Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” is another of the filmmaker’s satirical sci-fi whatsits, in the tradition of “Snowpiercer” and “Okja.” The tone is garish and random-feeling, the concept is high, and visiting celebrities are encouraged to discard any lessons they may have learned as to the art of understatement. If you liked “Snowpiercer” and “Okja,” you may enjoy “Mickey 17,” though that’s not a given. If you didn’t, beware at all costs.
Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson) is an expendable, a clone of a clone, etc., who is sent to do dangerous tasks and then “reprinted” when he dies. It’s the future, he’s on a huge ship with thousands of crew people, and they are on their way to colonize the ice planet from “The Empire Strikes Back.” Mickey 17 speaks in voiceover and explains to us for at least 60 of the film’s 137 minutes the rules of this world. Given that these details are clichés of the sci-fi genre, I will labor to spare you as much of that experience as possible.
Right away, nothing makes sense. Mickey is a man in debt who sold himself into the equivalent of indentured servitude, an allusion to our own debt issues as the struggling working class, and he falls into bed with Nasha (Naomie Ackie), a law enforcement figure on the ship who is of superior social standing. People of differing castes mix all the time, of course, but Bong never mines or acknowledges the class tension, which is odd for a movie that’s being celebrated as a social satire.
There’s a long scene that suggests that sex is going to be outlawed amongst the crew and that also goes … nowhere. Mickey and Nasha are openly dating. No one cares, except for the other attractive white-collar intellectual who fancies a slice of Pattinson’s chiseled beefcake for herself. You might think, given that Pattinson can be cloned, that we are entering the territory of a fun and bracingly modern sex farce. You would be wrong.
Bong keeps sidetracking himself, explaining arbitrary things. He doesn’t appear to have the foggiest idea what kind of movie he’s after here. The reason for Mickey’s servitude has something to do with loan sharks and a bad business venture with a friend, Timo (Steven Yuen). And yet, Timo instantly ascends the social ladder of the ship. Why? Despite its endless yards of exposition, the film doesn’t deem this information relevant.
It’s tedious when a critic picks apart a movie’s premise. But when a movie has nothing else going on—no present-tense narrative or emotional dimensions—one works with what one is given. There is an absurdity that distracted me more than all others, which underscores the film’s astonishing lack of curiosity and imagination. For reasons that Bong spends many minutes elucidating, more than one clone of Mickey cannot be allowed to exist at once. This society finds it objectionable. And the Trumpian bosses of the ship—played in predictably toothy all-caps by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette—have no interest in violating this taboo. It’s a galling missed opportunity.
Wouldn’t an army of Mickeys be a haunting symbol of Bong’s working-class concerns? As convoluted and scattershot as “The Matrix” sequels may be, the images of the endless copied-and-pasted Neos and Mr. Smiths speak to the eerie anonymity of modern media culture. No image in “Mickey 17” has that weight. Wouldn’t tyrants, who invent new ways every day to make humans less likely to find work from which they can live, adore a whole cadre of Mickeys, and wouldn’t they bend whatever rules needed to be bent to get them? Why would a society comfortable with cloning draw a line with multiples? Yes, Bong bothers to offer an answer to that last question. But the answer is stupid.
The various dead ends keep adding up, intensifying a sense of pointlessness. Nothing counts, everything is about a gonzo attitude that is derivative and amused only with itself. The device of cloning worker bees—Mickey is the only clone by the way, and nothing is made of that either—and the caste system of the ship are immaterial anyway. At the midway point, “Mickey 17” becomes a reprise of “Okja” with PETA messaging involving the humans’ treatment of weirdly cute aliens who resemble a cross between larvae and water buffalo. What’s this have to do with the clones? Capitalism, baby, it’s bad for ya. Want a bit more than that? Sorry about your bad luck.
I am not going to riff on the film’s political talking points, as Bong doesn’t earn them. They are so obvious as to be self-explanatory, and are dropped in willy-nilly as bird seed for the think-piece crowd, in an attempt to invest a blockbuster junk pile with an illusion of importance. Many less self-aggrandizing movies have mined this terrain more effectively. Duncan Jones’ “Moon” is one. Doug Liman’s “Edge of Tomorrow” is another.
Liman established the business of recycled people in a few breathless minutes, while Bong hammers on and on, despite, lest I remind you, having no interest in ramifications of the premise anyway. Nasha is faced with the prospect of a three-way with a couple of Pattinsons, and you might perk up: Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Of course that doesn’t happen. This movie is too expensive to be “Solaris.” That would be too good, too in tune with human wants and needs. Sci-fi movies, with their anal-retentive obsession with feeding arcane horseshit to nerds, are often hostile to adult emotions.
“The Rule of Jenny Pen” doesn’t make much sense either, but it has a nasty kick. Stefan (Geoffrey Rush) is an esteemed judge who is sent to a rest home after suffering from a stroke. He is full of himself and does not accept his enforced humility lightly. Illness and advancing age don’t care what you think of their humbling, of course, and, in this case, they are embodied by a patient, Crealy (John Lithgow), who torments fellow members of the ward randomly with his little hand puppet in tow. The film is a battle of wills between Stefan and Crealy, who insists on breaking the judge’s pride.
The film suggests a modern aging-male answer to the trend of “hag” horror that appeared in the 1960s and ’70s, most famously “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Co-writer-director James Ashcroft works in a broad register that at times is reminiscent of Bong, and it takes getting used to. You must accept that this rest home is not realistic at all, and that Crealy can come and go as he pleases with no consequence of any kind. And, yet, these dissonances are metaphorically justified.
Unlike “Mickey 17,” this sick and weird little movie has a center. Crealy is a boogeyman, a physical embodiment of the wrath wrought by “natural causes.” The surprisingly pronounced violence of “The Rule of Jenny Pen” is somehow empathetic, then. That’s the kind way to read it. Others may read it as Ashcroft getting off on simulating old people torturing each other. It is well-staged, with a wild mixture of tones that suggests that Ashcroft is getting several movies out of his system at once. He has potential.
Meanwhile, Lithgow is granted his longest leash here since the over-the-top-and-back-again one-two-three punch of “Ricochet,” “Raising Cain,” and “Cliffhanger” in the early ‘90s. Lithgow isn’t given a gold watch here. Instead, he’s invited by Ashcroft to come over and get his master villain groove on at the cusp of 80. There’s something heartening in Ashcroft’s respect. Maybe you have to be a horror head to get it.
“Mickey 17” and “The Rule of Jenny Pen” are now in theaters everywhere.
