‘Mickey 17’ now on big screen

Almost six years after the success of ‘Parasite’ (2019), writer and director Bong Joon Ho returns to the screen with ‘Mickey 17’ (2025).

Set in 2054, where Robert Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes is dodging dismemberment by a homicidal loan shark, ‘Mickey 17’ tells the story of his relative escape to outer space on a mission to colonise a planet called Niflheim.

The catch is that Mickey has had to sign up as an Expendable. This means his consciousness is uploaded to a series of new bodies every time he is killed in one of the mission’s deadly explorations and medical experiments.

Still, this seems to beat the aforementioned dismemberment and Mickey actually finds love on the bleak spaceship in the arms of a security agent named Nasha, played by Naomi Ackie.

If this sounds a little absurd, that’s because it is, but below Bong’s satirical science fiction laced with offbeat black comedy, ‘Mickey 17’, like ‘Parasite’, also offers some sobering social commentary.

Contrasting the sumptuous life of an über-wealthy former politician and the half-starved workers who will eventually populate Niflheim, ‘Mickey 17’ highlights the fact that humanity’s class divides and worker exploitation are so entrenched that they may very well follow humans to a new planet.

The fact that Mickey undergoes all manner of horror ordered by the egotistical idiot that is expedition leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) also underscores the expendable nature of workers and the idea that should you die on the job, you’ll be replaced the very next day.

However, in this case, somewhat horrifically, the replacement is you.

Familiar in Marshall’s supremacist assertion that the indigenous population of Niflheim are the aliens and need to be eradicated and wild in his wife’s (Toni Collette) insistence that the villainised ‘Creepers’ be turned into sauce to add some flavour to their meals, ‘Mickey 17’ echoes contemporary realities of violent, settler colonialism, destructive personality cults and man’s desperate search for novelty cuisine.

Darkly funny, based on the book, ‘Mickey7’, by Edward Ashton, and often reflective of the times, ‘Mickey 17’ sees Pattinson have plenty of fun alongside a scene-stealing Ackie and Steven Yeun’s traitorous Timo.

Catch this on the big screen if you like films as bonkers as one has come to expect from Bong.

‘Mickey 17’ is now showing at Ster-Kinekor.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com