Parasite director returns with mind bending sci-fi flick, Mickey-17

Mickey-17 was one of my most anticipated movies of the year.

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho, the genius behind Parasite, it is the South Korean mastermind’s first film since claiming the Best Picture win at the Oscars in 2020.

After hearing the premise, “A disposable employee named Mickey is sent on a human expedition to colonise the ice world Niflheim. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact”, I was locked in to see the master at work.

Now that is a lot of glaze for Mr Joon-Ho and it’s deserved when you have the resume he has. I also really wanted to show how excited I was for this film.

With all that put aside however, Mickey-17 is just kinda … fine.

It isn’t horrible by any means. Heck, I don’t even have a lot of problems with it, but it’s just, meh.

The best way I can think to describe it is like going to a fast food place you love. You remember having an awesome meal there previously and you work yourself up to have the same quality again, but this time, it just doesn’t hit the same.

It’s, eh, you know?

One of the things I was really excited for was Robert Pattinson. He has been on an awesome run of films recently. Between The Lighthouse, Tenet, The Batman and The Boy and the Heron, Mr Pattinson has been putting in a shift!

And, much to his credit, he is again brilliant in this film. His duality between the different versions of Mickey and the brief lives they live is awesome. His turn does a fantastic job of asking the morally grey questions about life and what it means for someone to live or die.

Unfortunately, these themes are undermined by a tonally confused performance by Mark Ruffalo as coloniser and cult leader Kenneth Marshall.

Once any difficult question gets posed, Ruffalo with his stupid fake teeth and silly accent, aided by a strange character performance by Toni Collette, pulls the rug from underneath it.

I’m not sure if this is how it was written in the book this film is based on, Mickey-7 (10 less than the movie), but it feels remarkably uninspired for a film with such interesting concepts.

The film is also a bit too long. There’s one particular plot point revolving around an alien species that feels like a completely different film. Cutting these scenes and focusing on Mickey and not these creatures would have made the film feel so much more punchy and focused.

Back to the good, though. This movie is very pretty. It’s shot well, acted well and filmed on real sets for the most part. It’s tangible, it feels like a real place despite its setting and its colours pop.

It would be a cinematographer’s dream to film this thing and it shows.

The dark comedy also lands, for the most part. There are a couple of jokes that were a bit much but I did find myself laughing out loud in a lot of scenes.

Ultimately, I was a little disappointed leaving the theatre. It’s probably because I expected tighter writing and storytelling from Mr Joon-Ho, so that probably needs to be factored in.

It’s not an awful movie by any means, in fact, aside from A Complete Unknown, it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in the last month. It just isn’t a great film, leaving a truly nothing feeling to it all despite its interesting yet morbid concept.

Mickey-17 is showing in cinemas across the country.