Mickey 17 is a sci-fi dark comedy adaptation of the novel Mickey7 starring Robert Pattinson, Naomie Ackie, and Steven Yeun. This is Bong Joon-ho’s follow up to the Oscar-winning Parasite in 2019. After multiple delays, it is now finally out in theatres and I was very much looking forward to watching it.
Point 1 – More Okja than Parasite
Depending on how much of Joon-ho’s filmography you’ve seen, your expectations going into this might be in the wrong place. Most of Joon-ho’s films at their core have a message about either classism or capitalism. Parasite was definitely more a riff on the former, but many Western audiences might be expecting a similar film to Parasite given his success with that, but if I were to compare it to any of his other movies, it would be Okja.
If you haven’t seen Okja, it is also a sci-fi film that follows a little girl’s quest to save her genetically-modified pig Okja from being mistreated and slaughtered by the meat industry. It’s not hard to see the messages and critiques built into that plot. But if you haven’t seen Okja and your only exposure to Bong Joon-ho is Parasite, the thing that will throw you off is the tone. Although Parasite was not devoid of comedy, it was far from a funny movie. It was more straight-edged in the way it approached its story. Okja however is much sillier in its tone and is not afraid to make characters extremely whacky to hammer home the social messaging embedded in the story. To a much lesser degree, Snowpiercer employs the same technique where the main characters and story are more serious and carries a lot of messaging, but it’s framed by a lot of caricatured complementary characters.
In that sense, Parasite very much leans into using a very whacky cast of characters to create the framing of the larger message of the film, which I’ll discuss in the next point. Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall and his wife Ylfa played by Toni Collette are an amalgam caricature of any oligarch that you want to choose. This will be a person to person thing, but to me, it didn’t need to be as cartoony as it went since the point is pretty clear without the need to go that far, but I think it still overall works. Other films you might find that fall in the same vibe as this would be something like Don’t Look Up or most Yorgos Lanthimos films.
Point 2 – Symbiosis of Colonialism & Capitalism
Although I won’t be spoiling exact details of the movie, I will touch on a couple of overarching aspects here. However, I don’t think this will take anything away from your experience and honestly, I don’t think this is the type of movie you need to go into blindly or anything. But I figured I should put a warning just in case.
A lot of media often cover the topics of colonialism and capitalism separately. For whatever reason, colonialism is seen as this thing we did a long time ago while capitalism is a feature of today. It doesn’t take much to realize that both of those are untrue. In that sense, I really appreciated Joon-ho’s deliberate push to intrinsically link the two of them together in Mickey 17. The general plot of the film is that a massive colony of humans have decided to leave Earth and set up shop to populate another planet called Niflheim.
Not to digress too much, but in classic Joon-ho fashion, he chooses the name Niflheim for the planet as it is wintry in nature much like the realm in Norse mythology. But it’s also one of the realms of the afterlife, which is significant since many of the people in this colony are those who didn’t see much of a life left for them on Earth and had more or less been pushed out.
Ok, back on track: during the 4 year journey to Niflheim, the film shows the exploitation of workers when they have no choice but to do menial jobs while the oligarchical overlords continue to preach cult-like messages to try to be revered despite taking advantage of everyone. Doesn’t take a genius to think of companies like Tesla or Amazon as clear inspiration for this.
Once they reach Niflheim, they then set down to colonize it before discovering an indigenous species of creatures called Creepers that resemble large pill bugs. The usage of the name Creepers is the more subtle messaging that shows the types of awful things various people in the world were called when colonizers invaded their lands. You can then imagine the direction the film takes when coming across creatures they see as nuisances.
Point 3 – Performers Carrying the Show
The one thing that I think everyone will be on board with is the strength of the performances that really ensure you are invested in the stories of the characters and where the story is bringing you. Robert Pattinson of course being the lead and co-lead knocks it out of the park playing weirdos again. He’s really found his niche of playing the weirdest folks in cinema, putting up a real fight against his co-star from The Lighthouse Willem Dafoe. His very Pinky and the Brain type performance between Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 forms the core of the film and I think it really works. The logic to make them so different was a little harder to follow within the world of the movie, but for the narrative purposes, making them diametrically opposed made a lot of sense.
Naomie Ackie as Mickey’s girlfriend steals a lot of scenes with great screen presence. Her character Nasha is a good strong complementary character to Mickey’s more passive and unassuming personality. Steven Yeun plays a hateable friend that you want to punch anytime he’s on screen. Meanwhile, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo chew up the scenery and are clearly having a blast being the most cartoony villains. The rest of the supporting cast do a great job of making the world of the film feel lived in and real. A standout among the rest to me was Cameron Britton, who you may have seen if you’ve watched Mindhunter or The Umbrella Academy.
Point 4 – A Little Messy
All the strong points above really ensure that the film escapes some of the messiness that accompanies Mickey 17. This will be my little nitpicky negatives section.
Mickey 17 had a lot of production issues leading to delays and even at some point, the possibility of the film being shelved altogether (it’s a Warner Brothers production, go figure!). The various issues do show their face in the form of some pacing issues and the film just not feeling as tight as it could. There are a few side plot points introduced that don’t seem to get developed fully or just dropped altogether. Cutting out some of that could have led to a more focused movie closer to a 1 hour 45 minute to 2 hour runtime rather than the 2 hour 25 minute runtime it ended up being.
The film also cost almost $200 million after marketing to put out there. A film like this is unlikely to make back that kind of spending, but it at least shows for the most part on screen. The sets and production value I do think is strong, but it’s a matter of evaluating how much one should spend on a film that won’t end up being all that accessible to everyone. It is especially odd that a film with this kind of budget doesn’t have any IMAX screens, making it easier for people to choose to just see it at home.
I mentioned it a little before, but I felt that sometimes the goofiness ends up being indulged a bit more than it needs to be. This is something that I also thought about Okja, funny enough. I think sometimes Bong Joon-ho latches onto a couple of things that he thinks will be funny but he ends up running it into the ground and ends up not being as funny as I think he thought it would be. In this movie, that would be the sauce bit. You’ll know it when you see it.
Overall, I still think this is a great movie and the first bigger scale quality film of the year that I’ve watched. I think Presence (review here) and Companion (review here) still beat it out for me overall, but if you’re looking for something to watch at the movies, this is an easy recommendation if you know what you’re getting into.
If you’re looking for other options of movies to see in theatres this month, check out my under the radar picks of March.
