Did Bong Joon Ho Make Another Best Picture Contender?

            2019 was the first year where I really started to dive deep into movies, and that year itself was an incredible one for them. There was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, Jojo Rabbit, and more, but one movie stood above the rest, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. It won best picture that year, and it set the tone for the shift in how the Academy would vote on Oscar winners in the future. To this day, Parasite is still ranked highly in my overall movie rankings, and I would recommend anyone to watch it (5 stars!!!). So I was very excited when Bong’s next movie was announced, and even more so, when I found out that Robert Pattinson would be starring in it.

            Sadly, this excitement had to be tempered. Mickey 17 was originally set to be released in January of 2024, but it got delayed. Initially it seemed like it might just get pushed to the end of 2024, which would be good, if it were going to contend for any awards, but then it got pushed all the way to March of 2025. The continual delay of a movie is never a good sign. This led to a dissipation of the hype, although it was still high on my list of movies I wanted to see this year.

            Mickey 17 is the story of man on the end of his rope. Mickey got in with the wrong people, and he could not pay back his loan, so the best option he could think of was to flee the planet, and the only job he was qualified to take on the ship was as an expendable. An expendable is basically a real-life test dummy. The only catch is that if they had some of his DNA, they could just reprint him, and they would regularly download his memories, so when he came back it was still him.

            Of course, this ship was more dystopian than utopian. They were out on a quest to a new planet to inhabit/colonize, and when they got there, Mickey was the one that was sent out to wander around, test the atmosphere and find out if there was anything dangerous lurking out on its icy surface. He does find one species, and they are like giant worm/centipede creatures, but instead of eating him, they save him. They bring him back to the surface, so he can return to the ship. The only problem is that the people on the ship assumed he had died, so they printed a double of him, which breaks the laws of cloning. Also one of the space worms finds a way on board, and the captain holds it hostage leading to a whole standoff with an entire species. Both of these problems boil over at the same time leading to quite the final act.

            If you have watched Bong’s films, then you know that he has an affinity for social commentary. In this case, there is a strong depiction of the haves verse the have nots. Mickey has no choice but to choose the lowest of jobs, and he is forced to face terrible treatment and experimentation while the rich leader of the ship dines endlessly on whatever he likes and lives in luxury. Bong also mentioned in an interview that Mickey is a stand in for the laborers that do dangerous jobs, that when they die, someone else just comes in and replaces them. There is no attempt to make the job safer, they just find another body to take the place.

            There is a strong focus on the cruelty of humanity. This cruelty is not only placed on its own species, but on other species as well. As mentioned, Mickey is continually abused with little care by those committing the abuse, and the class conflict also shows itself in the form of food rationing. All the crew members on the ship were only allowed to eat their allotted calories for the day, and they were banned from having sex, because that could lead to more mouths to feed and that burns calories that they need to save for work.

            Once on the planet that was not their own, they basically chose to go to war with a species that had no desire to go to war with them. Basically every chance he gets, the leader of the ship chooses violence. When they find two worms on board, their immediate reaction is to exterminate it, even though it is a baby, and when the one worm is killed, the rest of the species starts to circle the craft in protest until they get their other baby back. Despite this visual, the leader of the ship chooses to torture and tries to burn the baby space worm to death before Mickey says that he will go out and confront them.

            There was also strong political commentary in the movie as well. Mark Ruffalo plays Kenneth Marshall, who is the leader of the ship. There is supposed to be some level of democracy on the craft, but it very clearly a dictatorship, where the other members of the ship have little say in their own lives. He is also very clearly doing an impersonation of Trump. Ironically, this was supposed to come out before he was elected…again. Ruffalo even goes as far as pouting his lip and getting a bad spray tan, but to say that these problems are just limited to our current president would be minimizing them. In history in general, leaders have a problem with arrogance. They find themselves so self-important that this often leads to them making ignorant decisions in hopes that their antics will land them in the annuls of history.

            Ruffalo was not the only one giving a solid performance. Personally, my favorite performance was given by Steven Yeun. He has been one of my favorites going back to The Walking Dead. He was probably my favorite character on there, and everything I have seen him on since I have enjoyed him in as well. Of course, there is Robert Pattinson in the starring role, and he had to play two parts, when there was the double, and I think he did this incredibly well, and he also gave a very weird performance as well. I feel like he was leaning hard into an accent. Toni Collete is always willing to give an unhinged performance, and she played the wife of the leader of the ship, and the way talked about food was wild. She cut off the tail of a space worm and turned it into a sauce, and she got way too excited about it.

            Overall, I really wanted to love this movie, but I just could not get fully into it. It was two hours and seventeen minutes, and I felt its run time. I do like that it was something that made me think and was very fun to analyze though. Also the actors seemed to be eating up their roles as well. There was just something missing in the second act that I felt held it back from being great, and they drug out the ending a little too long. I am thankful for another Bong Joon Ho movie, but I hope the next one will be better. I give this 3 stars.