a pleasant rhythm in his new life until one day when he returns to his room after a near death experience to find Mickey 18 in his bed. The mission had presumed him dead and already reprinted the next version, putting both Mickeys at risk of termination, as there is a strict rule against “multiples”.

Robert Pattinson gives a fun, dual performance as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Where Mickey 17 is insecure, with a childlike innocence, Mickey 18 is cold and confident. It’s never really explained just why the two Mickeys have such divergent personalities, but Pattinson does his best to make them both believable versions of a character experiencing more death than anybody could fathom. The same can be said of all the performances, as everybody does their best to make their characters feel real and memorable without being given much in the way of logical or emotional arcs.

Nobody in this film is really likable, per se. Mickey 17 is easy to root for, in the way that you root for somebody you know is doomed to fail. He is weak willed and passive, but he seems to mean well and that’s enough for me. Nearly every other character in the film ranges from comically villainous to casually unlikable. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette play comic book villains, with Ruffalo taking his character from ‘Poor Things’, sprinkling in a little Donald Trump, and jacking up the buffoonery to show that these characters are pathetic, out of touch, and incompetent but no less powerful because of it.

Most of the background characters are just following orders in their inane day to day cruelty, and there are really only three other characters given notable screentime. Nasha becomes the most heroic of these characters, I suppose, but I don’t feel much emotional attachment to her relationship with Mickey or her role in the mission, as moments that could be taken to build empathy are instead made into comedy, such as when Nasha first discovers the multiple Mickeys: rather than plumb this for drama or intrigue, we’re presented with a Nasha high on Oxy, excited at the prospect of having multiples of her lover. Timo is the most unscrupulous of the everyday characters, never pretending to go beyond his own self interest. Perhaps the most interesting side character is Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), Nasha’s rival for Mickey’s love. In one of the few moments of genuine pathos in the film, Kai, distraught after losing a close friend, sits with Mickey 17 and asks him the question he’s heard countless times: what does it feel like to die? And for the first time, Mickey answers her as they bond through their pain. And yet from here we cut to the previously mentioned attempted threesome with Nasha and the multiple Mickeys, during which Kai tells Nasha she wants Mickey 17 for herself, and then Kai does not have another line of dialogue for the rest of the film. ‘Mickey 17’ proves capable of deeper emotional depth in moments like this, but then breezes on past it to the next absurdity.

While ‘Mickey 17’ contains some of the class warfare themes covered in ‘Parasite’, they are handled with much less nuance or depth, as there are just so many things being jammed into this bloated runtime. Characters will show up in one scene, seeming like they may play a larger role in the story to come, but then they’ll just disappear for a long stretch or just vanish altogether. The comedy and satire are broad to the point of being groan inducing, with lip service being paid to real world parallels without actually exploring them in any meaningful way. Bong Joon-ho establishes an interesting world, with compelling characters, but then unfortunately doesn’t do anything with them. There are so many fascinating moral and ethical questions around the expendable program and how humans are doomed to bring their Earthly vices and flaws wherever they go, yet they are only given the briefest of screen time before the film moves on to the next comedic set piece.

The absurd satirical bits compromise any poignancy with the actual story. In the last hour, it feels like the writers were told they needed to deliver some semblance of a Hollywood plot, and thus we get a rushed conflict, with a climax and postscript that seem more earnest than the preceding ninety minutes of sci-fi farce. Unfortunately, despite strong performances, world building, and cinematography from the great Darius Khondji, ‘Mickey 17’ cannot overcome its overstuffed narrative and tonal mishmash to become the kind of masterpiece that Bong Joon-ho has proven himself capable of.

Mickey 17
Rated R for violent content, language throughout, sexual content and drug material.
Running Time: 2 hours and 17 minutes

Director Bong Joon-ho
Writers Bong Joon-ho
Stars Robert Pattinson, Naomie Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo
Rating R
Running Time 137 Minutes
Genres Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi