Bong Joon-ho was delighted by a congratulatory letter he acquired from Martin Scorsese after his 2019 Korean-language movie Parasite triumphed on the Oscars. At a press convention, Bong revealed that Scorsese had mentioned he and different administrators have been keenly awaiting his subsequent film. “You’ve performed effectively. Now relaxation. However don’t relaxation for too lengthy.”
Right here finally, six years later, is Bong’s subsequent movie, financed on a special scale. Parasite was made on a funds of $11.4m and took $258m on the field workplace worldwide. Mickey 17 is ten instances the punt, with a $118m funds, lavished by Warner Bros.
It’s based mostly on the amiable sci-fi novel Mickey7, by Edward Ashton, optioned by Warners even earlier than it was revealed. Mickey7, tonally paying homage to The Martian by Andy Weir, is about sooner or later and narrated by Mickey Barnes, an “expendable”. Mickey, a pure loser, has joined a mission to colonise a distant planet, led by a messianic twice-failed politician, by agreeing to be its one member who will be endlessly “reprinted”, his physique replicated and his thoughts downloaded. Mickey performs duties that may kill him, endeavor medical experiments or braving lethal radiation, secure within the information that 48 hours later, he’ll be again, able to go once more.
At some point, although, on the freezing new planet Niflheim, all of it goes improper. Having fallen down a gap within the ice, Mickey7 is left for useless and his successor Mickey8 duly printed up. However Mickey7 is surprisingly rescued by the planet’s native creatures, often known as Creepers. So now there are two of him and that’s an issue, not solely along with his girlfriend, Nasha, however with the authorities: “multiples” are strictly forbidden.
This story’s affinities with Bong’s cinematic creativeness are apparent. Oppressed people in autocratic, enclosed environments, as in Snowpiercer and Parasite. Bizarre however not evil creatures, as in The Host and Okja. Claustrophobic darkish locations, abysses, passim.
Bong has vigorously dramatised his supply, because the change in title alone suggests, permitting for a lot of extra ugly deaths to be proven. A lot of the techy innovations – which Ashton, a most cancers researcher and quantum physics lecturer in addition to novelist, evidently enjoys – have been quietly forgotten.
Mickey 17 begins promisingly, with the scene during which our downtrodden hero (Robert Pattinson) falls into an incredible crevasse and is heartlessly left to die by his supposed buddy, Timo (Steven Yeun). As Mickey returns to the huge, grubby spacecraft that’s dwelling, we get his backstory, till we return once more to this turning level, and the confounding discovery that there are actually two of him (one other concept that has appealed to Bong earlier than, there having been twin Tilda Swintons in Okja).
Pattinson is endearing as passive, dopey Mickey 17, earlier than reworking into aggressive, macho Mickey 18, modelled on Robert De Niro’s nastiest roles, with solely snarly enamel to indicate as a bodily distinction. As Nasha, the British actress Naomi Ackie is convincingly excited by the prospect of getting each of them in mattress collectively. The far future is surprisingly English, maybe as a result of Mickey 17 was made on the Warner studio in Leavesden.
The place the film goes improper is its satirising of the vile chief Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his grotesque, manipulative spouse, Ylfa (Toni Collette). It’s greater than heavy handed: Marshall publicizes that he’s creating “a pure white planet filled with superior individuals”, whereas Nasha speaks up for “the native inhabitants of our planet”, the Creepers (caterpillars-cum-walruses, given to bounding round like spring lambs).
Ruffalo, a surprisingly humorous villain in Poor Issues, is horrible right here. He clumsily parodies Donald Trump along with his gestures, expressions, carrying huge enamel. However, as the previous couple of weeks have illustrated, Trump will not be a joke. (Alec Baldwin’s gurning impressions on SNL have by no means been humorous; the latest movie The Apprentice works higher because it goes again to Trump earlier than Trump.) Bong is well known for his abrupt shifts in tone, discovering comedy in horror, however this flip defeats him and undoes the entire film.
Mickey 17 was filmed in 2022, maybe assuming that Trump would lose two elections in a row, however for numerous causes, together with the 2023 Hollywood strike, its launch has been delayed, usually introduced after which postponed once more, till now. It’s dangerous timing. However revisiting Bong’s 2003 breakout masterpiece, Recollections of Homicide, concerning the chaotic investigation of a real-life serial killer at the moment unidentified, re-released in 2020 within the wake of Parasite, reveals how dislocated, inflated and coarsened his film-making has turn out to be since his worldwide success.
“Mickey 17” is in cinemas now
[See also: Art and the ruins of the left]