Mickey 17
Mickey 17 was like space Forrest Gump if Bubba got killed by capitalism and Lt. Dan was a space worm.
I walked into Mickey 17 with high hopes. Like most film lovers, Parasite is one of my all-time favorites and I was amped up for the prospect of another banger. Surprisingly though, I somehow tricked myself into thinking there would be little to no socio economic commentary and the film would just be fun space comedy. I don’t know where I got that idea given Bong Joon Ho’s film cannon but comedy and space were still both in good supply.
At the center of this film is Mickey. The movies two leads are both mickey and the whole plot rests on his shoulders. From a writing perspective I am pretty obsessed with Mickey as a main character for one simple reason. He’s dumb. He’s a “not so bright” guy who trusts very deeply and lets others take advantage of him. I think it’s unique to have a “dumb” lead because in Hollywood we tend to give our central characters these extraordinary intellectual or physical gifts that make them special. Our hero’s can only be geniuses or supermodels. But like every lead character there is something very extraordinary about Mickey. And that’s his heart. Walking down the escalator out of the film my friend Richard so rightly summed my point by saying “he’s got heart man”. Mickey special talent that makes him our lead is his ability to believe in the best version of others even when they hurt him. To care, to believe, and to hope again and again, life after life.
The plot was a little less far reaching than I expected and a bit self-contained, but it was also very original and full of great fun. I was expecting something maybe a bit more intergalactic and sci-fi in a broad sense. Instead I got a socio political love story with a sci fi back drop. There isn’t much movie action but there is a lot of good comedy. The film takes a dark subject and pokes fun at it from the very first moment. Much like Forrest Gump, we watch Mickey enter many situations that he’s ill equipped for, and we root for him as he miraculously makes his way through them. I particularly enjoyed the bit where Mickey’s reprinted body keeps falling out of the printer because the scientists forget to put the table in front of it.
Another aspect of the film I enjoyed was the depth of the female characters and the writing of the romantic arcs in the film. They were very three dimensional characters with both bad and good intentions that broke outside the mold of a Hollywood film lead. This was strengthened by writing that used our expectations against us. I particularly enjoyed how this was used with female lead Nasha. In the early second act of the film we find Mickey’s girlfriend Nasha sleeping with his alternate self and in the moment, we are hearbroken and angry just like Mickey. However, later in the film, Mickey reveals that Nasha loved both Mickey’s because she loved every version of him, and the film plays a montage of Nasha sitting with mickey as the various version of him are subject to death by deranged medical tests over the years. This reversal does such an effective job of turning our assumptions on their head and increasing our love for the couple. Similarly, the character of Gemma tries to start an affair with Mickey that dissolves and later resolves itself in Gemma finding another partner. I enjoyed the way this interaction happened and was let go without major judgement of character or focus. The sort of loose end of it all made for very believable writing.
The rest of the plot was full of campy political comedy and really cool space bugs. Which brings me home to my last point. Mickey 17 was a movie in the classic sense. There was something about the style of the creatures, the camp of the comedy, and the sincerity of the love, that would only fit on the big screen. Like the Tarantino’s, Gerwig’s, and Peele’s of the world, Bong Joon Ho takes a film and turns it into a movie. Everything outside of the plot itself was so full of style and depth and just pazazz honestly. Like these other directors, Bong Joon Ho always has something to say but never at the expense of spectacle. His films feel uniquely Hollywood in that way.