Mickey 17

Mickey 17

Director ~ Bong Joon Ho

Writers ~ Bong Joon Ho, Edward Ashton

2025, US-South Korea

Stars ~ Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Michael Monroe

Mickey 7

Edward Ashton, 2022

 

Of course, ‘Parasite’ was such a masterclass of balancing tone and genre that expectations were going to be high for Bong Joon Ho’s follow-up, ‘MICKEY 17’. Mickey 7 from the novel is increased to 17 but demoted to simply a dope for the film: he has less agency, less of the backchat and quiet smarts. The awareness and insight kept close to his chest is lost in the film, which operates on broader strokes. Bong calls the character of Mickey 7 “pathetic and ultimately hilarious”,* but surely that’s unfair and a misreading. At the centre of the kind of simple but direct metaphor that science-fiction excels at, in both prose and celluloid cloned Mickey is an unwitting victim and symbol of uncaring capitalism, new technology, the distillation of an expendable workforce. In the film, he also victim of slapstick – hence 17 rather than 7 – and more a straight-up idiot than the quietly sly and opinionated prose character. So, despite the excellence of Robert Pattinson, if you are a fan of the book, you may feel Mickey shortchanged.

 

Ashton’s novel is one of those smart pulps with a mild, struggling protagonists up against A Big Uncaring Future. It has more world-building, covers more well-thought-out background to and history of the planet colonisations, which is well thought-out and interesting. It too has a light tone which some may find underserves the big ideas, but it’s fun and engaging with several bright ideas and insights.

 

Bong’s film is a romp a little too amused with itself although the central idea fascinates and the effects look expensive. The difference is in a whackier tone and caricatures, with the colony owner Marshal is simply a Donald Trump parody with a manipulative and villainous trophy wife. Mark Ruffalo dives headfirst into the Trump impersonation that clearly puts the unsubtlety at the foremost that this is almost an SNL skit. The commentary is so clearly on the Trump-Musk era that it surely crimps the idea’s scope and evergreen observations on society, although others might see this as a sign of its urgency. Perhaps what is different is that the usual super-plotting nefariousness of bad guys has been replaced by the warmongering ignorance of the power-hungry elite.

 

Come the ending, the fascinating cloning concept and analogy seems to have slipped away, to count as secondary, lost in a mash-up of excellently imagined scifi setting, comedy, political satire and genre diversion. The alien encounter overwhelms the fascination of Mickey’s situation, and although that’s the trajectory of the source novel, there feels less of a balance here (although admittedly that could be simply a result of the book being first-person). Pattinson captures the exhaustion and trauma of dangerous work but swamped under the denouement of special-effects extravaganza, the focused humanity he represents feels lost. Bong is a master genre-blender, but there is something of the near-miss with this concoction. It may be fun enough, amusing and beautifully filmed, but there’s none of the perfection of ‘Parasite’ and less of the pleasing metaphor and serious defiance of ‘Snowpiercer’. A heady amusement that doesn’t quite monopolise its big ideas.

 

·         * - ‘Mickey 7’ (2022), Edward Ashton, Q&A with Bong Joon-Ho (Solaris, 2025)

Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

Writer & Director - Brandon Cronenberg

2023, Canada-Croatia-Hungary

Stars - Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Colem

 

The Cronenberg brand always delivers. Impotent with writer’s block, author James (Alexander Skarsgård) – retreats with  Em (Cleopatra Coleman) to an holiday resort to relax and for him to discover his mojo again. On this fictional island of La Tolqa, they meet Gabi (Mia Goth), who says she’s a fan and fun and introduces them to an increasingly hedonistic group of holiday goers.

 

When he accidentally kills a local, James discovers that the natives have a punishment system where they can make a clone of the offender to take the penalty – in this case: the death sentence. Cronenberg introduces cloning into the mix to lay bare the selfishness, privilege, decadence, etc, of the upper-class tourists exploiting and abusing the local people and customs. These people never suffer the consequences. It’s an easy target, but an ever deserving one. Seemingly having avoided the death penalty, James is somewhat perversely thrilled at this brush with mortality and getting-away-with-it and throws in with this irresponsible crowd. But of course, they just might be clones themselves… perhaps losing a little empathy and humanity with each cloning? It’s all something to laugh about over a night of hedonism and drink.

 

 

 

There’s not quite the hyperviolence of ‘Possessor’, but until things get going, Cronenberg makes sure we have traditional masks that look like meat packing and a graphic hand-job to be getting on with.  Skarsgård, as tall and handsome as he is and coming from the machismo of ‘The Northman’, is increasingly convincing as a man out of his depth and self-sabotaged by insecurities and gullibility. After ‘Pearl’, Goth ranks up her Horror Girl status and solidifies her reputation as a considerable presence. There are Cronenberg’s arty-trippy sequences where, although they don’t, things look like they might go the way of ‘Society’. These may lose some viewers and straightforward narrative drive, but that’s the point: everything slides apart. “Where are we?” James asks at the start, but by the latter half, he is thoroughly lost in hallucinogenic decadence.

 

The appeal of irresponsibility is chief here, but you must have the privilege and money to get away with it. And the victims are left shellshocked and ruined, but still enamoured of its allure and the faded glamour despite themselves. The descent into psychedelic mind-bending will lose a few, and as a cautionary tale about falling in the wrong people it won’t leave as much of a mark as ‘Speak No Evil’ or ‘Wake in Fright’, but Brandon Cronenberg continues to assert himself as a reliable source of unhinged ideas told in a clean, near-clinical but empathic style.