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 Perhaps what is different is that the usual super-plotting nefariousness of bad guys has been replaced by the warmongering ignorance of the power-hungry elite.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)

Big Trouble in Little China

Big Touble in Little China

Director ~ John Carpenter

Writers ~ Gary Goldman, David Z. Weinstein, W.D. Richter

1986, US

Stars ~ Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun

 

Certainly, when I first saw it, I didn’t get the joke. Oh sure, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ was amusing, but I was in my later teens that the mainstream and VHS were saturated with American super-machismo: Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, Segal, etc. This is before I got any nuance from the first two. This film seemed of a piece with scene and I didn’t register the satire. Certainly Kurt Russell knew the assignment and pushed more and more for this to be a send-up of the Swagger Saviour that he himself had earned a reputation with. Not least of all, with Carpenter himself, having played Snake Plissken and MacReady in ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘The Thing’.

 

It becomes apparent that there are two films going on: firstly the wuxia homage taking place in an American city with a huge heap of the supernatural where Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the hero; and then there’s the film that Jack Burton thinks he’s in, being the John Wayne star when actually he’s a truckin’ blowhard that is culturally out of his depth. This where the film’s longevity and cult status comes from, as it wasn’t originally much thought of due in part to a studio that didn’t get the joke and, surely, some audiences too. If the portrayal of Chinese culture is a little broad, well this is broad strokes humour and homage and there is no meanness or condescension here. The humour is almost exclusively at the expense of the Jack Burton, although it is neither mean nor condescending towards him either. It feels more like the gentle ribbing between buddies rather than derisive mocking.

James Berardinelli’s review seems confused at the film’s irreverence and that Burton seems to get more screen time in the service of the joke; actually, he’s just louder and wants to make it all about him. Similarly Kathleen Carroll seems bewildered by its scatological nature, resorting to descriptions such as culturally specific cuisine  zingers as “stir-fried mess” and “as impenetrable as chop suey”, whatever that means. Hal Larper is more on-the-ball with “A campy, convoluted series of outrageous adventures that careens through an imaginary world for two hours before depositing you, breathless, back in your seat.”  Nobody familiar with the likes of ‘Mr. Vampire’ or ‘House’ will be surprised at the bonkers silliness, although its monster inflections and tone are more in place with the likes of ‘Ghostbusters’ .

The dodgy/dated 80s effects, ludicrous street tuff posturing and wuxia pile-ups has proven ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ more a cult favourite with time, its mash-up aesthetic sustained by a concentrated satire which perhaps proves more in tune with later zeitgeist further attuned to genre and culture medleys. Distinguished by its refusal to be mean-spirited, ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ remains happily irreverent and fun.

 

Late Night With The Devil

Late Night with The Devil

Writers and Directors ~ Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes

2023, Australia - United Arab Emirates

Stars ~ David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss

 

With this kind of horror premise, there’s only one likely way it will go. And it does, so it is the journey and the execution that counts. Instead of the trending Eighties homage, Cameron and Colin Cairnes go to the Seventies for an era of talk show TV and Satanism. There’s plenty of Seventies aesthetic but played straight instead of kitsch; although it becomes evident quickly that the live and “backstage footage” doesn’t hold up, being too evidently clear and edited for maximum effect to be convincing. And then there’s the disappointment/outrage at AI usage for the transition cards, which at the very least seems lazy. Long before the denouement, the film has jettisoned and kind of “found footage” credulity pinned by the opening narration (Michael Ironside!) summarising a tumultuous decade and the never-quite-making-it career of our central show host. It becomes apparent that any demand for sincerity or continuity as found footage is shrugged off whenever it needs to, even before and especially when we get to the worms. ‘Ghostwatch’ it isn’t. It sets up and then breaks its own rules. If you can’t make allowances for such shrugs, enjoyment will be crimped.

 

 

But what it does have is pleasureable period detail, a little satire on backstage melodrama and fame,‘The Exorcist’ and theremin gags and, mostly, David Dastmalchian. Dastmalchian manages to convey subtlety in a role that could have been just showboating and/or obnoxious in a context where he is always on show. When someone says he’s a good guy, it’s easy to believe that he is misguided rather than egotistic. Everyone projects layers of real characters underneath the televised veneer, even hammy clairvoyant Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), for a broad-strokes producer, Josh Quong Tart (Leo Fiskewhen); and we get to the apparently possessed girl, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), she’s obviously doing the Creepy Kid thing from the outset, talking like someone half her age, that there is nowhere for her to go. It all escalates into a few shocks and reality breakdown which jettison once and for all the TV format pretence.

 

It's true that this has mostly been heavily guided by gripes about internal logic, but with ‘100 Bloody Acres’, the Cairnes brothers made it clear they are out to offer fun and extremity in equal measure, and there’s plenty in ‘Late Night with the Devil’ so that any shortcomings don’t stop the enjoyment. They know how to serve up a most entertaining horror concoction.