It is inevitable that when a director peaks early in their career, every subsequent film of theirs will be compared to it — Francis Ford Coppola will always be known for “The Godfather,” Barry Jenkins will forever have to talk about “Moonlight” and Bong Joon-ho will never escape “Parasite.” It’s a melancholic fact of greatness in art that audiences will hope these directors recreate that same artistic genius. Rightfully, Bong Joon-ho should be held in very high regard for his universally acclaimed biting critique of class disparity under late-stage capitalism. “Parasite” will surely be watched for decades, but perhaps we shouldn’t hold directors to the unreachable standard that is their best work. “Parasite” is a once-in-a-generation masterpiece — don’t expect a repeat with Bong’s five-year awaited follow-up, “Mickey 17.”
“Mickey 17” follows the titular Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson, “The Batman”) who, after becoming indebted to a loan shark on Earth, signs up to become an “expendable” on the colony planet Niflheim. Expendables are workers whose bodies are reprinted from organic slop after each death. From dangerous expeditions to intentional radiation and virus exposure, their bodies are used to complete some of the most life-threatening tasks imaginable. Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”), the narcissistic fascist and former Earthen politician hell-bent on creating a “pure” colony in his own image with Niflheim, only worsens Mickey’s quality of life. But while things may look pretty rough for Mickey, especially due to his ostracization as an expendable, he does have one bright spot: his girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie, “Blink Twice”), a flawed yet endlessly supportive partner to each one of his cloned iterations.
While it might not be fair to hold Bong to the standard of his best film, “Mickey 17” covers basically the same set of topics as his previous films. Like “Snowpiercer,” the film focuses on the role class plays in an isolated community of people with a despotic leader in a frozen tundra. Like “Okja,” the immense destruction of animal life for human profit is pervasive in every moment of the film. Bong might be treading familiar ground, but his experience is a strength. The core conflict of “Mickey 17” starts when an alien creature called a creeper, a dog-to-elephant sized cross between a roly-poly and a pig, saves Mickey, and no one realizes, resulting in Mickey 18 being printed out. Though they initially seem extraneous to the plot, it’s these strangely cute creepers that make the film’s thematic messages feel significant. Upon discovering the creepers, Marshall’s dreams of a pure colony are dashed, making him determined to exterminate them.
Environmental destruction and animal cruelty are familiar themes in Bong’s films, and “Mickey 17” is no exception. It’s fitting that Mickey — another life deemed expendable by his fellow humans — is the first person able to communicate with the creepers. It would have been easy to default to a classic science fiction clone versus clone narrative, but Bong’s turn to the allyship between both of the Mickeys and the alien creatures is a much more interesting route. This addition extends the themes from a simple human-centric perspective — one centered on the conflict between Marshall and Mickey — to a broader message about the value of all life in the face of ecological colonization. Thematically, here is where Bong excels, and “Mickey 17” follows up the environmental themes of his previous films in a much more whimsical and oblique fashion. There is no dour talk of climatic collapse in the film, but the looming threat of anthropogenic climate change is a clear source of anxiety for Bong, which makes “Mickey 17” a clever plot for indirectly exploring these ideas.
Altogether, “Mickey 17” works — except for its abnormal pacing. The story occasionally drags for little reason and conflicts sometimes wrap up much too fast to feel natural. It’s difficult to establish a sense of time, as a single conversation will overstay its welcome, only to be followed by a breakneck montage. Considering the many release date pushes the film received, one can speculate how excessive changes contributed to this feeling. Regardless, the scene-to-scene editing did not do the film any favors. That being said, the film is clearly full of technical expertise: Striking visuals and musical cues often redeem dragging scenes. The film’s structural integrity was never seriously in danger, but some cracks showed, souring the overall viewing experience.
Additionally, not all of the thematic writing in “Mickey 17” expands on previously tread ground in such interesting ways. Mark Ruffalo gives a snooty performance fitting of a more reserved satire, making the character feel undeveloped. Clearly meant as an allegorical take on extremist populist leaders such as President Donald Trump, Marshall never reaches the potential of absurd satire he should in such an off-the-wall comedy. While an audience can guess his motivations based on real-world politics, Bong doesn’t reveal much about the character, beyond that Marshall is generally stupid and bad.
This could all be forgiven if Marshall was funny enough to negate the need for a fully realized character or a biting critique layered in his idiocy; some solid comic bits are peppered throughout the film, but Marshall doesn’t consistently sell the laughs he needs to. Similarly, Marshall’s puppeteering wife, Ylfa Marshall (Toni Collette, “Juror #2”), is also undeveloped — though she’s a little funnier due to her more Machiavellian character. Her obsession with perfecting a sauce to eat is much more befitting of the film’s nonsensical tone. However, the Marshalls’ SNL-esque dialogue prevents even the occasional intriguing sequence from ever excelling.
The film’s standout performance, by far, is Robert Pattinson. Pattinson’s voice performance — something in between an accent and a caricature — is one thing, but jumping between the sillier Mickey 17 and the darker Mickey 18 is even more impressive. Though ostensibly cloned copies of the original Mickey, each version is easy to differentiate from one another without over-the-top signposts for the audience. The imperfections of the cloning process create tension between the characters yet possess varying perspectives when faced with their life-or-death situations. Pattinson somehow delivers line reads between the Mickeys with the same quirked-up accent, yet sounds completely different between characters. Even his movements possess a slight quality of difference, from things as small as a head turn to as major as a running cadence. The work put in to capture such a difficult role is clearly on display here; it’s truly hard to think of someone doing a better job at two roles in a single film than Pattinson did here.
With so many disparate elements in the film, it would be easy for Mickey to get lost. Luckily, the emotional core of the story — the relationship between Mickey and Nasha — helps anchor the film in Mickey’s story. In contrast to the Marshalls, Nasha is a fully developed character, one who is extremely loyal to Mickey while still possessing her own flaws. When she discovers that there are two Mickey copies alive at the same time, instead of becoming concerned — knowing this marks a death sentence for both “multiples” if found out — she gets high and attempts to have a threesome with them. Still, Nasha’s strange love for Mickey, in all his permutations, remains strong throughout the film. Between Mickey’s love of Nasha and his partnership with the creepers, the bones of the film — the inherent value of life — are strong, preventing the film from feeling contrived.
Some would say the sort of overdramatic science fiction spectacle film that Bong Joon-ho has trodden on before, and revisits here, is a far inferior method of satire than the expertly tense, more realist metaphors like “Parasite.” These people are wrong. “Parasite” is a masterpiece, but it’s not the genre shift that elevated his film — it was the sharp class commentary that Bong has revisited again and again throughout his career. Perhaps we’ll get another “Parasite” someday. For now, I’m happy to enjoy Bong’s madcap romps with clones, aliens and mad scientists.
Daily Arts Writer Zach Loveall can be reached at zloveall@umich.edu.
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