‘Mickey 17’s Best Recurring Gag Skewers the Tech Broligarchy

Mickey Barnes’ 9 to 5 is literally killing him, but at least he meets his ends with variety. One day, he’s baked alive via cosmic radiation; another, he’s a guinea pig for researching nerve gas; on yet another, he’s the canary in the coal mine on a planet with a deadly pathogen in its atmosphere. (Symptoms include vomiting blood, which frankly is the only one that matters.) Mickey tolerates the suffering, but the bummer gig is wearing him down. Besides: he’s too handsome for this kind of drudgery.

No, really, he’s way too damn good looking, a sore thumb sticking out in the dystopian future landscape of Mickey 17, the new movie from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. It’s the film’s best low-key recurring gag: that Mickey, a humble space laborer en route to the unexplored world of Niflheim, is devastatingly gorgeous; his physical appearance belies his vocation, but his intellect is just about where his oligarch masters want it. 

Wisely, Bong cast Robert Pattinson as his lead, continuing the former teen heartthrob’s post-Twilight career arc of starring in interesting movies under interesting artists while capitalizing on his appeal at the same time. Here, Pattinson speaks and emotes like he’s aiming for the sweet spot between “Woody Allen nebbish” and “Adam Sandler in Little Nicky.” Mickey is a loyal, sweet-hearted doofus and the ship’s token “Expendable,” a crewman assigned tasks that have guaranteed lethal outcomes. 

Every time Mickey bites it, the science team fires up their organic 3D printer and churns out a brand new Mickey, rolled onto a conveyor belt with loving care—as long as a nearby Poindexter remembers to set it up. When they don’t, out flops Mickey’s prone body like sausage from a grinder. The first Mickey we meet in Mickey 17 is, if you can’t guess by the title, his 17th iteration. An eventual mix-up leads to Mickey 18 (Pattinson, natch), who’s a total prick compared to 17, not the least because “multiples” of the same Expendable are forbidden and subject to summary termination. 

Mickey 18’s only been alive for a few hours by the time 17 discovers him. He wants to stay that way. That existential quandary kicks off Mickey 17’s plot in earnest, eventually building to a showdown between the assembled colony-to-be and Niflheim’s native critters, dubbed “creepers,” pillbug behemoths that read like a joint creation between Dr. Seuss and H.P. Lovecraft. They’re harmless. They even save Mickey’s life, the instigating moment that leads to 18’s printing. 

Maybe the creepers just think Mickey’s a cutie pie, too; everyone else does, after all, from his girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), to Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), one of Nasha’s fellow security agents. Though he never says so aloud, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), the expedition’s Dear Leader, a loudmouth nitwit and inveterate swine, probably admires Mickey’s statuesque symmetry, too. 

If Ruffalo’s manner and motion, from his awkward herky-jerky hand-dances to the dumbfounded curl of his mouth, aren’t a clear “tell” that the current president is a partial template for Marshall, his flamboyant vocabulary and constant misconstrual of facts will be. (In flashback, he thanks a panel of elected officials for inviting him to a congressional hearing regarding cloning technology ethics, and is sharply reminded that he was subpoenaed.) As do the men Ruffalo’s performance evokes, Marshall likes beautiful things that are pleasing to the eye. It’s fitting that the guy whose job it is to live, die, and repeat on his behalf is a total hunk, no matter that Mickey walks into the role by his own inattention. (Turns out he signed on the dotted line without reading the fine print.) 

In one sequence, where the science officers ignore the printing machine and Mickey subsequently spills out onto the floor, the audience gets a brief glimpse at Pattinson’s sculpted butt; elsewhere in the film, he goes shirtless instead, showing off his chiseled abs. Even if Mickey 17’s supporting characters didn’t recognize his fashion model looks, the film itself does. For a movie brimming with social commentary on and ideas about our modern politics and social crises, from mankind’s reckless plundering of natural resources, to the elevation of idiot narcissists to elected authority, to tech world ethics, Pattinson’s casting makes a loud statement unto itself: Even at the end of the world, looks are everything.