When making his 2017 big pig adventure Okja, director Bong Joon Ho had one of the most scarring experiences of his life. Mickey 17, his first film since the Oscar-winning Parasite six years ago, shows that this harrowing incident is still lingering at the back of his mind.
“When I was researching and writing Okja, I visited a slaughterhouse in Colorado, and what I saw shocked me into becoming a Pescatarian. I had to give up after two and a half years and begin eating meat again on doctors’ recommendations, but I’ve still tried to eat as little as possible since then.
“I wasn’t thinking Okja when I was writing or shooting Mickey 17, but during post-production when I was watching the footage back for the first time, I was reminded a lot of it. The creatures here are aliens, but they look like animals – similar to Okja, by looking through the eyes of these animals, you get a greater sense of the damage humans can cause.”
Ecological concerns are one of the many issues director Bong is wrestling with in his big-budget space adventure, which follows the workers brought to help colonise the distant planet of Niflheim by a failed senator (Mark Ruffalo) who sees himself as the human race’s new messiah. On this ship is Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who has signed up to be an “expendable” researcher, routinely killed and brought back to life via “human printing” in elaborate experiments to weigh up whether mankind can survive in this alien climate.
Mickey becomes something of a saviour to the planet’s native alien race, who rescue him after one incident when he was supposed to be left for dead. Returning to the ship, he discovers that the crew has already printed his next incarnation – called, you guessed it, Mickey 18 – who is angrier, more violent, and less eager to go along with each deadly mission.
The dual roles highlight Pattinson’s versatility as a performer, equally at ease playing up the slapstick comedy as he morphing into a brooding antihero. He was the only actor director Bong had in mind whilst he was writing the screenplay – adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 – and hopes his film plays another crucial part in the star’s ongoing screen transformation.
“I thought about Robert Pattinson a lot whilst writing the script”, Bong added. “I never had a list of other potential candidates, as I was quite certain he would be the best person for the role.
“Just the way he strode in when we first met to speak about the part was enough to convince me he was the actor I was looking for. It opened my eyes even further to how skilled he is as a physical performer, and how flexible he is with his body – he'd be a perfect fit for a modern Buster Keaton movie.
“Before then, watching the Safdie Brothers’ movie Good Time was the first time I realised as a viewer that we were being introduced to a new side of him which the audience hadn’t previously been exposed to. When I was at Cannes in 2019, I saw him in The Lighthouse, and it was a further evolution; there’s a lot of Mickey 18 in that performance.”
If you read Ashton’s source novel when it was published in 2022, you might be baffled as to why Pattinson was the director’s only choice for the role. However, when you consider that the screen character has been killed ten more times than his equivalent on the page, it’s easy to see why he’d be a much different figure.
“This is my eighth film, and third adaptation”, Bong continued. “The last adaptation I made was Snowpiercer, and I followed a similar process here in terms of liberally changing aspects of the source material.
“In the novel, Mickey is a historian, you could even consider him an intellectual. But I wanted to change that to make him a lower-class worker chased by loan sharks; the fact he’s more downtrodden and unfortunate offers more of a way in for the audience.”
Mickey makes his way onto the ship alongside his best friend Timo (Steven Yeun), who are both chased out of town after some dodgy dealings with their Macaron business. However, the two are almost immediately separated, with Timo having far more skills to get a higher-ranking job on board, leaving his friend with the workers at the bottom of the heap.
As Yeun suggested to Zavvi, this makes him one of the more complex characters in a world where the heroes and villains are very clearly designated.
“There are a lot of ways to justify Timo’s intentions, at least when you view his actions from his perspective”, he said. “Mickey can’t manoeuvre through the ranks in the way that he can, and you can sense that maybe Timo thinks his friend is safest in this position, that he’s dropping him off at the spot that’s most suitable for him so they can both adjust to this second chance at life.
“There’s an eternal connection between the two of them. I look at Timo as an older brother to him, and as I’m an older brother myself, you can act in a way that’s taking responsibility for your siblings in a way that isn’t immediately received that way; good intentions can cloud you from how misguided your actions are”.
Mickey 17 marks Yeun’s second collaboration with director Bong following Okja, and naturally, he accepted the role purely to work with him again; their initial conversations on the phone barely touched on the movie at all. However, he’s too in awe of the filmmaker to call the two movies thematic companion pieces.
“You could certainly make parallels with Okja, but I think director Bong has access to a depth of creativity I can’t explain; he has clear things he wants to communicate, and there’s intentionality in his design, but I feel like he’s just able to channel things few other people can.”
As for Bong’s next steps, he’s already hard at work on his next Korean project, his first animated film (and biggest budgeted film in Korean history), which might be ready by the end of 2026. When it comes to a return to Hollywood, don’t expect an adaptation of Antimatter Blues – the sequel novel to Mickey7 – if this is a hit.
“I love franchise films, and I love going to see sequels and remakes, but on a personal level, I have way too many stories and ideas I want to explore. I need to always be making something completely different.
“My biggest goal as a filmmaker is to hold off on dying until I’ve made each one!”
Mickey 17 is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 7th March.
