A disposable employee is sent on a human expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. For what it’s worth, Bong Joon-ho directed two brilliant films in Snowpiercer and Parasite. Both are fascinating breakdowns of the social hierarchy in two vastly different genres, with the latter deservedly winning Best Picture at the Oscars. A common trend in Hollywood is for big studios to pounce on the opportunity to take advantage of award winning directors and their creativity by granting them hundreds of millions of dollars and free reign to do whatever they want for their next movie. On one hand, I most definitely appreciate and long for ambitious and refreshing new films where the director doesn’t have their hands tied down by an overbearing studio executive. On the other hand though, free creative reign can result in certain story elements being unpolished and even incoherent. Such is the unfortunate case with Mickey 17, a movie full of interesting ideas and themes that are never individually explored or unpacked. The first half of the movie was actually really solid and had quite a lot going for it in terms of being a witty social satire about the morally questionable nature of cloning humans for labor. Robert Pattinson plays two versions of Mickey. Mickey 17 is the clumsy and socially awkward clone while Mickey 18 is the more brash and at times downright mean clone. Pattinson shows impressive range here, with both 17 and 18 having distinctive personalities, demeanors, and even accents. During the voyage to the ice planet, Mickey 17 develops a romantic relationship with Nasha, played by Naomi Ackie. I thought Ackie brought quite a lot of energy to the character of Nasha, and her chemistry with Pattinson was one of the best aspects of the film. The movie is at its strongest when it goes for the absurdist social satire comedy and at its weakest when it tries to say too much and take itself far too seriously. What ends up happening is that satirical comedy and the seriousness of certain situations on the ice planet start to clash in the latter half, making the tone very inconsistent.
This brings me to the film’s villain in Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall, a politician who runs the colony. Ruffalo was impossible to take seriously in this movie and his performance was so bizarre that it felt as if he was doing a half assed impression of what Hollywood thinks of Trump or any other controversial religious/political figure. Toni Collette on the other hand as Marshall’s wife was able to balance the serious moments with her more over the top outbursts in a far more believable way. If you ask me, she should have been the main villain. Other than that all of the other performances are quite solid, especially Steven Yeun as Mickey 17’s “friend” Timo. I even liked the designs for the CGI “creepers,” the indigenous habitants of the ice planet that become targeted by the humans for their own selfish research. The big problem, as said before, is that the movie is trying to say a lot, but never commits to any particular theme. Is it about the morally questionable nature of cloning humans? Or how inhabiting a planet of indigenous creatures is wrong? Or the influence of corrupt politicians and religious leaders? The answer is I really don’t know. The third act just mushes all of those questions together, which are interesting, but they never complement each other nor fit in a cohesive way. It felt like a lot of elements from other sci-fi movies were just mashed together in hopes of it making sense. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy a good chunk of the film, mainly in its first act, but when a bunch of lofty ideas don’t come together cleanly, it becomes difficult for me to feel emotionally invested. On a technical level, the cinematography is great and the visuals are impressive. I just wish its story had more focus on the whole. Overall, while the film has a strong first act and Robert Pattinson X2 gives a committed performance, Mickey 17 is ultimately Bong Joon-ho’s weakest film yet, as it is unable to decide whether it wants to be a full blown dark sci-fi comedy, or a serious social commentary about the morally questionable nature of cloning human beings.
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