In Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, Mickey 17, Robert Pattison plays the titular Mickey, a failed macaron restaurant owner turned runaway intergalactic guinea pig whose sole purpose in life is to die infinitely horrific deaths for eternity.
One minute into the film, he’s preparing to die for the 17th time. So much for labor rights.
In a bid to escape a blood-hungry loan shark, Mickey joins an expedition led by failed politician Kenneth Marshall to the Planet Niflheim, four years of starship travel away.
Mickey signs up to be an expendable, a person who agrees to give up their life to science, literally. Through the development of human printing technology, humans can now be reprinted with complete transfer of memories, even after death. Ethical and legal concerns have banished the technology from Earth all the way to the edges of the galaxy, where it’s now Mickey’s job to pave the way for humanity’s conquering of a hostile, unknown world by dying.
And die he does.
After sixteen blood-gurgling expirations, Mickey’s demises finally allow scientists to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus present on Niflheim, giving the explorers the green light to colonize their new home.
Yet, things begin to get complicated after Mickey manages to survive an encounter with the native species of Niflheim. This grotesque (but also strangely adorable) insect looks like something straight out of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Crawling back to the ship, he is shocked to discover that Mickey 17 was presumed dead, and Mickey 18 has already been printed.
An adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, Mickey 17 is an outrageous creation, a sci-fi black comedy that makes up for a lack of subtlety with boldness and undeniable hilarity.
The cast, including Pattison, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Ackie and Toni Collette, is outstanding. The strongest comedic moments were those that leaned into the absurd, especially with physical comedy or unexpected line deliveries.
Satirizing colonialism, capitalism, fascism and more, Mickey 17 doesn’t quite manage to meaningfully address all the issues it ambitiously brings onboard, but beneath a consistent barrage of bits and one-liners sits a bluntly effective critique that doesn’t shy away from being direct.
I have more thoughts on how the film handles many of these themes, but in the interest of keeping this spoiler-free, I will comment more on them in a separate article as others get a chance to see the film for themselves.
However, what’s not up for debate is that Mickey 17 is the film Bong set out to make. It’s inventive, highly entertaining and very funny while avoiding most of the pitfalls of a classic “eat the rich” satire. If Bong wanted to create a layered, complex critique of colonialism or the current political landscape, he wouldn’t have made Mickey 17.
In this way, Mickey 17 is radically different from Parasite, the film that turned Bong into an Oscar-winning household name. But, in the end, Mickey 17 not trying to be the next Parasite.
