Bong Joon-Ho Laughs at Death in ‘Mickey 17’

At a Glance: While trying to tackle death, individuality, corruption, and more, Mickey 17 tells a scattershot story whose pacing buckles under too many threads, but survives thanks to witty humor and a deeply charming cast.

Following up Parasite was always going to be a challenge for Bong Joon-Ho, who had previously directed cult classics like The Host, Mother, and Snowpiercer before taking home the Best Picture Oscar for Parasite.

Mickey 17 is his most ambitious film to date, a beautiful and expensive sci-fi comedy that doesn’t quite live up to its predecessors. Clearly, no expense was spared on bringing Bong’s vision to life. His typical industrial gloom is contrasted by gorgeous vistas of a frozen alien world populated by bizarre (but friendly) creatures.

The film follows the titular Mickey, an “expendable” who signs up for a dangerous mission to a far away planet in order to escape his debts on Earth. He joins the ship’s Expendable Program, where he is forced to endure fatal experiments and tasks – only to have his body reprinted and memories restored after every death.

It’s a novel concept, but one that Bong fails to fully explore. Instead, the film indulges in a thematic soup, never choosing one theme to really dig into. Mickey 17 scratches the surface of themes like individuality, authoritarianism, environmentalism, death, love, politics, and more. It’s a scattered approach that doesn’t allow any one single idea to cook fully.

Then there’s the pacing. At well over two hours long, the film indulges in bizarre humor and tangential subplots that grind the action to a halt. There’s an adultery plot that fizzles out, the introduction of a mysterious debt collector that only wraps up in a quick bit of narration at the end. These threads felt undercooked in a movie that was already packed to the brim.

Now for the positives. Bong clearly let the cast play, and they are having the time of their lives. Robert Pattinson disappears into the comically meek Mickey, supported by fantastic comedic performances from Naomi Ackie and Steven Yeun. Then there’s Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, who share a manic chemistry as the ships delightfully vain billionaire captains. There are a lot of very obvious Trump/Musk qualities in Ruffalo’s performance, but it’s the absurdities of his character that has him stealing every scene.

While the movie sputters and slows, it’s hard to deny just how funny this film is. Bong knows how to squeeze a laugh out of every death, but this also undercuts much of the tension of the film. If we know Mickey can always come back, how invested can we really be in his continued survival?

Overall, I would say that I enjoyed the film despite its many flaws, but the pacing issues and scattershot storytelling will keep me from revisiting this one anytime soon.