In Martin Ritt’s 1979 film Norma Rae, Sally Field’s titular character is spurred to unionize the cotton mill where she works after hearing a speech by Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman), a union organizer from New York City who states that, “your average working man is not stupid. He just gets tired.” In Bong Joon-ho’s earnest sci-fi satire Mickey 17, it would be easy to confuse his protagonist Mickey Barnes’ (Robert Pattinson) detachedness and apparent affability with stupidity— after all, he didn’t know what he was getting into when he signed up to be an Expendable on the crew of a ship bound for the planet Nilfheim, having neglected to read through the paperwork. The next thing he knew, he was being hooked up to a machine, liquids pumped into him to copy his DNA, his memories backed up into a brick for storage. As an Expendable, Mickey can die and be reprinted within 20 hours, allowing the science team on the Nilfheim to dispatch him on lethal assignments so they can gather data that will protect the others on board. At the opening of Mickey 17, his broken body is lying on the floor of an icy chasm, marveling at the fact that he’s still alive. But as his resigned voiceover narration indicates, on his 17th iteration, he’s used to dying by now. It is, after all, his job.
But Bong’s film, which he scripted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, is far from your typical live, die, repeat scenario. Even as far as cloning narratives go, it circumvents many of the usual cliches— or at the very least, builds on them in meaningful and often surprising ways. It takes a while for Mickey 17 (which contains one of those late in the film title drops) to get to the meat of the conflict. The film’s first act is essentially a “record scratch, freeze frame, ‘Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation,’” situation, in which Mickey recaps just how he got to become an Expendable preparing to die for the seventeenth time. You see, back on Earth about four and a half years ago, Mickey and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) got into some trouble with a loan shark after their business went under (apparently, they were all too happy to believe the advice that macarons would be more popular than burgers). Unable to pay their debts, and burdened with the knowledge that the gang will pursue them to the ends of the Earth, they conclude that their only option is to leave Earth. But everyone else is trying to get out too— after all, it’s more appealing to make a new start elsewhere than try to fix the problems at home— and the next spaceship out, operating under the command of blustering political Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), is crowded. Timo is the sort of smooth talker who can get himself in to and out of virtually any situation; he finds a cushy job despite having no prior experience, while Mickey can only get on board by signing up for the undesirable Expendable position.
It takes over four years for the ship to finally reach Nilfheim, which Marshall and his domineering wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) intend to colonize with only the best specimens of humanity (it other words, the most physically attractive people and most skilled laborers). Mickey spends those intervening years being put through hell and striking up a romance with Nasha Barridge (Naomi Ackie), a security agent he locks eyes with across the cafeteria his first day on board; they spend much of their downtime defying Marshall’s suggestion that there should be no indulgence in sexual activity on board, in the interest of conserving calories. But once the narrative finally catches up to the opening scene, it turns out that Mickey 17 doesn’t die in the jaws of the mysterious roly-poly critters native to Nilfheim (nicknamed “creepers”). Rather, he’s saved by them, but when he returns to the base, he discovers that the science team has already printed out Mickey 18. The existence of both of them is in violation of the law against multiples, established after it was discovered that one of the inventors of the technology was a serial killer using it to print multiples versions of himself so he would have an alibi. In other words, one of these Mickeys has to go.
Bong spends portions of Mickey 17 making the sort of broad gestures that in a lesser film by a lesser filmmaker may become borderline insufferable, from a bronzed-up Ruffalo delivering an thinly-veiled impersonation of America’s current President, to touching on the capitalist and environmentalist themes he’s mined more profoundly in previous movies from Snowpiercer to Okja. And yet, there’s a sincere curiousness that, when married to the film’s otherwise offbeat tone and Bong’s elegant formal style, makes it as uniquely propulsive as it is weirdly entertaining. This is a film about labor and class, and how social and economic structures are put in place to make some people comfortable while others have to run in a never-ending circle to just barely survive. This is literally represented in Mickey 17 in the juxtaposition of Marshall and Ylfa’s cushy quarters, where they dine on steak paired with Ylfa’s homemade sauces (“Sauce is the litmus test of civilization”), with the cold, barren interiors of the rest of the ship, and the cafeteria where scores of crew members clad in identical grey jumpsuits eat tiny portions of equally grey foods, a loudspeaker publicly shaming them if they try to help themselves to more than their daily allotment of calories will permit. But it’s also entrenched in Mickey’s entire being. He couldn’t make it on Earth, so he left. And in order to leave, he had to subject himself to a job where he is constantly devalued. He’s flung out in space to measure levels of deadly radiation. He’s sent to Nilfheim’s surface without a helmet so the science team can measure the toxins in the air and create a vaccine so the planet will be habitable. He’s tasked with bringing back a creeper sample to study. It could be said that he’s doing it for some sort of greater good— these discoveries save lives, after all— but it all traces back to Marshall and his greed-driven, Elon Musk-like handle on technology. He’s just another cog in the machine, as evidenced by Bong’s frequent cutting back to the tube-like printer from which each new copy of his body emerges, jarring and spluttering before being coldly dropped onto the floor, where the team of disaffected scientists wait to subject him to his next torture.
There’s certainly something humorous to Bong’s presentation of these scenes that doesn’t detract from the impact of their commentary on the maddening degradation of capitalist societies. It’s representation of the daily grind (the repetition of shots, the constant questioning of “what does it feel like to die?” that Mickey has to endure from his peers) and the wearying effect it has on the body and the mind, even as absurd and pushed to the extreme as it is here, pierces straight to the core of something deeply relatable. Pattinson’s remarkable lead performance goes a long way toward striking that precarious balance, when the film could have easily dipped too far in either opposing direction. With his craggy features that can be molded into either those of a handsome romantic lead or an awkward weirdo, moppy haircut, and mastery over accents (I’m not sure I possess the vocabulary to describe precisely what Pattinson is doing in his voice for Mickey 17, but suffice it to say it works), he was already a great fit for the part. But he also exhibits an impressive amount of control over his physicality. You just have to look at his slouching posture, hesitant half-smile, and eager devouring of his meals to know that this is a man who is fighting for his place in the world. Pattinson recalibrates his performance once Mickey 18 enters the picture. In an intriguing aside that Bong doesn’t really pursue further, it’s alluded to that every iteration of Mickey has a slightly different personality. Mickey 18 is bolder, more fearless, and Pattinson pitches his voice a little lower and stands up a little straighter. It’s a practical choice to differentiate the two for the viewer, but it also works in the context of the story, pushing Mickey 17 to take more charge of his life and the rights that have so far been denied to him.
Mickey 17 also probes the ethics involved in the Expendable program—resentment runs rampant through the crew after one of their own is killed on a mission, when it ought to have, in their minds, been Mickey— although the majority of this line of thinking extends to the film’s backward motion (the scientist/serial killer aside, for instance), the forward motion ultimately focusing on a more rote proletariat rising against the man in charge narrative. But it’s peppered with moving, standalone moments (the care that Kai, played by Anamaria Vartolomei, affords to Mickey when no one else will, even in the wake of her own loss) and fun asides. Bong’s centering of yearning (both for physical and emotional connection) in the story is particularly welcome, and Ackie brings a lot of energy to her performance; honestly, her initial response to suddenly being confronted with doubles of her lover is just too real, and her and Mickey’s use of a chart of sexual positions they created together as a sort of secret code is a delicious detail.
Accented by Jung Jae-il’s lovely, piano-forward score and Yang Jin-mo’s precise and purposeful editing, Mickey 17 exists as both a continuation of Bong’s favorite themes, and a step in a fresh new direction. Mickey 17 likely won’t be a critical and commercial crowd-pleaser the way that Parasite surprisingly was; it’s simultaneously too weird to appeal to either the arthouse crowd or mainstream cinema-goers. But that undefinable quality is a feature, not a bug, and despite its obvious allusions to current world figures and events, there’s a timeless sheen to its imaginative rendering of man’s relationship to machines. In 1931, filmmaker and actor Charlie Chaplin met with Mahatma Gandhi in London. In a dialogue that would later at least partially inspire Chaplin’s similarly timeless exploration of labor exploitation, Modern Times, Chaplin argued that “it’s the natural outcome of man’s genius and is part of his evolutionary progress. It is here to free him of the bondage of slavery, to help him to leisure and higher culture. I grant that machinery with only the consideration of profit has thrown men out of work and created a great deal of misery, but to use it as a service to humanity, that consideration transcending everything else, should be a help and benefit to mankind.” Gandhi, whose non-violent rhetoric included pushing back against the use of technology, reportedly responded, “I am not against machines but I cannot bear it when these very machines take a man’s work from him. Today we are your slaves because we cannot overcome our attraction for your goods. Freedom will surely be ours if we learn to free ourselves from this attraction.” At the start of Mickey 17, Mickey is tired, resigned to his position, rarely if ever looking to the future. By the end, he’s glimpsed who and what he could be, and is inspired to free himself from the attraction— not only the literal machinery that maintains his body and mind, but the system that at large robbed him of his humanity for the sake of profit. Are any of these so-called leaps forward for mankind, whether it be cloning or space exploration, actually of benefit to humanity? Mickey 17 may not fully answer the question it poses, but this is one film that is enthralling to watch spin its wheels.
Mickey 17 is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 137 minutes. Rated R.
Katie at the Movies 