Mickey 17 review: Robert Pattinson holds this chaotic sci-fi flick together
Imagine you died. Multiple times over, in fact. And each time you died, you were replaced by a new, identical version of yourself, created by a printer. How «you» could you be if more than one «you» existed?
Fear not, this review contains zero spoilers. I won’t be mentioning anything here that hasn’t already been revealed in trailers.
Bong Joon-ho loves pushing the boundaries between genres. Back when he made Parasite and Snowpiercer, he mixed social commentary with black humour, family drama, splatter and iconic imagery. And his first film as an Oscar-winning director is in keeping with that tradition. First and foremost, Mickey 17 is a sci-fi satire about clones, capitalism and a colony on the brink of self-destruction. But it’s also a reflection on the value of a life that can be copied an infinite number of times.
The film’s driven forward by the tremendous Robert Pattinson, whose character Mickey isn’t confronted with his own mortality as much his own replaceability. It begs the thought-provoking question: what happens when a person dies over and over again, but still lives on? How much of them remains in the copy of the copy of the copy? What changes with each new version?
Mickey 17 poses these questions cleverly and with subtle wit, before losing itself a little too much in the whacky shenanigans of the second half.
What’s Mickey 17 about?
New planet, fresh colony, bright future. At least, that’s the plan. In reality, it’s a different story. Niflheim is a hostile chunk of ice in the middle of nowhere, and Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has the most thankless job of all: to die. Over and over again. As a so-called expendable, it’s his job to carry out the dangerous work and experiments nobody else would survive. If he dies, it’s no problem. A new version is simply reprinted.
But what happens when there are suddenly two Mickeys? For the colonialists, it’s one Mickey too many. Especially for Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the charismatic but opaque colony leader, who’s keen to preserve the status quo. Supported by his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), he tries to keep Mickey from questioning his role as a functioning cog in the machine.
The trouble is, Mickey’s lost interest in being shoved into the nearest printer slot.
When science fiction asks questions
Some science-fiction films are mostly about production value. Think imposing spaceships, alien planets and a bunch of action sequences, each more showy than the last. Then there are films like Mickey 17, which, at their best, do the very thing that makes the genre special: ask questions.
The first half of the movie is a prime example of this. It throws the audience into a world where cloning is at once a technological achievement, economic necessity, ethical controversy and psychological ordeal. After all, it’s not as if you never die. On the contrary: anyone desperate enough to do so dies time and time again – and still lives forever.
Try wrapping your head around that one.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
Mickey 17 achieves this feat, not by lecturing the audience, but by letting the conflict flow casually into Mickey’s everyday life. While other people go to work, he goes to die. When they get a coffee, he gets a new body. Or, to put it more accurately, he has one printed.
The cloning process is grotesque and banal in equal measure. Mickey’s spat out of an oversized 3D printer fed with organic waste and incinerated excrement (what else could a human being be created from, right?) It starts off with that all-too-familiar print job sound: a metallic rattling, a whirring and a mechanical stuttering as if there’s a virtual paper jam somewhere. And then it happens.
Mickey’s printed out.
The machine squeezes him out layer by layer, his still unfinished body wobbling away as if the printer’s had an ink cartridge refilled. Maybe he should’ve stayed in the device a few seconds longer. Whatever. The next element’s already on its way. The printer quickly uploads the last saved memories from another mass of organic waste, and a fresh, new copy of Mickey Barnes is ready for his next death.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
Details like these make the first half of Mickey 17 fascinating and surreal in equal measure. And I adore that. The film’s cleverly written, pointed and full of moments that underline the theme with dry wit and absurd scenes.
The best example? In a scene at the very beginning of the film, Mickey falls into a roughly 10-metre-deep ice crevice. When he tries to pick himself and his shattered body up, he realises that instead of freezing to death, he’s actually about to be eaten by a gigantic, cockroach-like snail. As the creature slowly moves towards him, Mickey just sighs:
«It’s gotta be better than slowly freezing to death, I guess.»
He braces himself, grimaces, closes his eyes and waits for the inevitable.
«Or maybe not.»
When science fiction takes a tumble
It’s precisely this dry humour, this subtle sense of resignation, that makes Mickey so endearing. And sadly, the film loses that subtlety in the second half.
What starts out as a clever mix of science fiction, satire and humour suddenly becomes louder, busier and, in some moments, downright chaotic. Instead of delving further into the question of identity and interchangeability, the film steps on the gas pedal and veers off in a different direction. It feels as if someone in the projection room has simply switched genres.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
This is mainly down to Kenneth Marshall. Combining religious zeal, political populism and the self-importance of a man who basks in his own propaganda, the colony leader is played by Mark Ruffalo. This works initially, as his character forms a clear counterweight to Mickey’s fatalistic self-perception. But the further the plot progresses, the more the film loses itself in over-the-top, almost caricature-like scenes.
Suddenly, there are speeches that sound more like election rallies than science fiction. Scenes that feel as if Bong Joon-ho momentarily forgot that he was making Mickey 17 and not a political satire. And then there’s Ylfa, Marshall’s wife (Toni Collette), who develops an almost disturbing obsession with sauces and alien delicacies. I guess it could be interpreted as a body horror component. Or as a biting satire – in the true sense of the word – on food aesthetics à la The Menu or Chef’s Table, where food presentation is sometimes more important than the dish itself.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
The question isn’t whether or not these elements work on their own. They do. Ruffalo is terrific, Collette – as always – fearlessly devotes herself to the role, no matter how strange. The thing is: they look as if they’ve been edited in from another movie. And that’s the problem. Mickey 17 begins as an astute sci-fi reflection and ends in a spectacle that becomes increasingly alienated from its own premise. That worked perfectly in Parasite, but it’s not as successful in this film.
When science fiction needs an anchor
There’s one more question that Mickey 17 keeps asking. One that fascinated me immensely. What does it feel like to die? Mickey should know. After all, he’s died countless times. Then again, does he really know? Do his copies remember dying? Or is he as much in the dark about humanity’s greatest mystery as everyone else?
While the movie never fully answers this question, it comes out in almost every scene, granting Robert Pattinson the perfect stage for one of his most nuanced performances. As exaggerated and contrived as the film becomes in its second half, Pattinson stays constant and holds everything together with ease.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
His portrayals of Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 are so finely differentiated that you never feel like you’re only seeing a variation of the same character. Mickey 17 is soft-hearted, dorky, full of naivety and, at least at first, stoic in accepting his fate. Mickey 18, on the other hand, is the opposite. Rough, impetuous, self-confident and almost desperate in his desire to be recognised as an individual. In other words, everything Mickey 17 might secretly wish to be.
This dynamic is where Pattinson’s true strength lies. It isn’t just the physical transformation that makes him unique as an actor. It’s the way he uses subtle differences in body language, facial expressions and manner of speech to create two characters who look exactly alike, and yet are fundamentally different.
In a nutshell
When science fiction copies itself
Mickey 17 starts out as a clever, dark-humoured reflection on identity, interchangeability and the value of an infinitely imitable life. In the beginning in particular, the film poses thought-provoking questions and skilfully juggles existential questions, only to lose itself a little too much in its own madness in the second half.
You see, the initially subtle satire becomes increasingly OTT. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette throw themselves into their exaggerated roles with gusto. And although their performances are enjoyable in and of themselves, they cause Mickey 17 to drift in a direction that doesn’t quite gel with the clever, quietly bizarre science-fiction drama that is the first half.
But one constant remains: Robert Pattinson. He’s the one who gives the film heart and holds it together – even as everything around him descends into absurdity. With this role, he proves once again that he’s far from just «that guy from Twilight». And demonstrates instead that he’s one of the most exciting actors of his generation.
Header image: Warner Bros. Pictures
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Luca Fontana
Senior Editor
Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.chI'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.»
