criterionforum.org

An extremely short teaser for Bong Joon-ho's MICKEY 17

brundlefly wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 1:08 am

Computer Raheem wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:04 am An extremely short teaser for Bong Joon-ho's MICKEY 17

Trailer. A reminder that not enough people saw Riley Stearns' Dual.

Word is that since the director had Final Cut and refused to make any changes, WB is dumping this in January and will make no awards run for it

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 6:10 pm

brundlefly wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 1:08 am

Computer Raheem wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:04 am An extremely short teaser for Bong Joon-ho's MICKEY 17

Trailer. A reminder that not enough people saw Riley Stearns' Dual.

Word is that since the director had Final Cut and refused to make any changes, WB is dumping this in January and will make no awards run for it

No dedicated thread for it yet but here's the official poster:



There's a rumour going around that some studios are planning on taking some 2025 releases and moving them to this year due to the weak Oscar race. This would be the perfect chance to move the Mickey 17 release date from January to December \:D/

domino harvey wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 6:10 pm

brundlefly wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 1:08 am

Computer Raheem wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 3:04 am An extremely short teaser for Bong Joon-ho's MICKEY 17

Trailer. A reminder that not enough people saw Riley Stearns' Dual.

Word is that since the director had Final Cut and refused to make any changes, WB is dumping this in January and will make no awards run for it

The same thing happened with Snowpiercer. Like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, he’d take a poor rollout over compromising his film

Mickey 17 is a spiritual sequel to Okja in all the worst ways. It's sloppy, didactically on-the-nose, and draaags - I'm stupefied by how elastic Bong's sense of economy can be. Pattinson's performance is a grace, but even he can't save a movie that's most interesting part - its opening precredits sci-fi 'premise' - is largely cast aside (other than its base element) in favor of windy plot roads that feel overdone and undercooked at the same time. Yeun and Vartolomei have completely superfluous narrative arcs, the former taking up way too much time just to, what, show unfairness in the system or provide dark comic relief to Pattinson's patsy? And Ruffalo needs the right director to help him go ham - his last gassed-up buffoon perf had a few layers, but this is one of the most embarrassingly one-note caricatures in recent memory. And what of the nonsensical dream sequence that essentially serves as the film's climax? This truly felt like a first draft, and I really hope Bong got whatever he had to get out of his system, so he can go back to his careful welding instead of spinning around banging pots and pans.

When I saw the trailer I had the unfair thought, "I liked this better when it was 90 minutes and called Moon", and now I'm worrying that it might not've been so unfair.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Mar 09, 2025 3:15 am Mickey 17 is a spiritual sequel to Okja in all the worst ways. It's sloppy, didactically on-the-nose, and draaags - I'm stupefied by how elastic Bong's sense of economy can be. Pattinson's performance is a grace, but even he can't save a movie that's most interesting part - its opening precredits sci-fi 'premise' - is largely cast aside (other than its base element) in favor of windy plot roads that feel overdone and undercooked at the same time. Yeun and Vartolomei have completely superfluous narrative arcs, the former taking up way too much time just to, what, show unfairness in the system or provide dark comic relief to Pattinson's patsy? And Ruffalo needs the right director to help him go ham - his last gassed-up buffoon perf had a few layers, but this is one of the most embarrassingly one-note caricatures in recent memory. And what of the nonsensical dream sequence that essentially serves as the film's climax? This truly felt like a first draft, and I really hope Bong got whatever he had to get out of his system, so he can go back to his careful welding instead of spinning around banging pots and pans.

Just popping in to second this, TWBBs somehow read every thought I had while watching. R Patz innocent, but the rest ranges from embarrassing to unbearable.

I'm glad Bong got to milk Warner Bros. for a couple hundred mil, but I need someone to step in and stop him from making anymore English-language films. I know Snowpiercer has its fans, but I am not one of them. As soon as I read the first review calling Mickey 17 "hilarious," I knew we were in an Okja situation.

I was not as disappointed with Mickey 17 as others here even if I understand the criticism. The last act is definitely too long but this is not a film that feels like it compromises its vision. The hyperbolic characterizations are integrated into the story in a more balanced way than in Okja (that film's more glaring flaw) and, as far as on-the-nose sci-fi satire, this one holds far more interest to me than Snowpiercer which remains the one Bong film that I dislike (a decent first thirty minutes to set everything up only to become an inert series of clumsily-directed action set-pieces). With Mickey 17, the satire works for me, even if it may appear obvious, because it maintains a surprisingly cruel edge throughout. This holds everything from the cute creature design to whimsical art direction in check and prevents the viewer from feeling too comfortable.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Mar 09, 2025 3:15 am ... And what of the nonsensical dream sequence that essentially serves as the film's climax? ...

This is what I meant by not compromising its vision. The supposedly feel-good denouement is dominated by this long interruption which doesn't allow the darker message to be obliterated...

Spoiler

Knowing that Ms. Marshall has committed suicide through slitting her wrists, Mickey envisions a replicated Marshall forever bleeding Christ-like and the blood being the "special sauce" that the Marshalls insist you must taste before knowing what's in it. That sauce is the allure of authoritarianism, and I admire how Bong ties this into the Christian notion of the "Blood of Christ" Eucharist (the Marshall cult being both a church and a company). The authoritarianism can be easily replicated and the film leaves it ambiguous whether the Marshalls have, indeed, been replicated prior to the printing machine being blown up.

In terms of overall quality Mickey 17 is definitely in the bottom half of Bong's canon for me. I'm glad he got the millions to do it but wouldn't mind him staying away from science fiction parables for a while... if not for the rest of his career.

Roger Ryan wrote: Mon Mar 10, 2025 12:56 pm

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Mar 09, 2025 3:15 am ... And what of the nonsensical dream sequence that essentially serves as the film's climax? ...

This is what I meant by not compromising its vision. The supposedly feel-good denouement is dominated by this long interruption which doesn't allow the darker message to be obliterated...

Spoiler

Knowing that Ms. Marshall has committed suicide through slitting her wrists, Mickey envisions a replicated Marshall forever bleeding Christ-like and the blood being the "special sauce" that the Marshalls insist you must taste before knowing what's in it. That sauce is the allure of authoritarianism, and I admire how Bong ties this into the Christian notion of the "Blood of Christ" Eucharist (the Marshall cult being both a church and a company). The authoritarianism can be easily replicated and the film leaves it ambiguous whether the Marshalls have, indeed, been replicated prior to the printing machine being blown up.

Interesting point

Spoiler

I'm not sure it's all that ambiguous, though. The way Pattinson shakes awake and turns his attention towards the explosion, the former scene becomes isolated to a darkly comic nightmare in the vein of his eccentric attention span we've scene throughout the film, diluting its messaging. However, your reading of this as a warning that 'We Haven't Fixed Things' is definitely pertinent to oppose the otherwise smooth finish. I just don't think they pulled it off in a way that was successful - if anything, chocking it up to Pattinson's idiosyncrasies and quickly pivoting to a utopian salvation kinda soils the darker undercurrent Bong was going for. That scene toed the line between farce and drama, but the subsequent scene's farce destroyed its value for me.

Again, this felt like a first draft. I think you're onto something critical there, even if Bong failed to glue the pieces together to hammer home his point. The movie is just a mess at trying and failing to balance various tones throughout its runtime - it's exhausting and antithetical to the auteur's thematic intentions.

I think I may just give up on Bong. As far as I'm concerned his high point was Barking Dogs....Host was the last film I really liked a lot, though Mother had its good points. After that, nothing "essential".

Michael Kerpan wrote: Mon Mar 10, 2025 6:30 pm I think I may just give up on Bong. As far as I'm concerned his high point was Barking Dogs....Host was the last film I really liked a lot, though Mother had its good points. After that, nothing "essential".

Barking Dogs is easily my favorite of his catalog thus far, too. Up with Burn After Reading as the most nihilistic comedy I’ve ever seen

Mother was the last film of his I loved. I'm going to pass on this one, too. Snowpiercer was so dire on a revisit years ago that i haven't bothered with Okja, and Mickey 17 being described as Gilliam-nesque is a turnoff, not a recommendation to me. Hopefully he's now got the sci-fi satires out of his system though I'm on the record for not liking Parasite either.

This is already going to streaming on March 25th: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers ... streaming/

As someone who is a fan of Pattison, likes Snow Piercer, and though Okja, while flawed, still had its moments, I'm hoping to to enjoy this.

I think this is a fun time that just doesn’t go all the way in what it’s trying to say. The last 15 minutes after a certain someone dies could’ve been cut completely. It doesn’t justify it’s runtime with scenes that make it worth but I still had a lottttt of fun watching.

The entire Stephen Yeun character subplot could have been completely cut and at the very least the pacing of the film would have improved. His character served zero purpose or value to the film.

The thing to me was that the last third of it is just the plot of

Spoiler

Starship Troopers.

I was already getting heavy 90s sci-fi vibes, Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette's performances felt like callbacks to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and then the hard switch from digging into the metaphor of expendables as the ultimate surplus value to doing something that felt like such a knockoff was just disappointing. I'm surprised Bong was battling for final cut here because it feels like a film that's trying too hard to please.

Finch -- I finally (for now, barring some radical change in Bong's direction) gave up on Bong with Parasite -- which I truly hated.

therewillbeblus' take earlier in this thread is spot-on. One could easily make a solid 95-minute movie out of this by cutting whole sections of the film with Yeun's and Vartolomei's characters and plot lines and omitting the slack parts of the third act. It would still wallow in the lower depths of Bong's filmography, but at least it wouldn't be so boring. And that's its worst sin—not being outright bad like Okja but just being boring. Thank goodness we have Pattinson giving his usual totally committed performance.

The barometer for Bong films being good seems to be "does someone in the film wear prosthetic teeth?" If yes, it's bad. If that someone is Tilda Swinton, it's double bad.