We can only speculate about the reasons behind Warner Bros’ decision to delay the release of Mickey 17 for a full year (it was originally scheduled to hit cinemas in March 2024). A science-fiction satire with the tantalising prospect of Robert Pattinson in a dual role, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his 2020 best picture Oscar winner, Parasite, has been at the top of most film fans’ need-to-see list since it was announced. The date shift sparked alarm and speculation that the director’s consistently high standards might have slipped. In fact, while Mickey 17 isn’t in the same elevated league as Parasite, it’s a lot of fun. What’s more, the delay has made the picture, with its themes of genetic “purity” and an on-the-nose Donald Trump parody courtesy of Mark Ruffalo’s performance as politician turned space coloniser Kenneth Marshall, feel rather more uncomfortably timely. Whether this was the intention is uncertain: given Hollywood’s current reluctance to incur the wrath of the White House, it seems unlikely.
The English-language picture, adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, represents Bong in brute-force Okja mode rather than the elegant, refined savagery of Parasite. This is not subtle film-making, but then again these are not especially subtle times. The story of a vain, populist leader obsessed with making great television; his followers with their slogan-daubed red hats and the zealot-like fervour of fully signed-up members of a personality cult – it all feels like a bit of a blunt weapon. But a blunt weapon can still do a lot of damage: a pivotal scene in which Naomi Ackie delivers a profanity-laden onslaught of truth to power is as galvanising as anything I’ve seen in the cinema so far this year.
Central to the action is what’s described as the “colony project”. The year is 2054, and huge space vessels full of eager volunteers are leaving a blighted Earth and venturing into the outer reaches of the galaxy to set up new human colonies. “A pure, white planet full of superior people,” is Marshall’s unambiguously fascist ambition for his mission, which is funded and supported by a supremely dodgy religious organisation.
Marshall’s vision categorically doesn’t include Mickey (Pattinson), who, as an “Expendable”, belongs to an underclass of disposable humans. His biometric data and memories have been uploaded; each time he dies, Mickey is reprinted and dispatched to carry out the kind of jobs other crew members wouldn’t risk doing. He gets to be a human sponge to test the effects of cosmic radiation (“How long until your skin starts to burn? … how long until you go blind?”); he’s requisitioned as a sentient petri dish used to develop a vaccine that can combat the airborne virus in the atmosphere of the new host planet, Niflheim. Mickey’s mumbled, barely articulate narration (Pattinson’s line readings are enjoyably off-kilter), together with the fact that he didn’t bother to read the small print of his job description, establish him as a likable doofus who, unlike many of the highly skilled crew members on the mission, is clearly no rocket scientist.
But even a dunce such as Mickey realises the seriousness of the situation when his 17th iteration, Mickey 17, is believed to have died after falling into an ice ravine on Niflheim and a new version, Mickey 18, is printed. The problem is that Mickey 17 survived, thanks to the intervention of the native species on the planet – a kind of giant woodlouse/guinea pig with face tentacles. Now there are two Mickeys out there, and Mickey 18 seems intent on murdering his predecessor. They look identical, but Pattinson’s expressive physicality is smartly used: 17 is gauche, with a cowed, kicked-puppy vulnerability; 18 is all hard edges and glinting grudges. To further complicate matters, the two Mickeys find themselves in competition over their girlfriend, Nasha (Ackie). The setup is superficially reminiscent of the premise of Duncan Jones’s Moon, but with the melancholy and angst replaced by violence, high-strength synthetic pharmaceuticals, sex and caustic comedy.
For the most part it works well. I’m not convinced that a running joke about the quest for the perfect sauce by Marshall’s wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), is strong enough to warrant the weight it’s given in the story. Elsewhere, though, there’s much to admire. The production design is superb. A scene in the colony project recruitment building on Earth looks like something from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; the crystalline sapphire blues of the Niflheim ice caves practically sing from the screen. And Bong’s peerless storytelling instincts are on display, deftly navigating a tangled nonlinear structure and making light work of the picture’s hefty two-and-a-quarter-hour running time.
In UK and Irish cinemas
