Robert Pattinson rules the big screen in more ways than one playing ‘Mickey 17′

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — He’ll blow your mind!

Synopsis

The impoverished Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is desperate to get off the dying planet Earth, jumping at the chance to become an “expendable” on the space colony Nilfheim. As an expendable, Mickey is tasked with dangerous assignments he is not meant to survive, with a clone being created every time he dies.

When Mickey 17 is believed to be dead after a job, Mickey 18 is created, but Mickey 17 quickly reenters the picture. As expendables must be eliminated if more than one exists at a time, Mickey’s 17 and 18 must put aside their difference to take down the people who run Nilfeim in order to ensure their own survival.

My thoughts

Back when Parasite shocked the world by becoming the first non-English-language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020, every pair of eyes in the world were on writer-director Bong Joon Ho. South Koreans and film aficionados have known of Bong’s work for a long time, but it wasn’t until Parasite that he really became a global name. The world was his oyster.

Normally it doesn’t take that long for a filmmaker to follow up their Best Picture win and it also normally doesn’t take Bong so long to release new films. Since 2000, he’s been pretty consistent with 2–4-year gaps between his projects, but with Mickey 17 coming out 6 years after Parasite, this has officially been the longest wait for a new Bong project yet. Even more exciting? It’s the return of Robert Pattinson to the big screen!

Recycle me not

Since Bong is the kind of filmmaker to win 3 Oscars for the same movie, that pretty much equaled a blank check for whatever film he wanted to make next. He decided to go with an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, which still hadn’t been published at the time he wrote the script. Bong claimed to take his own liberties with the story and characters while keeping the general “expendable” premise intact.

I haven’t read Ashton’s novel, but Mickey 17 is such a Bong Joon Ho picture through and through that you’d believe it’s his own idea he came up with. People who have only seen Parasite may be surprised to know that Bong likes to dabble in sci-fi when he’s not doing his more grounded, character-driven thrillers. When you consider he made movies like The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja, something like Mickey 17 isn’t too far off.

At the same time, it’s easily his most commercial film, starring an A-lister like Robert Pattinson and being released by a studio like Warner Bros., all while carrying a budget of $118 million. Bong has worked with some big stars and distributors like Netflix before, but this is a new foray for him, now relying on box office dollars for success here. Despite this, he was able to keep his filmmaking identity completely intact.

Like his other works, pertinent social commentary is woven through the story and characters, and Mickey 17 has it all: unchecked capitalism creating oppressive governments, corporations, and class warfare, human rights abuses, animal cruelty, the ethics of cloning… okay, well maybe his other movies don’t really have cloning, but you get the idea. Thematically, Mickey 17 feels like an amalgamation of his previous work, especially Snowpiercer and Okja.

This all does feel like Bong is kind of treading old ground here, especially during the second half where the narrative shifts. The shift here is nothing as crazy as Parasite, but the path we end up taking in Mickey 17 doesn’t quite measure up to what all comes before it. I loved the darkly comic existential crisis Mickey was going through of basically being a human guinea pig, knowing he’s meant to die over and over, so when we got into more standard and broader themes about politics, some of the luster was lost.

Even if Mickey 17 is a pretty high concept, it’s surprisingly quite simple in scope. There aren’t a whole lot of different settings here, most of the proceedings take place on the spaceship colony or on the snowy planet they’re trying to inhabit. Bong works well within these confined settings, keeping the camera moving and always in interesting places. His visually striking, surehanded direction combined with the beautifully detailed cinematography, production design, and visual effects made the world of Mickey 17 feel both unique and lived in.

Dueling Pattinson’s

It was refreshing to have a protagonist who was a bit of a pathetic dummy, which was one of the changes Bong made to Ashton’s source material, where Mickey is far more capable and intelligent. Robert Pattinson can definitely play capable and intelligent characters (just look at The Batman), but he also excels at being a moronic goofball. That’s basically what he does here, but this time we get two of him!

By playing both Mickey 17 and 18, Pattinson gets to flex his range as an actor, portraying the same character, just as slightly different shades. When the two Mickeys are interacting with each other, it’s like Pattinson’s personality from The Lighthouse split in two, like some demented mirror image. 18 is just as simple-minded as 17, but he’s more immature, impulsive, and selfish. He’s not malicious because he enjoys it, but unlike 17, he’s freshly printed and doesn’t have the life experience to give him empathy.

Inspired by the likes of Ren & Stimpy and Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, this performance isn’t the nuttiest Pattinson has ever been, but it’s definitely up there. He uses a similar accent to his one in The Lighthouse, but just dialing up the kookiness, where he’s a borderline caricature here. Pattinson is one of the modern greats, though, so he knows exactly how far to push the eccentricities. No matter how funny he’s supposed to be in the moment, there’s a constant look of painful, existential dread on his face. “Dying over and over sucks,” and Pattinson’s eyes make sure you can feel it.

Mark Ruffalo plays the wealthy politician villain Kenneth Marshall, an incredibly over-the-top character, and luckily for him (and his huge Jim Carrey’s The Mask-esque prosthetic teeth), Pattinson left plenty of scenery at the buffet to chew. Ruffalo’s always been great, but I was really blown away by his comedic performance in Poor Things, and I’m all for a new trend of him playing characters with ridiculous voices like these. Like the themes of the movie, his presentation is exaggerated and blunt but loads of fun to watch and appropriate for the vibe.

The rest of the cast is great, but their characters don’t have as much going on, most of them having to play their limited characters too straight, except for Toni Collette operating on her own unhinged wavelength. It all works for the tone of the movie, though, as Naomi Ackie and Steven Yeun’s more straightforward, and at times completely deadpan delivery made for some great laughs. Even if some of these side characters can feel like afterthoughts at times, the actors all have enjoyable chemistry.

Final verdict

Mickey 17 has pretty much everything you could want or expect from a Bong Joon Ho film, even if it’s not his strongest work. Relevant social satire abounds, but it’s also an interesting story about one’s true meaning in life, just with an absurd twist. All led by lively Robert Pattinson continuing to show why he’s one of the best in the biz, Mickey 17 is more than worth taking a trip with.