Mickey 17

Clones, androids, artificial intelligence... in short, films about the unnatural creation or recreation of human life are abundant in the science-fiction genre. That is why I entered Mickey 17 with a mixed sense of excitement and prudence, because it is a hugely interesting topic, but it's also easy to fall into clichés and tired ideas when playing with these concepts, and often hard to find new things to say about the moral implications. Luckily, Bong Joon-ho has proven time-and-time again that he thinks and acts differently to the masses, even when working on someone else's story.

Mickey 17 is the adaptation of Mickey7, a 2022 novel by Edward Ashton. It tells the story of Mickey Barnes, a worker on a space colony that has accepted the role of an "expendable": someone who gets assigned the most dangerous missions - usually abhorrent experiments on himself - because, when he dies, he gets reborn again through a "human printer". His memories remain, but his former self dies completely, and the "new Mickey" gets assigned a number: Mickey 16, Mickey 17...

The film's greatest strength is that it rarely gets predictable, even with a premise as juicy as this, with plenty of potential for twists and dark humour. But that can also be the film's biggest (and perhaps only) flaw: it sometimes feels too creative, and gets easily distracted by too many subplots, unnecessarily long sequences that lead to nowhere and secondary characters that are left behind. It's all over the place, and what is there is usually very fun and creative... except when it isn't, and slows down the pace of the movie. Despite its length of 137 minutes, the movie never feels boring... but it's fair to say that it doesn't maintain the same level of engagement all the time, and the second half... well, it's weird and probably not because of the reasons you may be expecting.

One way to put it is that the movie doesn't really use the premise of human cloning to its limits. Instead, the movie puts a big focus on an alien race of strangely cute maggots, and - a lot - on the character played by Mark Ruffalo, the megalomaniac boss of the colony, who is overacted but not wholly by the fault of the actor, but by the way he (and his on-screen wife Toni Collette) are written and portrayed. The movie doesn't have too many formal excesses (flashy uses of music, editing, or cinematography, as earlier films by Bong Joon-ho had) and it is clearly cut by Hollywood blockbuster rules, but compensates it with exaggerated characters and some out of place moments.

Was it necessary to make Ruffalo and Collette's characters so dislikeable? I don't think anybody is going to mistake they are the villains here, embodying a too simple-minded capitalist parody that's not as funny or clever as the more inspired moments of the movie, which almost always revolve around Robert Pattinson and his brilliant, multifaceted performance as Mickey(s). As with all of Bong Joon-ho's films, there is a lot of social commentary mixed with entertainment and comedy, but the more nuanced philosophical questions about the value of human life and the working class are overshadowed by very brutish criticism on anti-colonialism, almost like a fable. The feeling I'm left with is that Bong Joon-ho got caught in a conflict of interests between developing his ideas and staying more of less faithful to the source material, without finding a perfect solution.

This is undoubtedly a much lighter affair than Parasite, and while all of his films are characterised by the mix of genres, Mickey 17 is the one that can more easily be ascribed to comedy, and not too black comedy at that despite some violent moments. It is much more "family friendly", a pure entertainment film. But, even if the film has an English-language cast and spectacular special effects, it still feels different from every other big-budget science-fiction western film, it's "alien" if anything.

Earlier in the review, I said that I applauded the movie for being unpredictable. While that is true, it manages to do so by taking some strange detours that may leave you with the feeling of wasted potential. To an extent, that is the price to pay for preventing the movie from heading down an easier and more Manichaean route. And I consider it a price worth paying. Even with the flaws, if you look at the "bigger picture", you get a movie that is different, fun, entertaining, spectacular, and a huge showcase of Pattinson's acting skills. It's a delight seeing him portray so many different emotions and personalities.

Mickey 17 is a fascinating movie, and despite having a larger budget and being based on a very recent novel, it maintains some of the best traits of Bong Joon-ho's films... and sometimes the not-so-great traits with a few excesses in the characterisation. Flawed and uneven, you may feel like it has too many pieces that don't fit well at the same time. Maybe it's my western palate talking here, or maybe it's that the pieces really don't fit well together. Regardless, its worth watching for Pattinson's performance(s) alone, and the huge collection of ideas that it presents, and simply put... there a lot of really cool things to witness here.