Mickey 17

No-one is better than director Bong Joon Ho at using the rules of genre...

Mickey 17

No-one is better than director Bong Joon Ho at using the rules of genre filmmaking against his audience. In the extraordinary Parasite, he engineered a mid-film switch from social comedy to something much darker and more outrageous; in Snowpiercer, it emerged that the revolutionary struggle we’d been rooting for was only a fraction of the true battle for survival. Now, in Mickey 17, he tackles space travel and the colonisation of alien worlds. If it’s a more conventional film than his best work, he still finds ways to subvert our expectations and continually surprise us with a hero who’s just trying his inadequate best. Mickey 17

Robert Pattinson, wide-eyed and squeaky-voiced, is Mickey Barnes, who needs to get off-Earth sharpish. In the absence of any discernible skill set, he signs up as an “expendable”, and to be killed over and over again on a colony ship headed to the planet of Niflheim under the authority of monstrous politician and cult leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). All is fine, apart from the dying and being recreated by a “human printer”, and Mickey even strikes up a relationship with security officer Nasha (Naomi Ackie). But then, Mickey no. 17 unexpectedly survives a near-death experience, and gets home to find the new version of himself, Mickey 18, already up and about. It’s a scenario that means death for both, so Mickey must finally develop some wits and try and keep them about him.

Director Bong delves into what makes Mickey human, and what qualifies as humane.

You’d think – not least because the trailer implies as much – that this is another epic tale of revolt against a corrupt regime and human triumph, and there is a bit of that. Ruffalo, over the top as a Trumpian wannabe dictator, intends to remake the new planet in his own image: he even calls it a “pure white world” at one point. But this is so much weirder than just a political satire. The hard-sci-fi concept of human printing is a clever device, and director Bong delves into what makes Mickey human, and what qualifies as humane. More surprising, perhaps, is that his trademark fury at social injustice is ultimately joined by a strong sense of romance and even optimism about the future.

After all, he has imagined that we could be sailing into the stars in our lifetime, that we might thrive beyond Earth, and that humanity can survive without just shooting everything in sight under terrible leadership. Mickey makes an unlikely saviour, but his hapless attempts to survive and thrive against all the odds – and 16 previous failed attempts at life – are inspiring.

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