Two Pattinsons, half the fun in ‘Mickey 17’

It’s been nearly six years since South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which, little to our knowledge at that moment, would be just the first of many victorious spots for the lauded social satire.

The culmination of that journey would be at the Academy Awards, where the film made history by becoming the first foreign-language feature to be awarded the prize for best picture. Of course, with that much success comes the raising of the bar and the inevitable questions of what’s next for a filmmaker who’s earned himself a blank check for whatever his heart desires.

Warner Bros. plunked down $120 million to lure Bong back to the United States for his third English-language film, the first two being “Snowpiercer” and “Okja,” respectively.  And while no follow-up to “Parasite” could possibly live up to the incredibly high standards placed upon it, “Mickey 17” is an extreme disappointment no matter how you slice it.

Between Jeff Bezos’ and Elon Musk’s continuous efforts to commodify space, the stars we all share are beginning to lose their shimmer. The final frontier is now merely another capitalist hellscape to run away from your problems on Earth, which is exactly what Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) does after he gets in deep with a loan shark who has an unhealthy obsession with dismembering people who fall into his debt.

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With no special skills to differentiate him from the overcrowded employment lines, he signs up to be an “expendable,” where his memories and body schematics will be downloaded so he can be reprinted/cloned whenever he dies. It’s only fitting that the most advanced technology humanity has ever wielded is mostly used to more efficiently exploit the working man.

The title comes from the fact that the iteration we become accustomed to is the 17th version of him, the previous 16 having died in the name of “science” as the crew of his spaceship tries to colonize the icy planet Niflheim. Mark Ruffalo plays the ship’s commander, Kenneth Marshall, in one of the laziest and most exhaustive Trump/corrupt egotistical politician impressions we’ve been inundated with over the past decade.

Bong already reared his head around this territory with Tilda Swinton’s awkward corporate head honcho in “Okja.” These results are much more simplified, even down to the red hats that Marshall’s supporters don and his constant need for approval.

Pattinson’s nasally narration is very much in “tell, don’t show” mode, rendering several scenes in need of a mute button. At the very least, it would allow for Jung Jae-il’s score and Darius Khondji’s cinematography to be more appreciated – the former reconfiguring the intense piano rhythms of “Parasite” into something a little more fluttery.

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There are so many ethical questions and dilemmas that Bong’s script – an adaptation of the Edward Ashton novel – could have investigated further or with more precision. Instead, everything is painted with the broadest brush possible, arming the satire with the same weight as a cold open from “Saturday Night Live.”

Pattinson’s commitment to the role, in all its eccentricities, is what keeps the ship from capsizing sooner. That goes double when he gets preemptively reprinted for the 18th time, leaving everyone seeing double. Naomi Ackie plays his lover, Nasha, although there really isn’t much to say about her. It’s one of the few times the line “I don’t know what she sees in me” can be shared by both the character and the audience.

There is one ingenious moment when they initially meet, and we don’t hear their conversation. All we see are their mouths moving, the gleeful expressions on their faces, and the joyous thoughts running through their heads as they realize they’ve each found the person right for them.

Bong has long held compassion for his characters, even if his view of humanity is never the rosiest. If only he had shared some compassion for the audience’s intelligence in this go-around.

Warner Bros. will release “Mickey 17” in theaters nationwide on March 7.

Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays, and everything in between. He currently serves as the president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals both big and small. To view his entire body of work, you can visit his website and Instagram.