Robert Pattinson's Forgotten Sci-Fi Satire Is a Stealth Masterpiece

Mickey 17 is something of a mix of Bong Joon Ho’s two earlier English efforts (with a fair bit of the eccentricity of his original Korean films included). Snowpiercer’s sci-fi dystopia, set on a vessel moving through an icy world, crammed the have-nots onto the back of a train with no hope for progress, and Okja’s tale of a genetically modified super pig revealed the extent of Bong’s love of putting cute critters through the ringer to demonstrate the cruelty of the bad guys. On Niflheim, the ice world of Mickey 17, the cute creatures are called Creepers, and they become the key to the movie’s satirical sensibility. As the indigenous population receiving the hostile Earthlings, they are immediately a thorn in the humans’ side.

Mickey is inconvenient for them as well. By signing himself up to die repeatedly for the sake of the expedition, he has effectively doomed himself to an eternity of servitude. In the movie’s cold open, he’s even left behind to die by his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun), who we later learn to have been a bit of a scumbag on Earth, as well. Mickey survives due to the protection of the Creepers, but his return is too late — there is already a Mickey 18 (Robert Pattinson), who’s cooler and angrier than the goofy 17 and whose very existence suggests a paradox. The movie establishes early on that cloning is a controversial science in this world, and one way people like Marshall escape any ethical quandaries is by confirming that any redundant clones will get killed on sight. The Mickey clones are trapped, and that — as well as 18’s defiant personality — leads to a wild third act that puts the ruling class on the ropes.

While Mickey 17 thrusts this group of humans and clones into a pressure cooker and lets the action flow, it also tells a moving, if obvious, political story. The people in charge of the expedition — Marshall, his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), and their various cronies — are fine with using a literal copying machine to create humans to die for them, just as they’re fine threatening annihilation to the Creepers. By using the ship as a miniature society ruled by people obsessed with wealth, power, and legacy, the movie also explores what it means to be considered “Expendable,” as Mickey’s initial job application states.

*Mickey 17 *is not quite as sharp as Bong Joon Ho’s previous Korean films, like his similarly-minded class thriller Parasite, in which the rich lived exceedingly nice lives while the poor had to fight for scraps. Nor does it have the tonal control of his 2003 serial killer epic Memories of Murder, which used a series of vile killings to explore the nature of obsession and the structure of a small town police department. In fact, Mickey 17 is probably a bit too eager to give viewers villains to root against and heroes to adore compared to Bong’s previous work, and its comedy relies a lot on Pattinson’s mugging, as well as its grimy Terry Gilliam-esque production design. But the movie is also fun and endearing, with Bong’s satirical sensibilities keeping everything running smoothly.

Science Fiction

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