Here, the idea of an “expendable”, in a story adapted by Bong from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, is the literalised idea of the capitalist worker: in order to escape his debtors, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) signs up to be an “expendable” on a colony mission to the planet Niflheim.
The Korean auteur, off the back of his 2020 Best Picture win for Parasite, has taken $80m (£63m) of Warner Bros’s money and, four release date changes aside, secured final cut on a giddy genre epic that answers the existential query at the very heart of our current existence: what’s the point of living in a world built to make us feel worthless?.
As Hollywood studios swiftly kowtow to the Republican regime, there’s a worry that Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s stark yet oddly life-affirming anti-capitalist sci-fi, will be one of the last honest pieces of art to slip under the gates.
For those whose only familiarity with Bong’s work comes from Parasite, Mickey 17 is different but tonally in check – tender, cynical, violent, humanist, absurdist, rooted in class politics.
Bong Joon-ho, the Oscar winner behind ‘Parasite’, somehow convinced Warner Bros to finance a costly sci-fi epic about the plight of the working class – and led by an actor doing one of his trademark silly voices.
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