South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho is back with his first film since taking home four Oscars for his mega-hit PARASITE in 2020. MICKEY 17, which is adapted from the 2022 novel “Mickey 7” by Edward Ashton, continues with PARASITE’s themes of social inequality and wealth disparity but this time set in deep space.

It’s the near future and Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson, THE BATMAN) is in big trouble with some loan sharks. To escape from his debts, he signs up to be an “expendable” on a mission to colonize the planet Niflheim, led by failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, POOR THINGS) and his controlling wife Ylfa (Toni Collette, HEREDITARY). The only problem is that Mickey didn’t read the fine print on the contract, which puts him in a programme where he must perform dangerous tasks that will probably kill him. Fortunately, technology has advanced to the point where if he dies, his body will get thrown into a furnace of sorts along with other detritus from the ship and out will come a new, 3D-imprinted body that looks just like the old one. With his memories and personality stored on a hard drive, these can be uploaded to the body and a brand new Mickey will be created. Everything goes smoothly as iteration after iteration of Mickeys are imprinted until Mickey 17 is left to die on the icy planet by his best friend Timo (Steven Yeun, MINARI) and Mickey 18 is created back on the ship a bit too soon. Now the two Mickeys are in a fight for their survival, dominance and the attention of security agent Nasha Barridge (Naomi Ackie, I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY), who seems quite happy to have two Mickeys vying for her affection.

Although MICKEY 17 starts off strong as Bong scrolls through all the different, and often gruesome, ways Mickeys 1 through 16 die, the story quickly loses its edge once Mickey 18 arrives and the film gets down to business. The tone is perhaps the biggest problem with the film as Bong ping-pongs between comedy, body horror, satire, social commentary, science fiction and probably a few other genres I haven’t yet thought of. It just doesn’t work and the film isn’t nearly as funny or as biting as PARASITE is. It’s also much longer than it needs to be, and whole scenes should have been cut or, at the very least, trimmed way back. Timo, for example, is a complete waste of a character. Perhaps he plays a more important role in the book but in the movie he could have been cut altogether.

Pattinson, thankfully, seems quite game to play the double role as he effectively channels his inner Steve Buscemi for his Mickey 17 character. (Mickey 18 has a different personality and a slightly different accent for reasons that are sort of explained.) Ruffalo, however, is a huge disappointment, especially after doing such a great job playing a lothario in POOR THINGS. Here he seems to be doing a caricature of a certain American president and it’s neither funny nor good as his cadence and tone wavers throughout the film. Collette fairs slightly better but the script doesn’t give her nearly enough time to explore her character’s manipulativeness. Instead, Bong wastes precious time on a ridiculously long, and illogically blocked, sequence involving the planet’s native inhabitants of large, furry grub-looking creatures that Marshall dubs “creepers”.

MICKEY 17 opens in Hong Kong on Thursday (March 6). After the success of PARASITE, this is one intergalactic disappointment. What should have been a really good social satire is just an overlong misfire.

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