If you’re South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, you’ve briefly basked in the incredible success of your 2019 surprise sleeper hit Parasite after winning four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. In Hollywood, the fame lasts for about 15 hot Warholian minutes before people start asking the inevitable question. “What’s next?”
The answer is Mickey 17, an ambitious sci-fi tale about a guy named Mickey (Robert Pattison) in the year 2054 who gets himself into some serious trouble with a couple of chainsaw-wielding dudes demanding money that he doesn’t have. His solution is to sign up for a space mission headed by a former, disgraced politician who plans to repopulate mankind on another planet. It’s a dangerous mission requiring, among other things, human guinea pigs known as “expendables.”
Having not read the fine print in his application, Mickey finds that he’s signed his life away, agreeing to be an expendable. It’s a job with a high mortality rate. Thankfully, future technology (improbably, less than just 30 years into the future) allows Mickey to be “reprinted” or physically recreated whenever he is killed in the line of duty.
He has been through this cycle 17 times as the movie’s title implies, dying a variety of deaths. In one case, having just landed on the alien planet, he is asked to remove his helmet in order to test the toxicity of the highly poisonous atmosphere. Moments later, he’s convulsing and coughing up blood. And dying.
We feel for poor Mickey and his plight. He gets no sympathy from his crew members who only repeatedly ask “What’s it like to die?” Luckily, one crewmate, Nasha (Naomi Ackie) sees a spark of humanity in Mickey and the two of them bond, though sex is forbidden on the huge spaceship in the interest of rationing food for the long trip.
Robert Pattinson in "Mickey 17."
As on Earth, there is a class struggle in space with corrupt, rich and powerful leaders (played by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette) who live like royalty while everyone else eats disgusting slop.
Bong Joon Ho injects social, political and religious commentary throughout the movie. As with all good science fiction, Mickey 17 attempts to hold up a mirror to current events actually happening in our real world.
The life and death cycle of Mickey’s existence is pretty much exhausted in the first third of the film. From there, the movie ventures out to the theme of alien life forms and how otherworldly creatures might be accepted or understood (or not accepted and completely misunderstood).
It’s a storyline right out of the old Star Trek TV series, or maybe The Twilight Zone, asking who the real aliens are (us or them) and questioning our tendency to kill and destroy anything we can’t comprehend, in the name of humanity and our collective mission to conquer the universe.
Bong Joon Ho tries to pack a lot of story into Mickey 17’s 2 hour and 17 minute run time. The more it strives to be interesting the less it succeeds in being entertaining.
As the movie trailers suggest, the movie is a technical marvel with impressive, big-budget special effects. In that regard it is wondrous. The design of the bug-like creatures (who the crew refer to as “creepers”) is both strange and realistic.
One of the subplots involves Mickey interacting with himself. It’s been done before, but not as seamlessly and convincingly as it is done here. It’s truly remarkable.
The themes of cloning, and dying and repeatedly returning to life, have been explored in movies like "Moon" (2009) and "Happy Death Day" (2017) and TV Series shows like "Russian Doll" (2019). They may not constitute entirely original ideas, but they are definitely popular ideas resonating in the current world of entertainment.
To a large degree, this storyline is the hook that will draw audiences to Mikey 17. It’s probably the most interesting part of the story which unfortunately drifts off course into other, less interesting material.
With Bong Joon Ho at the helm, Mickey 17 is not a total failure, it’s just his honest attempt to match or top a movie that would have been a near-impossible task for any director. It’s a movie with all the right intentions, and one worth seeing, even if it doesn’t entirely live up to all the hype generated by the movie’s marketing.
His fans will enjoy it. Critics will be asking, “What’s next?”
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