Director Bong Joon Ho made Parasite in 2019. It was a masterful expression of filmmaking focusing on themes of inequality, exploitation, and the lengths people will go to get themselves a better life. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 and went on to win the top prize, the Palme d’Or; the first Korean film to win this prize. It then went on to be the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film had a budget of $11 million and went on to make over $258 million worldwide.
After all this success, everyone wanted to know, what would Bong do next?
Mickey 17 is based on the 2022 novel by Edward Ashton, Mickey 17. In 2054, the world is a rough place and Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) are in trouble. They borrowed money from the wrong person to start a macaron restaurant. Shockingly, it failed and now they are on the run from said loan sharks.
To try to escape and with no real skills, Mickey volunteers as an “expendable” on a spaceship heading to colonize the planet Niflheim, headed by a failed politician, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). Marshall has the spaceship filled with his fanatical followers who also wear red hats.
As an expendable, Mickey has signed his life away to be tested and used by the spaceship crew to make sure things are safe. Every time he dies they print a new version of him. He dies repeatedly when they use him to develop vaccines for alien pathogens, when he is exposed to radiation or just exploring the new planet’s surface.
During his many re-printings, Mickey forms a relationship with Security Agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), and dodging the affections of another security agent Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei.) That is, until he gets to his 17th version, hence Mickey 17.
Mickey 17 is tasked with exploring a section of the new ice planet they have landed on, Niflheim, which is not the paradise it was sold to be. There are also alien life forms on the planet that are considered aggressive and dangerous. Mickey 17 falls down an ice fissure and is left for dead. When word gets back to the ship that Mickey 17 died they print out Mickey 18 who comes out as a much more aggressive version of Mickey.
While at the bottom of the fissure, the alien creatures start to advance on Mickey 17, who wishes for a quick and as pain-free death as possible. This does not happen. The creatures drag his damaged body into a large area where many alien creatures turn up. They don’t use him as a meal, they carefully pull his body all the way out of the fissure and back to the surface. The creatures communicate through a series of clicks and tones, when pushed back to the top Mickey 17 tries to replicate these noises as a thank you.
Out of the fissure, the next issue is getting back to the spaceship, he stumbles upon a transport vehicle and he just onto it. When he gets to the spaceship, no one notices him getting off and he makes his way back to his room and collapses from exhaustion into his bed, only to be woken up by Mickey 18 already lying in it.
It is illegal to have two expandables at the same time and a fun little vignette details the unsavoury actions of one of the people who created the expendable technology. Knowing this, Mickey 18 tries to kill Mickey 17 being much more aggressive and not as dim, 18 nearly does it but they decide to split duties and food and deaths.
Nasha finds out about the duplicate Mickeys and tries to help them both. Marshall invites Mickey 17 to eat some experimental meat but he has a severe reaction to it and is given untested painkillers, and he is nearly going to be killed until Kai steps in to save him. Once Mickey 18 hears about the dinner, he plans to kill Marshall. There is a public ceremony where Marshall is commemorating a Niflheim rock, Mickey 18 tries to shoot him but is stopped by Nasha and it is revealed that there are two Mickeys. Now they must all fight together to keep the Mickeys alive and keep the ship’s crew from dying from terrible leadership.
The film’s budget is US$118 million, ten times the budget for Parasite, and this is a perfect distillation of the difference between the two films. Whereas Parasite was hyper-focused, subtle, and trusted the audience to get subtlety, Mickey 17 is loud, large, and bloated. The two films cover similar thematic ideas and look at the effect inequality has on the whole system. How people in bad conditions make bad choices out of necessity which leads to worse outcomes.
Robert Pattison was great, the scenes where he is playing two people is possibly the best this has ever been done. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette are having a blast hamming everything up. Steven Yuen is great as a punchable friend, the performances are great, and the production is high quality, the issue is that less is sometimes more and Parasite showed the world that people can connect the dots, but when big money gets involved it seems we lose those lessons.
25 Feb 2025 Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
