‘Mickey 17’: Robert Pattinson lives to die in sci-fi comedy
The “expendable” Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is left to die by his co-worker (Steven Yeun) in a clip from Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi comedy “Mickey 17.”
Spoiler alert! We’re discussing important plot points and the ending of “Mickey 17” (in theaters now) so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
Robert Pattinson’s underdog title character in the sci-fi satire “Mickey 17” has all sorts of obstacles thrown at him – that’s the breaks when you’re considered “expendable.” In the end, though, he not only survives but thrives, even as a copy of himself meets a heroic fate.
In Oscar-winning writer/director Bong Joon Ho’s new movie, Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) is an Earth man who signs up for a colonizing expedition to a distant icy planet and volunteers for a job that puts him in deadly situations constantly. Every time he dies, a new version with his memories is printed out. The 17th iteration is thought to have died, which leads to Mickey 18, but when the other didn’t perish, 17 and 18 have to figure out how to coexist.
Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY’s movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox.
They get a common enemy: Villainous politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the man leading the expedition, wants to kill the Mickeys. He also wants to wipe out the planet’s indigenous creatures, the Creepers, who had saved Mickey 17 earlier. After killing a baby Creeper, leading the mother Creeper to gather her fellow beasts and surround Marshall’s spaceship, Marshall sends 17 and 18 out to kill Creepers or else get blown up. But 17 warns the Creeper mom about Marshall’s plan to use nerve gas on them – and to keep them from wiping out humans in revenge – and 18 sacrifices himself to blow up Marshall.
While he’s looked down on for most of the movie, Mickey 17 gains new respect among his human co-workers. And when his girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) is put in charge, she lets Mickey push the button that explodes the human printer.
Does ‘Mickey 17’ have a post-credit scene?
Nope, but before detonating the human printer, Bong includes an important dream sequence where Mickey confronts Marshall’s scheming wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) when she’s printing out a new version of her husband. “Isn’t this what everybody wants?” Mickey tells her off in four-letter fashion.
“A lot of strange things have been happening” in Bong’s native South Korea and the world, the filmmaker says via a translator. “We’re going through climate disaster and fires and we all just feel a bit scared. We feel small and helpless. And what intensifies all that fear even more is hatred and disdain and contempt for one another.”
But in the moment, Mickey rejects all that, Bong adds. “Even the most powerless underdog can overcome his fears and find hope and fight against the vitriol and the hatred of the world. Maybe that’s kind of all we can do and all we can hope for in this crazy world.”
Pattinson sees the movie as “a very sort of extreme version of where your life could end up. I’m always a fan of saying people need to give themselves a break,” he says with a laugh. “It’s funny trying to put things in the context of the way the world is now – it shifts with such alarming pace that it’s almost impossible. Good advice today will be bad advice tomorrow.”
While Mickey 17 is definitely an underdog, “at the same time, what’s interesting is it’s not like he wants to be leading the world afterward,” Pattinson figures. “He doesn’t even really get it. When everyone’s like, ‘You saved the world!” and he’s like, ‘I did? OK, cool.’
“He just wants to have a nice life and be a regular dude. He doesn’t really have any higher aspirations particularly. He was fine with being tortured every day if he could just go home to Nasha.”
Leave a Reply