Pop Culture Happy Hour - Mickey 17 And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Mickey 17 is writer-director Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning film Parasite. In the sharply satirical sci-fi film, Robert Pattinson is a manual laborer on a spaceship who just keeps dying. But then he gets reprinted – his memories get downloaded into a new body. What could go wrong? The film also stars Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, and Naomi Ackie.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture.To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Mickey 17 is writer-director Bong Joon's follow-up to Parasite, which won him a raft of Oscars back in 2020, including Best Picture and Best Director. It stars Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, and Tony Collette. In this sharply satirical sci-fi film, Pattinson is a manual laborer on a spaceship who just keeps dying. But each time, he also gets reprinted. His memories get downloaded into a new body. What could go wrong? I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Mickey's,

17 on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Jeff Yang. He's a cultural critic and author of The Golden Screen, the movies that made Asian America. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Glenn. Hey, Aisha. Hey. Also with us is Kristen Mineser. She co-host The Daily Fail, a podcast that does comedic close readings of the tabloid.

Hey, Kristen. Hey, thanks for having me back. Of course. So let's get to it. In the future, a spaceship bound for a remote ice planet is loaded with folks loyal to a failed politician played by Mark Ruffalo and some disturbingly white veneers. He runs the ship with his wife, a diehard foodie, played by Tony Colette, and together they hope to found a space colony. Helping them in this endeavor is Robert Pattinson's Mickey 17, an anxious, traumatized pastry chef,

so desperate to escape a violent lone shark on Earth that he agrees to sign on as an expendable, a worker who does dangerous jobs for the ship. If he dies, he just gets reprinted into a new body. and die he does, like, a lot. When we meet him, Mickey's on his 17th body. The best thing about his miserable existence is his relationship with Nasha, one of the ship's space cops. She's played by Naomi Acky.

Complicating the mission to colonize the planet are the planet's indigenous life forms. They're kind of a cross between a pill bug and a yak. Mickey 17 is in theaters now. Jeff, kick us off. What'd you make of this? Very hard to make a movie. Well, okay. I loved it, but admittedly, I love anything that Bong Joon Ho breathes on.

So if you're the same, I mean, you're going to absolutely love this film because it's kind of this super convergence of themes and ideas and even plot devices that he's explored in the host and Oakjaw and Snowpiercer and Parasite. I mean, you can almost hear Bong shouting in the background, like, assemble Voltron, right? And it's full of all these little details that Bong is so good at. Like, I mean, I just obsess over this because it actually did cause the entire audience to burst out laughing. The human printer that pumps out Mickey clones, how it kind of advances and then pulls back a little bit, you know, just like printers do. So it's such a hilarious detail for me. And I watched it twice and I actually enjoyed it even more the second time. All right.

Aisha, how about you? I'm also a big Bong Joon Ho fan. And like Jeff said, it's got something for every one of his fans. It's all mixed in there. I especially think that Robert Pattinson here is doing such an interesting, an interesting job, especially because he has a very, very thick accent here. I think he said he was inspired by Steve Bouchemey's character in Fargo, but I was getting a lot of like the Ray Leota, Henry Hill character and Goodfellas.

Like it's funny, it's quirky, but then he has this like weird kind of, I don't know, American accent in a way. I think he does a really good job of sort of conveying the themes that this movie is exploring, especially around this idea of death and being afraid of death and wondering what death may feel like. So overall, I found it very enjoyable. I feel like the first act and this setup is much stronger and then it kind of loses. It kind of lost me in the second half. But visually, it's stunning and I think people are going to overall really enjoy this.

Okay. Thank you very much. Kristen, you were nodding your head. when Aisha was mentioning the third act, a little pillbug tells me you may be weren't as hot on this as we were. Well, first, I just want to preface this by saying, I usually do like Bong Joon Ho's work quite a bit. I do. But this one, it was too long.

It was too heavy-handed. And at the same time, it was heavy-handed. It was very imprecise because it was trying to say so much against oligarchs, against entertainers as rulers, against white supremacy, against colonization, against class stratification against treating the lowest among us as disposable. Again and again and again, I could go on and on and on. You know, we all know his greatest hits of things that he's fighting against. And he's trying to fight against all of them all at the same time in this movie.

And it just feels like it's all over the place, unfortunately. And Aisha, I'm so sorry, I have to disagree with you about Robert Pattinson's performance in this. That's fair. We're friends here. It will polarize. Okay, I know you're a Disney adult. So maybe this is part of. of it, but I felt like he was playing like Forrest Gump through the lens of a scared Mickey Mouse

through most of this. Oh, interesting. That is a very precise critique. That is a visual. I just had a very different take of things. I need to know Glenn what you thought of this. Okay. I hear what you're saying, Kristen, I really am because I love this film.

But I agree it is shaggy, it is messy, it is chaotic. And it does synthesize a lot of the themes in satiric targets. he's played with before. You see a lot of Oakjaw and Snowpiercer mostly. But I've seen all this stuff. But I was coming out of Parasite. Yeah. I love Parasite,

but there's something kind of cold and surgical and precise about Parasite. That film felt like a steel trap. This feels like a pair of fuzzy handcuffs. You know what I mean? It's just, it's big, right? It's over the top. It's sci-fi farce, which means there are some slapstick elements. Some work.

Some don't. Big performances. I think they all worked. I think tonally, this doesn't really hang together. in the same way the parasite does because it's all hanging from the same kind of narrative infrastructure. It feels kind of smushed together. And in interviews, Tony Colette has said that Bong Joon Ho kept saying to her and to Mark Ruffalo, okay, just think of it like you're in a different movie.

And I was like, well, that story checks out. There we go. That explains at least some of it. Mission accomplished. Yeah, but the interesting thing is that Bong Joon Ho famously does not shoot what's called coverage, right? doesn't shoot the entire scene and then go in and do mini shots just to make sure. It's called coverage because you're covering your butt. You want to make sure you have the shots you want when you get into the editing room and can kind of basically recreate the scene from scratch.

He storyboards completely thoroughly every single shot, every moment. He only shoots what he knows he's going to need, which is why it's so hard for me to figure out. And that's very hard for actors, by the way, because you were shooting in tiny increments, you know, shot by shot. You're not getting this kind of holistic sense that a lot of stage actors, kind of need. But given that kind of level of precision, I am amazed that this film feels as, I think, I liked the kind of looseness, the shagginess, the weirdness, the organic quality of it. I'm amazed at how he got there using that technique, but he got there for me.

Because Bong shoots that way, it both complicates, I think, the central performance in this and also really underscores what a tour to force it is. Like, Robert Pattinson is playing a double role, and he's doing so in a way where there isn't a lot of margin for error. And frankly, I kind of love this for him just because as goofy and weird and over the top as his performance is, like, he's very clearly on his Daniel Radcliffe arc right now. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, it's just, it's so impressive how committed he is to these roles, right, in all their absurdity and contrasting demands. I did wonder about the Naomi-Aki character because she is a cop at the beginning of the film. And then like, I don't know.

think it's a spoiler to say, like, eventually she finds her way onto the other side of the resistance. But, like, I don't know if that arc quite worked for me. And that's, I think, Kristen, to your point, where things got a little bit to kind of, the tentacles were kind of in all these different directions and not really landing on a strong enough point for me in terms of, like, what are we trying to say here? Yes, obviously, the Mark Ruffalo character is, he's bad. And he's, weirdly, he looks like Desi or Naz now. Sure. But he's giving Trump meets Elon meets Bezos and all these other things.

At one point we see that his character, Kenneth Marshall, also has his own late night talk show. He's like giving this like very, very broad performance. And I really enjoyed that broad performance in the first half. Like it doesn't hang together for me. And when I think about this and compared to something like the host, which like I recently watched for the first time somehow, look, the CGI effects, we've come a long way, baby. Like this monster here, these creepers in Mickey 17 are like actually kind of like cute but ugly. Like, you know, and very, very well drawn.

And then the monster and the host, obviously, because it's like, you know, the mid 2000s. It looks like the mid 2000s. But I feel like that movie in a way worked for me better in terms of having the slap. There are slapstick moments. There are terrifying moments. But it also like settles at the end in a way that's very profound and not a quite happy ending. And it balances those. and the politics around this virus that is coming and like it balanced all those things in a way that I couldn't quite wrap my hands around with Mickey 17.

And maybe to your point, Jeff, like, I need to go back and rewatch this again and maybe it'll hang together a little bit better. But I don't know. Kristen, is that kind of where you were at with this too? Yeah. And I also want to make clear, I went into this very hopeful. Oh, yeah. Not just because I like Bongchunho, but I thought the trailers looked fantastic. I love the premise of it.

And if they would have really just stuck with what you liked about the first third of the movie, Aisha, focusing on Mickey and his humanity and what does it mean to be disposable. I think if they would have stuck with those kinds of themes, it would have been a much better movie. Instead, it just goes wild and all over the place. And as the movie goes on, Mark Ruffalo's character gets more and more ridiculous, almost like he's on a children's TV show on Nickelodeon or something. It's like a different universe he's in, which apparently he was directed to do that. But I thought those creepers were so cute. I agree with you. They were so cute, but also kind of gross.

They look like tardigrades, like big, cuddly tardigrades. Like, if I am laying in a crevasse and one of those wants to crawl on top of me, I would welcome that. I would let them eat me. I'm okay with that. My meat is good. I just wanted to top off the conversation on Ruffalo's performance because I think it's clearly going to be divisive in a lot of ways. And not just because the performance. itself is so broad. I mean, he's chewing all the scenery around him, like, you know, just eating

every piece of facade around him. But there's something kind of amazing that Bong decided to craft this performance. There are just bits and pieces that pop up in the course of the film that stagger me a little bit. Like, they feel weirdly prescient. I think there are going to be people who take the political interpretation of this and decide to get very, you know, and decide to get very angry about it. And that's totally fine because in many ways, that's sort of, to me, what science fiction does so well. It allows us to talk about issues that are provocative in the real world and that maybe, I don't know, mainstream media, news media does not really want to tangle with and bring them into the surface and force people to have conversations about it.

Well, Bongchunho knows what he's doing, right? Like Kenneth Marshall's accolites wear red hats and shirts that say one and only. But also clearly, like, you do wonder, Did the director think like we were going to be in a different time now? Because, again, the premise of this is that Kenneth Marshall's campaign failed. And so now he's taking everyone with him to colonize a new planet. And that's clearly not the reality we live in right now. Mark Ruffalo has said he wasn't sure about taking this role because he's never played any role like this before. And I didn't know what to do.

Well, apparently he didn't see poor things where you're paying. I was going to say, he's on a streak right now. Exactly. This is the next phase of Mark Ruffalo, puffed up. blow hard. Also in the cut? Yep, absolutely. I loved Patinson in this only because I love it when an actor with leading man bone structure and cheekbones gets to give a character actor performance. And here he gets to give two. And Kristen, to your point, that thin, reedy voice, that very wounded aspect, that's close to the line for me. And like, he was a little annoying. But this is why

I think as good as Patinson is, I love Naomi Acky in this. And I'm going to stick up for Nasha the space cop because I love what Bong Joon Ho is doing with her because she is so much more confident and charismatic and strong than Mickey is. And it's not a coincidence that we get a few shots of her going off to work while he waves goodbye from the apartment door. I mean, Mickey 17, right, is coded as sensitive and empathetic to the creatures on the planet, which is to say playing the historically feminine role, Nasha is coded more masculine. And I'm like, I want to see more relationships like this on screen. I love this. She goes for it just as strong as Patinson goes for it. She it's a scene where she could, toward the end of the film where she curses somebody out,

and it's a very funny instance of cursing somebody out. And if you're going for it as hard as Pattinson as that is saying something, because that guy does not hold back. I also just want to second what you're saying about Naomi Acky. I think she does a great job in this role. She brings a lot of nuance. In a lot of ways, she's the only real three-dimensional character of this whole movie, because the other ones are kind of caricatures,

and in some cases, not kind of. but just full-blown caricatures. But she's a fully formed character. And at certain points wondered, why is she even with Mickey 17? Well, I think that's the fun thing. At times it almost felt like she's dating a child. And she is so fully formed. He's kind of hot, though.

Yes, yes. I mean, I do think that Naomi Akis character made it feel like Bong expected that we'd be having like a black woman president about now, you know? Yes. So there is some sense of that for sure. Yeah. I mean, look, I think Naomiaki is great in this. I just kind of wish, it felt like, of course the black woman's going to be like the one who kind of really actually saves the plan. Or like at least saves like the like sloths everything.

I both appreciated and also just wanted a little bit more, I don't know, character development, not in her depiction of the character, but in just like what we know about her. But we also don't really know much about any of these characters. Like, even Mickey 17, we get like one sort of a little flashback to suggest why he feels like he can be an expendable. We get like two, a couple, but like one to his childhood. And I don't know, I kind of wanted a little bit more of that. Well, to Kristen's point, Nasha is a 3D character and Mickey is 3D printed. So it's not the same thing. I have a tone question for you all because Mickey dies a lot.

one of the points he makes in the film that the film makes over and over again is that it is always terrible, it's always scary, it's always painful, even if he knows he's coming back. And those deaths are played for laughs, but they're also legit horrifying. I was thinking back to a film we saw recently called The Monkey, another film with the deaths are played all for laughs. And while I found that film and its approach to those deaths kind of cynical and thin and cartoonish, I was so invested in Mickey. I felt for him. So what is, you? And it's approach to those deaths kind of cynical and thin and cartoonish, I was so invested in Mickey. I felt for him. So what is, What is Bong Joon Ho doing to keep this film from feeling cynical arch thin? I mean, I think a lot of it, honestly, is Robert Pattinson and how he is able to, again, that commitment he invests in the role where you feel that urgency, that sense of like, this life as thin and small as it is is something that I cherish. And I actually do feel like the disregard people have for the Mickey's, right? the more we actually see that, the more I felt empathetic towards him, especially as he became resigned increasingly to death. And an example of how sometimes when you play things against expectation, where we have somebody who's just sort of saying, all right, here I am, dying again. And yet seeing it again and again should make us feel near to it, it almost, I think, amplifies our sense of sadness and horror and what he's losing. That's the sense I got, too, yeah.

think that's so crucial is the fact that the Mickey character is a literal space skinny pig. And they're like, okay, you're going to go step outside now and you're going to take off your mask and then you've got to tell us everything that's happening, especially, especially the moment you die. And it's just so matter of fact to them and very callous in a way. And I think that callousness really makes you feel, like as an outsider looking and make you feel for the Mickey character. And can you really become immune to dying over and over again? Again, goes to all of sort of Bong Joon Ho's, his films, and how he's always trying to reach for humanity in ways,

even in the most, like, bleakest of situations. The humanity that Mickey brings to things versus the callousness he's treated with is really, it's really demonstrated so much by the fact that he's not treated like a human ever in this movie by anybody except his girlfriend. He is treated like a freak or really just an object that, you know, is printed out. And so it doesn't matter. Oh, he's in the crevasse. Oh, it's going to take a lot of work to pull him out of the crevasse.

Let's just print out a new one as he lays there freezing to death. The rope only goes this far. Yes. The rope only goes this far. Yeah. And moments like that where it's like it's really the equivalent of me dropping a hair tie on the ground. Like, oops, oh, well, I'll just get another one out of the drawer. It's fine.

And then to hear his heartache being left behind like, oh. okay, I guess that's fine. I understand. And that is heartbreaking. I do feel like this is a movie we need for this moment. Science fiction is a bit of a safe zone to address provocative and controversial stuff. And these are topics and issues that are being treated as third rails in reality in many ways. You know, we're in a world where expendability is a very big thing that we should contend with. and a lot of the expendables don't look like Robert Pattinson, you right? So I'm hoping this movie does prompt serious conversations.

And at the same time, look, I also hope people just watch this because it's a fun as hell sort of space escapade that happens to deal with some very big existential issues. Here, here. Here, here. I mean, this is where we are in 2025. The subject of empathy is the subject of a science fiction film. Basic empathy toward other humans and to other creatures on the planet. Like, let's make that. Let's take that into the realm of sci-fi.

Well, tell us what you think about Mickey 17. Are you a Kristen? Are you a Jeff? Are you Miranda? Are you a Carrie? Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH. And on Letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description.

Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this weekend every week. What is making us happy this week? Kristen, kick us off. What's making you happy this week? Nobody at home can see this, but hopefully you all can. Dolly! This is Dolly Parton's behind the seams.

My Life in Rhinestones. Our beloved Dolly sadly lost her husband this week after 60 years. And I took that as a chance to reread this book while listening to it. And I highly recommend that's how people consume this book. It gave me that book on tape experience I had as a little child, paging through picture books while listening to the story. story. This book in particular works so well that way because the book is so visual. There are hundreds of costumes. Dolly tells the story of several of the costumes. She talks with her

stylist, with her designers, with her costume archivist. And the conversations are so delightful when you get to hear them while looking at the images. You can hear Dolly giggling at points. I highly recommend simultaneously reading with your eyes and listening with your ears to behind In the Seams, My Life and Rhinestones by Dolly Parton. That's a great pick. And also a great title. What a great title. Jeff, what is making you happy this week, sir?

I'm just going to say it, Reacher is making me happy. It's just a joy to watch Alan Richson, this human iceberg crashing through bad guys and doing things that are just like ridiculous for people his size to do, like capering around on windowsills. He's basically like this rectangular justice machine, sort of the human sponge bob. The sponge bob were made of like solid rippling muscle, right? And he's kind of become an anchor for me in a world that is constantly being rocked by tsunamis. That's another great pick. That's Reacher streaming on Prime Video. And we should note that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content.

Aisha, what is making you happy this week? Well, if you are like me and you love Mariah Carey, but, look, Mariah's been busy. She's been busy mostly promoting her Christmas song. That's 30-plus years old now. And she's not making as much new music as I would like. So instead, I have recently discovered a newish artist named Semma. She's a London-based singer-songwriter who gives so many Mariah Carey vibes, but puts her own spin on it.

Her 2019 EP Ribbons and Bowes is definitely worth checking out. It features a really great song called Bittersweet. Okay, I hear it. Yeah, you hear it, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of impossible not to hear it.

She is definitely playing into it as well. In 2024, she released two songs called Honeycomb and Salty. Now, Honeycomb, Honey, Mariah Carey. There's a lot of, like, great sonic warmth goodness going on here. And I just think she's so fun. And again, that's summer. And you should check out her 2019 EP, Ribbons and Bowes. Thank you so much, Aisha.

What's making me happy this week? Dredge is an indie game available on several platforms. You are a fisherman in an archipel. ago, you go out in your fishing trawler during the day to fish, you bring them back to port, you sell them, you upgrade your equipment, you go back out so you can go out further. Now, Aisha, I see your face. You're looking at me and you're saying, no, this sounds fun. You're saying to me, Glenn, are you seriously recommending a fishing simulator?

I am, however, it's clear from the jump that something is up because the creepy townsfolk keep warning you to return to dock before the fog rolls in at night, and if you are still out there at night, when the night comes on very swiftly, you start to see things in the You get disoriented, you start to panic. If you choose to risk it and stay out fishing at night, what you pull up is strange and sinister. It is creepy. It is fun. It's for anyone who ever read a perfect storm and thought, you know, this is fine.

But it really needs more unnameable Eldridge horror. That is Dredge, and it is available on several platforms. And that is what is making me happy this week. And we've got one last thing before we go. You heard us talk about Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus many times. this podcast and starting this weekend. We're going to be releasing monthly bonus episodes. These are going to be mailbag style in the first episode.

Steve and Linda answer the questions, what's more fun to discuss, something you love or something you hate? And do you like it when your feelings conflict with those of other hosts or panelists? Well, it's on today. So if you want to get these monthly bonus mailbag episodes, subscribe now to pop culture happy hour plus at plus.npr.npr.org slash happy. We'll also have a link. in our episode description.

That brings us to the end of our show. Kristen Mineser, Jeff Yang, Aisha Harris. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This has been so fun. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker and Lennon Sherburn

and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. And Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.