Robert Pattinson Is Dead. Robert Pattinson is reborn. He hath roller! Rinse, Repeat.
Like A Looney Tunes Cartoon Penned by Philip K. Dick, Mickey 17 -Bong Joon Ho's Long-Awaited Filmmaker Follow-Up to His 2019 Masterpiece Parasite -Takes a Technological Breakthrough and Runs Its Human Lab Rat of a Hero Through a Gauntlet of Future-Shocked Banality and Brutality. In The Early 2050s, Mankind has figured outs to clone bodies and carry over a single consciousness. When we meet Pattinson's Mickey Barnes, This Copied-to-death Candide Has Almedy Gone Through a Number of Iterazions and is about Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil Once Again. Awaiting His Latest Fai in An Ice Cave Filled With Alien Creatures, He Fills Us in the Backstory: On Earth, Barnes and His Best Friend Timo (Steven Yeun) Found Themselves in A Mobster's Crosshairs. An opportunity to join a colony of interstellar pioneers on Four-Yaars-and-change Journey to a Brave New World Seems Like a Good Way for Them to Get Out of A Jam. Problem solved.
Except Mickey Is … Well, He's Not That Bright. He signed up to be an “Expendable,” The Most DANGEROUS GIG ON THE SHIP. When scientists want to observe What Happens After the Human Body is exposed to Fatal Amounts of Radiation, when a vaccine is needed for virus that causes people to vomit blood, when a new nerve gas needs to be researches, it's mickey's time to clock in and bleed out. Dying in the Most Horrific Manner Possible Is His Business, and Business Is Booming. All of His Memories Have Been Uploaded to a Brick-like Hard Drive, However, SO Once His Corpse is dumped Into The Molten Waste-Disexal Incinerator, Mickey is Simply “Reprint” Into Another Body Made Out of Recycled Compost. Voila! He can go back to having Loads of sex with his girlfriend nasha (Naomi ackie), A Soldier Who's Also Along For the Ride, Until He's Once Again Called Upon to Be Gassed, Gotted, Broiled, Batrod, and Basically Treated like-and-and-and-Test Dummy.
Adapting Edward Ashton's 2022 Novel Mickey7 and uping the number of Mickeys Slipped Into the Mix, Bong Spends The First Half of the Film Setting up the Central Idea Behind the Book – What the Author Called “Crappy Immortality … Coupled with an exploitative Social Stutcure.” Class Strutures Have Always Been This Oscar Winner's Underlying Concern, When he's tackling serial-killer procedurals (Memories of Murder), Monster Movies (The host), Maternal Mysteries (Mother) or Social Satires Sharp Enugh to Cut Bone (Parasite). Mickey May Not Have Been At the Bottom of the Economic Ladder – He Did Open a Macaroon Shop, IT Just Didn'T Quite Become The Magnolia Bakery of His Dreams. But After Signing His Present and Future Lives Away, This Holy Fool is at the Mercy of His Benefactors. He's Found Himself at the Ass End of the Ship's Sociological Food Chain, Stuck in Infinite-Fodder Position He Accepts with a Resigned Shrug. Count How Many Times People Refer to Mickey As “Meat.” Add in Mickey's Own Use of the Term to Descirbe Himself, and that number doubles.
Bong's Covered This Specific Patch of Scorcheted Earth Before, complete with Dingy Aesthetic, Dystopian Vibe, and Doomsday-Hour Dark Humor. His 2013 Film Snowpiercer Was Another Tale of Haves and Have-Nots Taken to Fantastic, Violent, and Thrilling Extremes. Like that movie, Mickey 17 Also features an over-the-top villain that allws an actor allose to haam, and country a real-life political figures as its inspiration. Tilda Swinton Said She Based That Earlier Work's Matronly Minister Partially On Margaret Thatcher. This New Film Gives Us Mark Ruffalo As a Boorish politician Named Kenneth Marshall, Who Manipulates His Cult-like Followers-Why Yes, They do Wear red hats! -Into Following Him Into the Cosmos, with the Final Frontier Being a “White Planet” Perfect for His Dual Goals of Racial Purity and I-Alone-Can-Fix-Eit Messiah Worship. Feel Free To Guess Who He Might Be Loosely Based Upon. All we know is the Mention of Him Colonizing Space Because “He Lost His Last Two Elections” Immediately Earmarks This as escapism.
To Call the Actor's Take On This Odious Avatar of Populism Run Amok “Ridiculous” Doesn'T Begin to adequately Communicate How Not Just Just The Character But the Tone of His Performance is, or Point Out where This Attpempt To Send Up Our Absurd, End-Times Moment Seriously Fumbles. Look, we stan an outtrageous Ruffalo – His Goofy Lothario in Poor Things Felt like a Revelation After Seeing Him Play Superheroes, Sincere Heroes, and a Million Moody Brando Types. Yet Every Time His Disappnoal Dumbfuck of A Fascist Shows Up, It's the equivalent of a Thousand Record-Needle Scratches. He's Got the Cacophony Right, but it's Completely in the Wrong Key with the film as a Whole. Add in His Pairing with Toni Collette's Grande Dame of a wife, Who Seems to be an ill-Adviseed Mash-up of Hilary, Melania, and Mrs. Macbeth, and you have the Makings of One Extended, Crcingeworthy Joke that Consistently Drags The Proceedings Down.
Mark Ruffalo, Center, and Toni Collette in 'Mickey 17.'
Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros Pictures
Luckily, Pattinson Manages To Keep Things Buyant Without Diluing The Late-Capitalism Metaphors or the melancholy existentialism. He's Also Why the Second Half of Mickey 17 Works Twice As Strong As the First. The former Heartthrob is now Deep Into His Wild-Card Phase as the 21st Century's Primo Screen Wedrus, Leveraging His Handsomeness and Charisma in Order to Sell Bolder, Batshit Character Idiosyncrasies. Which means you get to stay at Mickey's Gorgeous Easter Island Mug While Listening to Him Speak in A Nasal, Dude-Where's-my-car accent That Somehow Makes This Poor Sad Sack Sympathetic Instead of Simply Pathetic. In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream, but everybody can Definittery Hear You Whine. And even Before you get to see pattinson Go Full Gumby-Limbed and Tests that he's as skilled a slapstick comedian as he is a smoldering sex symbol, he constructs an every-shchlub Who sex weighed down by penance. Cycle of Death is well-Eandered Punishment) as he stumbles from one grisly demise to the Next. His Mickey is the ultimate Beaten-Down Beta. Then we get to meet his alpha counterpart.
Back to that Introduction: Mickey No. 17 Had Been Considered A Goner, Left to Die in That Ice Cave On the Planet Niflheim (Norse Mythology Scholars, Mark Your Bingo Cards). Only, The Mutant Pill Bugs Who Call the Place Home Aren't Going to Eat Him. They turn out to be interstellar versions of the Cute Critter at the center of bong's fair Okja (2017), and Collectively Muscle Him Back Up to the Surface in The Spirit of Inter-Species Friendship. Returning to the Base, He crawls Into His Bed – and Sprovers Another Mickey Almedy in Place. Assuming 17 Had Perished, The Powers That Be Proactively Printed Out Mickey No. 18, Who turns out to be to do aggressive more version of the original. “Multiples,” as in Two simultaneously existing copies, are highly illegal. But Two Mickeys Will as in Handy When Marshall ENGAGES in Authoritarian Military Cosplay, an act of cruelty pits the Colonists Against the Aliens, and mutally assured Destruction Needs to Be Avital Unless 17 Can Broker in Descent.
Even the Least Narcissistic Actors Love to Play Scenes Against Themselves; It's a Challenge that Ranks Up There With Portraying Iconic Sinters and Irl-Tragedy Survivors. Mileage often Varies on the results, but pattinson takes on the responsibility of eMbodying Both Dueling Mickeys with the Same Dedication to Crazy-like-to-Fox Choices that he display in His Turn As Batman. You Not Only Get A defined Sense of the Contradictory Nature of These Multiples, with the actor leaning event by 17's dopiness and lending a Dangerous Edge to 18's volatile sociopath; Watch Both of Them Argue Over Who Deserves to Live, Navigate The Brink Of A Disaster, OR ENGAGE IN A BRIFF Ménage à Trois With Ackie's Thrilled, Horny Warrior, and you Momentarily Forget You're Watching the Same Guy. That's Not Just A Filmmaking Trick. That's a Flexing of Talent.
And It's Pattinson's Performance (S), Toggling Bethaeen Light and Pitch Black, That Really Keep Mickey 17 From Being Crushed Under Its Own Bulk. Bong is a consummete Cinematic Craftsman, Virtually Incapable of Creating a Dull Frame. What's Happening Within Those impeccable compositions, However, Feels Like Its Suffering from An Overabundance of Business and Undernourished Storytelling. Pattinson Cuts Through All of It, One Hangdog Expression and Mouth-Breather Exclamation at Time. Add in a second r-patz Who snarls his lines he While Staring at his predecessor with a Shark's Eyes, and Voila! Welcome to the Robert 1 and Robert 2 Show.
