Mickey 17 Is As Weird and Life-Giving As Robert Pattinson’s Gonzo Performance

In Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, the 17th incarnation of Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is haunted by a foundational trauma from back home on Earth. Mickey has convinced himself that his string of fatefully bad luck stems from pushing a button inside his mom’s car that led to her death. Mickey 18 (also played by Robert Pattinson) dryly offers that the real culprit was an automaker’s defect. It’s this small but telling detail that distills the central conflict of not only the film, but Bong’s whole filmography.

This learned helplessness at the hands of mighty institutions has long been a focus of director Bong’s astutely observed social satires. Gnawing away at the beating, bleeding heart of Mickey 17 is a tragic contradiction: People trap themselves in cycles of eternal recurrence for failings that are not their own. They internalize the flawed logic that powers such systems as capitalism, governments, or religions and let it drive them to destructive ends.

But just like Bong’s other inventive sci-fi fare Snowpiercer and Okja, Mickey 17 somehow remains bizarrely hopeful in humanity’s capacity to regain their sense of agency. It helps that this story, adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, is about the very cycle of life and death. Pattinson’s Mickey flees a dangerous loan shark waiting to collect on a defaulted business loan by joining a colonial mission into the far reaches of space. Somewhat clumsily, he signs up to become an Expendable — allowing his mind to be placed inside a body reconstituted from organic waste each time he perishes in service of the voyage’s aims. (Notably, this 3D printing technology is deemed so unethical that it can’t even be used on Earth.)

Whether serving as patient zero to incubate a vaccine for the new atmosphere on the ship’s new planet or exploring the vast reaches of the new territory for other species, Mickey’s purpose in life becomes nothing more than death. “Even on my 17th go-round,” a world-weary Mickey laments in voiceover, “I still really hate dying.” The tragic irony Bong highlights throughout Mickey 17 is that someone should not need to be intimately familiar with dying to understand the true value of living. His shipmates cannot help but ask him repeatedly about his experiences passing away before they pass over any of his insights.

In the latest indignity that Mickey must suffer, his old world friend Timo (Steven Yeun) simply leaves his body for dead in the film’s opening under the assumption that the planet’s caterpillar-like animals will simply devour him. The “creepers,” as the space colonizers fearfully dub the multilegged creatures, inexplicably spare Mickey 17 — who returns on board the ship to discover his 18th version has already been minted. While they share the same basic memory bank, seeing them side-by-side leads Mickey’s longtime girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) to proclaim 17 the “mild” version and 18 “habañero.”

There’s scarcely been a better argument for the value of life on screen than seeing all of it that Pattinson brings to bear in his dual performances. Bong lets him loose in Mickey 17, and Pattinson’s exuberantly gonzo performance is a source of constant rejuvenation for the film. The actor gets to display all the gifts he’s cultivated across the past decade of working with an eclectic group of filmmakers. There’s the loopy accent work he sported in The Devil All the Time and The King, the exaggerated physical contortions he mastered on The Lighthouse, as well as the general weirdness from offbeat comedies like Damsel. Pattinson is willing to get as experimental in his acting style as the nature of his character, and Bong masterfully deploys his supersized star power to illuminate the thematic resonance of his kooky space odyssey.

17’s sparing by the creepers gives him a newfound appreciation for the native inhabitants of the land. Naturally, his skepticism grows for the extermination plans of their aspiring theocratic overlord Kenneth Marshall (a delightfully hammy Mark Ruffalo) and his glad-handing wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). The ship’s leader may take on a fictional foe, but Marshall’s antics are all too familiar: an aesthetics-obsessed blowhard and wannabe war hero who wields division as a powerful tool to achieve his aims. But Marshall fails to contemplate the implications of trying to pit Mickey 17 against 18, given that they are the same person.

That micro-scale solidarity Marshall inadvertently triggers becomes a model for how Bong suggests a revolt could begin against the forces that divide and conquer on earth. It starts with developing a class consciousness among all those who toil under the thumb of inhuman leaders. Mickey 17 transcends the politics of its time by avoiding obvious, simplistic allegory. Bong taps into longer-running structural tensions dealing with the devaluation of labor’s dignity and the disregard for the decency of all beings … all while maintaining an impressive balance of silliness and seriousness to the endeavor.

His vantage point on the conflict does leave Mickey 17 a rather dense and overstuffed work to digest, however. Following a perfectly paced and plotted project like Parasite was always going to be tough, but this busy and noisy work reveals even more loose threads than Snowpiercer or Okja as it barrels its way toward a climactic showdown between the forces of humanity and barbarism. The depth and dimensionality Bong gives his many ideas help the film overcome some of its less engaging action sequences. Yet even if the plot can’t contain all the bigness of this premise, the committed performers — Pattinson especially — prove they can.

Mickey 17 premiered February 15 at Berlinale. It will open in theaters March 7.