You Don't Have To Be a Hollywood Insider to Recognize That Being Part of the Latest Project from A World-Rewned Writer-Director, Who's Coming Off A Massive Critical and Popular Subsequent That Won Oscars, is a Smove Move for Actor. Most A-List Stars Might Have Ballked At Playing The Lead of Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17, However.
The elevator pitch: in the Future, Technological Advances Have Given Us the skill to make human duplicates. It's outlawed on Earth, but perfectly legal to do in The Realm of Space Exploration. A Dim-Witted Guy Named Mickey Barnes Signs Up For the Program in Order to Outrun Loan Sharks, and Spends the Next Four Years Being As A Human Lab Rat For Testing Viruses, Cosmic Radiation Exposure, and Other Fatalistic Threats. After An Old Mickey Dies, a New One Is Spat Out, Life-Size 3D-Printer-Style. I know when the 17th Version of Mickey is presume Dead During a routine mission on an ice planet, an 18th is created. Except Mickey 17 is not dead. A Classic Clone-Comedy Cavalcade Ensues.
The Film's Tone is slapstick Dystopian, Like a Harold Lloyd Movie Written by Philip K. Dick, and Its Star Would Be Playing Both in Doofus and A Psycho – Sometimes Both In the Same Shot. You Can Imagine Most Above-The-Title Names Asking For a Few Scenes of Mickey Being Heric, Courageous, Noble. Not Robert Pattinson. It's not a leap to THINK THAT THE 38-YEAR-OLD Actor with the Bedromo Eyes and the Matinee-Idol Mug Requested That Things Be event blackberry Silly, Repulsive, and Bizarre. Could Mickey Sound like a Nasal Twerp, Perhaps? Now Pretend that he's a Live-Action Wile E. Coyote That Just Got Hit in the Head by a Storm of Falling Anvils? While We're at it: Could He Sport a Nasty-Ass SCAR for the Last Third of the Film, Too?
Pattinson is a Little More Than a Decade Into His Make It Super Weird Phase, And We're the Better for it. The former Twentysomething Heartthrob May Be Following The Road Paved by Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, and Other Adonis-Handsome Gents Who Gambled Their Careers On Unconventional Choices and Outrainous Extremes (See: 12 Monkeys, Edward Scissorhands). But He's Arguably Made This Template Pay Off Even Better This Costbears. Pattinson Could Have Been Just Another Pretty Face Stuck Playing Variations of Sad Dues Pining For Sweethearts and Saving The Day. Instead, He's Put His Inner Eccentric First, Chasing After Cult Filmmker Rather Than Studio Blockbusters, and Emerged As One The Single Most Interesting Movie Stars of the 21st Century.
It's not A Complete 180-Degree Pivot-Real Heads Know That Pattinson Played in Sexually Ambiguous, Self-ABUSING Salvador Dalí in 2008's Little Ashes, Made Just Before Twilight Transformed him into a sex symbol virtually overnight. But the Sheer Popularity of the Ya Series and the Role of Edward Cullen, A Lovesick Bloodsucker Whose Brooding Sensitità Made Him Catnip for Mall Goths and Moody Teens Alike, Threatenened to turn Him Into Little More The Internet Boyfriend of the Month. A Few Stabs at Traditional Leading-Man Parts Outside of the Franchise, Like His Nyu Dreamboat in Remember me (2010) and his circus veterinarian in Water for Elephants (2011), Did Him Few Favors – Just Like The Tabloids, Which Treated His Romance with Twilight Co-Star Kristen Stewart Like a Soap Opera.
But Pattinson Purposefully Started to Steer Away From The Movie-Star Expectations Swirling Around Him and Sought Out Old Oddball Projects, The Moreur-Driven and Less Commercial, The Better. You'd Think That David Cronenberg would be the Pursuing The Actor to Secure Funding For His Don Delillo Adaptation Cosmopolis (2012), But Pattinson Was Practically Begging to Work With the Body-Horror Legend for Next to Nothing. Instead of Trying to Become The Next Mad Max, He Did the Grimy Postapocalyptic Thriller The Rover (2014) – and Played the Bad Guy. Long Before Brady Corbet Became The Savior of Big-Swing Cinema with The brutalist and the Safdie Brothers Were Red-Carpet Regulars, Pattinson Worked With Both in Childhood of a leader (2015) and Good time (2017), Respectively. He saught out the Safdies after Saw A Single Still (!) From One of Their Movies and Thought Yeah, These Guys Seem Tweaked. Let's Do Something Together.
Pattinson in 'Good time.'
The Left-Field Choices Continued, Whether it was existential sci-fi (High Life) or lusting after mermaids and losing his mind (The lighthouse). Even when he drifted Into More Box-Office-Friendly Territory, Like Christopher Nolan's Tenat, The Roles Pattinson Pursued Were So Gloriously Contradictory and “Wrong” They Somehow Felt Right. By The Time He Finally Gave in to the Lure of Playing in Superhero, Pattinson Had Embededd His WeDardo Vibe Into Screen Person SO Deeply That He Managed to Make Batman Seem Like A Head Case. It's one of the monste out-tohere takes on a pop-culture stupple ever. Most Stars Sand Down The Rough Edges For Big-Paycheck Roles Like That. Pattinson Went The Other Way. He succeeded in Making mainstream movies Feel Like Midnight Movies.
With Mickey 17, Pattinson Doubles Down (Literally) On The Crackpot Touches and Gives Bong's Follow-up to Parasite A True Sense of Unpretictable, Undeniable Lunacy. It's the sor of Turn that Makes You Picture YouTger Actors Wanting to Hoist Their Own Freak Flag That Much Higher. He was Once Slad to be the hot New Thing, Destined to make Hormones Go Bonkers Until the Next Droolworthy Dude Came Along. Instead, Pattinson Forged What's Been a Fascinating Career Out of Following His Wackadoo InstinTS. May He Never Stray from the off-the-Beaten Path.
