I have been a fan of Bong Joon-Ho’s for a few years now, ever since I realized the guy that made Parasite was the same man that had given us Snowpiercer several years before. Since then, I’ve gone back and watched both The Host and Okja,. I have to say: from my window of experience with him, he has been a can’t-miss director. 

So when I initially heard he had a new film coming out called Mickey 17, I was ready to get it as soon as I could.

Unfortunately, Mickey 17 was embroiled in controversy for a while, as Bong fought with the studio over when and how it was going to be released. It was starting to look like the film might have a bleak future. However, it did finally release in theaters recently, and I got a chance to watch it. So… was the movie worth the turmoil it was caught up in?

Mickey 17 is set in a future where mankind has reached the ability to start visiting other planets. On Earth, Mickey Barnes and his friend Temu have run afoul of a loan shark, and they see space as their opportunity to get away from their troubles. Mickey signs up as an Expendable–a worker who takes on medical tests and dangerous missions. When he dies, a new Mickey is printed out and his memories installed into it. And that is how his life (and deaths) go, day after day.

When the movie starts really going, we are on the 17th iteration of Mickey. Despite his rough career, he has a decent life aboard the spacefaring vessel with his girlfriend Nasha. But when Mickey is thought to be killed on a mission, an 18th Mickey is printed out. So now there are two Mickeys–which breaks the law–and they have to figure out how to coexist and not be found out.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Robert Pattinson continues to turn in glorious performances post-Twilight, as he delivers a wonderful role here as the various Mickeys. We mostly get him as the incredibly disparate Mickeys 17 and 18, but before them, we see him as other versions of Mickey, too. Most of them are more similar to Mickey 17, but there are minor differences. 

Also, it’s wild how different Mickey 17 is from Batman, but Pattinson pulls both roles off extraordinarily. He truly is a great actor who takes direction very well. Mickey 17 is childish and meek, whereas Batman is obviously almost the exact opposite of any of that. I’m excited to see where his career continues going from here. 

+ It’s another typical Bong Joon-Ho movie about classism and animal rights, this time set… IN SPACE. It’s a really nice touch on his usual formula. He has done great jobs using a horror movie (The Host) and a dystopian future movie (Snowpiercer) to tell stories about the differences between the rich and the poor–and he has utilized a child’s fable (Okja) to highlight the importance of animal rights activism–so of course he was going to go to the realm of science fiction next.

I know movies like Mickey 17 and Snowpiercer were adaptations of previous works, but the cinematic outings really showcase Bong Joon-Ho’s imagination and eye for using different settings and for adapting his work to fit other genres. He really is a special director, and I’m reminded of how much I need to look up Memories Of Murder (it’s apparently free on Tubi!) and check that out.

– There are aspects of the movie that don’t matter and probably should have been edited out. For a movie that stretches to nearly 140 minutes, that is problematic. Having not read the source material, it’s possible those elements matter more there, but for how little they pay off in the cinematic iteration, they should have just been left out entirely. 

The first is about a drug that Temu sells aboard the ship. Other than further setting up Temu as a dirtbag, it doesn’t really add anything to the plot. At one point, Nasha and Mickey 18 get high on it, and… that’s it. Nothing really comes of this development. 

Nor does anything sprout from the Kai character and her would-be love for Mickey 17. She is introduced about halfway through the flick, is really important for about fifteen minutes, then vanishes again until the very end. 

Again, I would imagine these elements are more important in the source novel, but I think Bong would have been better off not having them at all here. 

– There is a LOT of exposition and info dumping here, both at the beginning and again at the end. These are large information dumps that felt a little heavy and like the movie was flying through details I’d rather have experienced than been told about. We get the entire backstory of the universe that’s been set up for us in the beginning, and then at the end, we get a dump on what happened after the experience with the creepers–the alien creatures who inhabit the planet that Mickey’s ship intends to colonize. I could have done with more Show and less Tell in these regards. Lose the drug and Kai subplots and give us more of a lived-in experience! 

OVERALL

Mickey 17 is a lot of fun, but it’s a bit long. If you aren’t engaged early on, I can see not really caring for this outing at all by the time it’s over. Luckily for me, I was all the way in on it, despite its narrative flaws. Pattinson is a gem, and Bong’s allegorical touches never fail to impress. I’d say this is the weakest of his efforts overall, but that says more about his other films than this one. 

3.25 Out Of 5