Only 34 days after Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy “Parasite” made history at the Academy Awards by becoming the first non-English film to ever win the Oscar for best picture, the world as he so searingly satirized it in his class conflict thriller shut down. As quickly as that win seemed primed to open countless doors for international cinema, the rapid spread of COVID-19 slammed those doors shut again. Days later, Donald Trump began to refer to COVID as “the Chinese virus,” a xenophobic and racist term that critics warned would contribute to the already rising numbers of hate crimes and racism against Asian American residents stateside and those of Asian descent globally. The number of Asian American hate crimes rose by 145% over the next year, while Trump’s foot-dragging response to the pandemic and xenophobic terminology had lethal ripples around the world that we’re still contending with today.
With his target in sight, Bong spends two hours taking swipes at Trump, ethnic cleansing, the elite’s response to airborne pathogens, human commodification and white people’s disgusting obsession with putrid sauces.
In Bong’s highly anticipated follow-up to his groundbreaking 2019 hit, the sensational Robert Pattinson vehicle “Mickey 17,” the South Korean writer-director is determined to keep all that horror at the front of your mind. Not that subtlety was ever one of Bong’s strong suits. “Mickey 17” is Bong’s first English-language film since 2017’s “Okja.” Like that movie about a girl who befriends a super pig being hunted by meat industry overlords — along with almost all of his other work — Bong is completely uninterested in the concept of subtext.
With “Mickey 17,” Bong uses his well-earned status as an industry titan and newfound status as a best picture-winning filmmaker to rip whatever scraps of thin veil were left hanging over his satire to reveal the repugnant face of authoritarianism to his largest audience yet. With his target in sight, Bong spends two hours taking swipes at Trump, ethnic cleansing, the elite’s response to airborne pathogens, human commodification and white people’s disgusting obsession with putrid sauces.
Yet, despite its overt themes, “Mickey 17” remarkably never feels cloying thanks to Bong’s inimitable knack for character writing. His lead, Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes, is a dopey, instantly lovable voluntary “Expendable,” jettisoned into space to be a human guinea pig who will be pivotal in colonizing a faraway planet. Mickey’s rubbery nature presents Bong with several opportunities for capricious humor. And though the film is occasionally too impish to make all of its social mockeries stick, Pattinson’s malleable performances as two warring Mickeys gracefully complement Bong’s playful sensibilities to make “Mickey 17” one of the most galvanizing cinematic experiences this year.
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Though it’s based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel “Mickey7,” Bong’s film is an affectionate reimagining of Ashton’s source material, shredded and reassembled to fit the auteur’s favored tone. In 2054, the 17th version of Mickey lands on the planet Niflheim alongside a group of hundreds of other colonial space explorers, led by commander Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his doting but similarly morally bankrupt wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette). Mickey is the sole Expendable on the mission, simply because he’s the only one who signed up for the role. Despite increasingly unlivable conditions on Earth, the chance to suffer a variety of excruciating deaths over and over again is not something that most humans are jumping at.
Mickey, unfortunately, doesn’t have that privilege. He’s defaulted on a business loan with lethal interest, thanks to his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) convincing him that “macarons would sell better than burgers.” Inevitably, the sweet but naive Mickey’s French cookie shop goes under, and his murderous loan sharks intend to follow him to the ends of the earth to collect payment in the form of severed body parts. Mickey is left with an impossible choice: spend his one life running from death, or spend eternity dying and being reborn as an Expendable, hopefully getting to enjoy some of his existence along the way.
Mickey 17 (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
Mickey opts for the latter, donating his live body to science for a mission deemed too controversial for our planet. Coming off of a failed career in politics, Kenneth weaponizes his proprietary combination of charm and smarm to use what power he has left in the government to become the commander of a colonization mission, in which Mickey will be pivotal. Need someone to fix a part on the spacecraft and expose himself to lethal radiation? Call Mickey. Need someone to test out a new synthetic painkiller with monstrous side effects? Mickeys 11 and 12 are your guys. Need someone to take the first steps on Niflheim to inhale the planet’s toxic air so the lab can concoct a vaccine? You get the idea.
After each death, Mickey’s consciousness is implanted back into his corporeal form — with the occasional personality variance. This reads like a bit of winking irony on Bong’s part, given that “Mickey 17” could be considered an echo of “Okja,” “Snowpiercer,” “Parasite” and “The Host,” all amalgamated into one film that’s the closest he’s ever come to a cinematic blockbuster. While the director cherry-picks his favorite themes for a wide audience, anyone heading into a Bong Joon-ho film hoping for ambiguity is looking in the wrong place. What’s special about Bong as both a writer and director is that, without being didactic, he understands how to prod his viewer by bringing into focus the grim realities of everyday life most of us are all too good at ignoring. His films are tactful contemporary explorations of the disparities humans have been grappling with ever since the development of the modern world. And he finds gripping ways to keep those centuries-old resentments bubbling at the surface until they reach a sweltering boil.
Often, I look at the news and wonder, “What the hell are we supposed to do?” Here, Bong argues that to make our way through, we must first accept how absurd the situation has become.
In “Mickey 17,” his foremost adversary is Trump, who criticized “Parasite” as an anti-American win. Bong strips Trump of whatever dignity the sitting president has left to reduce him to a caricature in Ruffalo’s big-toothed, image-obsessed Kenneth. (Think the gender-swapped version of Tilda Swinton’s veneer-forward villain in “Okja.”) Kenneth can’t disguise how excited he is to get away from Earth to the ice planet of Niflheim, calling the soon-to-be-colonized atmosphere “a pure, white planet full of superior people” in a particularly scathing bit of screenwriting syntax.
Whether this Trumpian parody would’ve had even more bite a year ago when “Mickey 17” was originally supposed to be released, before it was pushed back as a result of the SAG and WGA strikes — is really no matter. Bong’s shrewd portrait of a wannabe dictator is even more chilling when you consider that Kenneth’s violent narcissism is relevant regardless of whether or not Trump is in office. There have always been politicians like Kenneth, and there always will be. Though the character may be dimwitted, his power comes from fortifying that stupidity with political policy. Bong walks a delicate line between being facetious and pulling his punches, and the script does sometimes fall to the latter side with some of its more trite resistance messaging. Nonetheless, the familiar images of malevolence in “Mickey 17” are rousing enough to make the film feel like a comfort in increasingly dire times. Often, I look at the news and wonder, “What the hell are we supposed to do?” Here, Bong argues that to make our way through, we must first accept how absurd the situation has become.
Equally preposterous is Collette’s Ylfa, who is hellbent on perfecting sauces and dressings, which she sees as the highest sensory experience one can have. Ylfa’s cockamamie hobby is ridiculous, but she’s no less dangerous than her husband, and Collette is the perfect extension of Ruffalo’s hyper-committed, hilarious performance. Bong brings the same grit out of Naomi Ackie, who plays Mickey’s girlfriend Nasha, one of Kenneth’s few dissenters on the mission besides Mickey. Ackie’s glowing screen presence and innate watchability are second only to Pattinson’s, whose Mickey gives Nasha a thrill when, during a routine reconnaissance mission that ends in assumed death, he’s reprinted as the gruff Mickey 18.
Except, Mickey 17 is still alive, and now there are two Expendables, a phenomenon known as Multiples that’s forbidden by law. The punishment for Multiples is to have each body incinerated and the original consciousness erased, thereby exterminating the person altogether. Though Mickey’s gotten used to dying, permanent demise is out of the question, and Bong gets the chance to bring in some late-period humor between the two Multiples as they figure out how to avoid being caught. Pattinson’s dual performances, each with its own unique quirks, are a joy to watch, and his voice work as Mickey 17 cements him as one of the most interesting performers working today — a perfect match for a filmmaker like Bong, whose films demand an equally eccentric artist at the helm.
Together, Bong and Pattinson have created the director’s most widely accessible feature yet, and certainly his most engaging English-language film so far. The worldbuilding of “Mickey 17” is economical and the design of Niflheim’s native alien species — whose tails might just add the perfect umami to a brand new sauce — is a sight to behold. While the film isn’t as blistering as Bong’s best picture-winning antecedent, “Mickey 17” aims for introspection over a comprehensive picture of the world today, suggesting that, as we move forward, remaining in touch with our humanity will be critical. With “Mickey 17,” Bong Joon-ho isn’t sacrificing his integrity to make a big studio crowd-pleaser. Rather, he’s using a freshly minted global platform to posit that nothing is more important than keeping your soul close to you in everything you do, no matter how powerful the person trying to take it from you.
“Mickey 17” is in theaters nationwide March 7.
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