Slapstick wasn’t always a feature of Bong Joon-ho’s cinematic style. It was first noticeable in a minor way in his sci-fi thriller, The Host (2006), and then central to his two English language fantasies, Snowpiercer and Okja. However, his comic sensibility was put to its most potent use in the Oscar-winning Parasite (those pizza boxes!), which is probably why Western viewers who weren’t familiar with his work before then now think of him as a satirist. His newest movie willl certainly reinforce this view, as its entertainment value is highly reliant on cruel humor to put across Bong’s acid opinion of where capitalism is taking us. Set in the near future on a private colonization expedition to a distant planet, Mickey 17 presents Chaplin’s hapless tramp in the form of failed franchise owner Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who is reduced to selling his body and soul for a chance to escape his creditors and achieve redemption—over and over again. Mickey has signed on to a rich religious cult leader’s space adventure as an “expendable,” a crew member offered up for sacrifice whenever there is a need for a disposable human body, and is then “reprinted” afterwards to do the thing all over again with the same memories and personality. He is literally and repeatedly worked to death, and, understandably, he’s sick of it.

As with Parasite, the offensive classisms are in the details. The cult leader, an unsuccessful Trumpian politician named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), is not only a blatant eugenicist but parades his childish arrogance like a peacock by serving his crew and followers the grossest food, treating everyone except his patrician wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), with devastating condescension, and throwing deadly tantrums when his hare-brained schemes don’t go his way. After his 17th incarnation, Mickey is left for dead by his former business partner and straight man, Timo (Steven Yeun), on the surface of the cult’s new home planet after falling into an icy cavern, but Mickey manages to survive only to discover that in his impatience to get on with the project, Marshall has reprinted him again: Mickey 17 meet Mickey 18, who, for reasons that are not satisfactorily explained, is a psychopath to his predecessors’ meek punching bags. The fact that “multiples” are deemed an “abomination” by Marshall’s dogma means elimination of both Mickeys without the possibility of return, but 18 has already gotten it into his head that he was reincarnated for only one purpose: Payback for all the times he’d died. 

It’s a brilliant premise for which Bong can’t take full credit since the script is adapted from a book, but the director rigorously exercises his funny bone with numerous absurdist subplots involving Mickey’s on-board girlfriend, engineer Nasha (Naomi Ackie), whose libido is doubly stimulated by having access to two Mickeys; Ylfa’s plan to exploit the planet’s native marumushi fauna for her “sauce” fetish; a stowaway agent of Mickey’s and Timo’s loan shark who is on the hunt for the two scofflaws; and countless speculations on the uses of science and technology to profit materially at the gratuitous expense of those at the bottom. A little of this goes a long way and if it weren’t for Pattinson’s inventive and sympathetic portrayal of both Mickeys the breathless intrigues that Bong contrives might have outpaced me, but I was able to maintain my stamina until the end. For what it’s worth, Parasite did much better with basically the same themes and tools, but real imagination backed up by real ambition is never a waste of anybody’s time.

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024). 

Mickey 17 home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2025 Warner Bros. Ent.