You might not have observed this except you’ve watched his movies carefully, however Bong Joon Ho (“Barking Canine By no means Chunk,” and another stuff after that) has a number of quibbles with capitalism. It’s true! I do know it may be exhausting to give attention to subtext when the previous Captain America is lamenting the truth that “infants style greatest,” however watch “Snowpiercer” for a second time and also you may simply have the ability to tease out a well-sheathed critique of the social order in its story about an economically segregated prepare the place the individuals within the decrease lessons are pressured to eat one another alive whereas their wealthy overlords within the entrance automobiles are free to benefit from the everlasting rewards of the locomotive’s self-perpetuating engine.
Ditto “Okja,” which hides a damning rebuke of company greed behind a winsome fable a few woman and her pet superpig, “The Host,” whose monster feasts on the industrialized world’s collective disregard for its most weak communities, and “Recollections of Homicide,” whose serial killer is empowered by the profound sense of helplessness that at all times trickles right down to working individuals when issues are rotten on the high. The Oscar-winning “Parasite” is absolutely the one exception to the rule (simply kidding).
You get the thought: Bong has a really explicit set of pursuits, and subtlety isn’t one in all them — even when nuance is one in all his signature items. However that strategy has at all times been extra of a function than a bug. Actually, I’d argue that the singular enchantment of Bong’s movies is rooted within the seemingly infinite spectrum of shiv-like slapstick they’re capable of mine from the obviousness of the identical primary topic; I’d argue that his movies use the screaming ethical iniquities of capitalism as a form of centrifugal drive that permits them to spin in a number of instructions without delay — and slush any variety of totally different tones right into a madcap style all their very own — with out ever flying off the deal with. And most of all I’d argue that “Mickey 17,” the very best and most cohesive of Bong’s English-language movies, affords such thrilling proof of Bong’s genius exactly as a result of it seems like such a transparent amalgamation of his earlier two, each of that are even goofier and extra fumbling than his Korean-made work.
That development continues after which some in his greatest swing to this point, a wry, pleasant, and resoundingly candy mega-budget house journey that doesn’t appear to be conscious that it was made by a serious American studio. Certainly, “Mickey 17” is so much like “Snowpiercer” and “Okja” in each tone and theme alike that Warner Bros. can’t presumably attempt to act like they didn’t know what they had been paying for.
Additively tailored from Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey 7,” Bong’s newest movie performs like a mega-mix of the director’s most acquainted tropes. Like “Snowpiercer,” it’s set in a bleak-as-hell future the place the Earth has grow to be an unlivable wreck, and a few portion of the survivors have squirreled themselves away inside an enormous car that seems as if it’d collapse at any minute. On this case, that car is a authorities spaceship reasonably than a privately owned prepare, it comprises a small fraction of the world’s inhabitants reasonably than the entire thing, and it’s touring to analyze the ice planet Niflheim — a possible web site for human relocation — reasonably than simply going round in circles, however the socioeconomic situations aboard the vessel are all too acquainted. If something, they’re truly even extra stratified than they had been in Ed Harris’ wildly uneven design.
On the high of the ladder is a failed politician named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, his pure seriousness proving fertile floor for satire), who sees the expedition as an opportunity to create his personal little fiefdom within the stars, and desires of colonizing a “pure white planet stuffed with tremendous individuals.” On the backside is the poor sap as soon as referred to as Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a servile and self-negating orphan who follows his childhood bully Timo (Steven Yeun) round like a misplaced pet, and didn’t suppose twice when his BFF prompt they take out a mortgage from the scariest gangster on Earth with the intention to begin their very own enterprise promoting macarons — they’re the brand new hamburgers!
Not a lot, it seems. Determined for a approach off-world, our boys hitched a trip on Kenneth’s ship. Timo took a job working the furnace, however Mickey thinks so little of himself that he signed as much as be the ship’s token “Expendable,” a human guinea pig whose recollections and biodata are saved on a harddrive in order that his physique might be endlessly reprinted each time he bites the mud. Want somebody to go on a harmful spacewalk to repair a busted half? Ship a Mickey. Want somebody to see if the Niflheim air continues an Ebola-like virus? Ship a Mickey. On the threat of overstating the pleasure that Bong takes in killing his lead actor time and again, it’s as if the director watched the final act of “The Substance” and thought to himself: “What if a film began with its star barfing up all of the blood of their physique?”
And but, a lot as that mordantly amusing situation may lend itself to the stuff of high-key satire, the actual fact stays that Bong has by no means discovered any pleasure within the struggling of his strivers. Even right here, in what would appear like his silliest film if not for the cock-eyed sincerity of its development, Bong’s pure inclination is to emphasise the downbeats; to border Mickey’s dehumanizing distress within the context of his absent self-worth reasonably than as the results of a sensible circumstance.
It’s a superb distinction, however one which makes all of the distinction to a film wherein human printing is concurrently each a path to god-like immortality and in addition a punishment reserved for essentially the most nugatory members of society. You may suppose that Mickey’s invaluable function within the expedition’s success would set up him as a rockstar aboard Kenneth’s spaceship, however the actuality is that having such a selected operate — not to mention one so depending on his final disposability — evokes the remainder of the ship to suppose as little of Mickey as he thinks of himself. “Virtually each single one in all you’ll be remembered all through historical past,” Kenneth blithely declares to his crew, and it’s clear who he’s leaving out of that legacy.
It’s one of many unusual quirks of capitalism that individuals with clearly outlined jobs are sometimes valued a lot lower than these whose best job is to wield the phantasm of their very own significance, and but making one thing right into a job is sufficient to allow all method of violence. Mickey’s job is to die, and since it’s his job, no one thinks twice about what it means to let him do it on daily basis. Seldom has Bong extra succinctly or amusingly illustrated the dehumanizing horrors of that system than he does within the scenes the place a brand new Mickey will get spat out of the DNA printer. The primary time it occurs, a number of crew members collect round to cradle and console his bare physique. Lower to: a number of printings later, when Mickey 10 or 11 is left to flop onto the ground whereas the one technician within the room is busy taking part in video games on his pill.
Then once more, maybe Mickey is correct to have such little regard for himself. Possibly he actually is only a piece of “dangerous meat.” The aliens he encounters on Niflheim within the film’s opening scene would appear to verify that suspicion, because the good “Creepers” — as Kenneth dubs the indigenous species of freaky big isopods who appear like they had been thawed out of Nausicaä’s worst nightmares — refuse to eat him even after Mickey falls into one in all their nests.
The individuals aboard the spaceship definitely assumed they’d, which is why they don’t even hassle to retrieve Mickey 17’s physique earlier than they print out the subsequent copy. Huge mistake. For one factor, the powers that be don’t take kindly to the thought of multiples. For one more, one thing about seeing one other model of himself triggers Mickey’s long-dormant survival intuition; if one of many two Mickeys doesn’t sacrifice himself for the better good, each of them are going to be put out of fee on a everlasting foundation.
If the marvelously detailed creatures — or Kenneth’s plans to exterminate them — don’t encourage fond recollections of “Okja,” Bong’s renewed fascination with twinning definitely will. Working from his personal script, the director thrills in how readily Mickeys 17 and 18 establish one another as an different, and there’s a splendidly matter-of-fact high quality to the sci-fi mishegoss that places the 2 Pattinson’s into direct battle.
All the time prepared to subvert his Tumblr-core previous by making the weirdest selections he presumably can, Pattinson provides two of the very best performances of his life right here. The meek and constricted Mickey 17 is instantly endearing although he talks like somebody has their fingers gripped round his throat, whereas the comparatively ruthless Mickey 18 seems like a direct continuation of Pattinson’s emo Bruce Wayne, right down to the glowering patch of hair that falls over his brow. The film wouldn’t work if every of them didn’t really feel like their very own distinct individuals, however there’s by no means any threat of that, even when Mickey 18’s character arc skips over a number of key stops in Bong’s rush to set the desk for this story’s unexpectedly emotional grand finale.
The climax is the one large-scale sequence in a movie whose unerring intimacy in any other case belies its interstellar mass, and the omissions from Mickey 18’s inside journey are all of the extra placing within the context of Bong’s emphasis on minute character element over Hollywood-funded spectacle. Regardless of the scale of its finances — regardless of the precise quantity — and the six years we spent ready to see it, “Mickey 17” is absolutely only a lovable little story a few bunch of foolish losers who’re given sufficient distance from the remainder of our species to take new inventory of their very own humanity.
It’s solely pure that the movie ought to thrive on the energy of its characters. Naomi Ackie is fantastic as Mickey 17’s girlfriend Nasha, a hot-blooded soldier who acknowledges Mickey’s bravery for what it’s — and begins to comprehend that she’s lucked into the world’s strangest “Challengers” scenario. “This Is England” actor Thomas Turgoose brings layers upon layers of lived-in texture to the spaceship’s crew simply by advantage of displaying up, his “one other day within the mines”-like power the right complement to the dinginess of Fiona Crombie’s manufacturing design, which feels form of like “Alien³” with a beating coronary heart.
Most pivotally of all, Ruffalo threads the needle between unfeeling realness and cartoonish evil as a wannabe despot who’s fumblingly out of his depth, and wouldn’t know how one can end a sentence if not for the assistance of his sauce-obsessed spouse (Toni Collette as Ylfa, who solely appears to be under-cooked due to how patiently Bong waits for the proper second to serve her up on a silver platter). In a film that spends most of its time confined to the disorienting guts of a derelict spaceship, monitoring Kenneth’s de-evolution from Kennedy wannabe to a used automotive salesman model of Colonel Kurtz is commonly the one ethical compass we’ve got to search out our approach in direction of a greater tomorrow.
For all of the novelty of its characters and the distinctiveness of their circumstances, “Mickey 17” is such an apparent composite of “Okja” and “Snowpiercer” that it sometimes threatens to really feel as if Bong is repeating himself. However this movie is such an important addition to his physique of labor — as totally different from these earlier efforts as the varied Mickeys are from one another, regardless of their outward similarities — as a result of it invitations Bong to reframe socioeconomic inequality as an existential disaster with materials penalties reasonably than as a cloth disaster with existential penalties.
In “Mickey 17,” the lack to really feel one other’s ache is positioned because the pure situation of a for-profit system, and human printing the ultimate step in direction of eliminating a employee’s self-worth. “Have a pleasant loss of life, see ya tomorrow.” This isn’t simply one other nice Bong Joon Ho film about how a lot he hates capitalism (although it undoubtedly is that too), it’s the primary Bong Joon Ho film about how a lot he loves individuals.
He loves that they’re so silly and eccentric; he loves that they’ll by no means make for excellent little drones that simply do as they’re instructed. And he finds it so humorous and unhappy and perversely fucked up that individuals preserve inventing new methods to deal with one another as in the event that they aren’t individuals in any respect, as if humanity had been hardwired in direction of its personal erasure. Even right here, in a narrative whose hero is technically immortal, everyone seems to be obsessive about asking him what dying is like, however the reality is that they already know. By the top of this heat, poignant, and indivisibly human movie, those self same crew members may discover themselves extra curious to know what it’s wish to be alive. On the very least, that is the uncommon Hollywood film that feels prefer it’s able to displaying them, even when it has to kill its hero 17 instances with the intention to work out how.
Grade: A-
“Mickey 17” premiered on the 2025 Berlin Movie Competition. Warner Bros. will launch it in theaters on Friday, March 7.
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