Warning, today's episode contains spoilers for Bong June Ho's latest film, Mickey seventeen in theaters now. Hello, my name is Jason Cepsion and I'm Rosie Night and welcome back to x Ray Vision of the podcast where we dive deep bit to your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. Coming to you for my Art podcast, where we're bringing you three huge episodes a week plus news.
In today's episode, we are talking Bong June hose Mickey seventeen, which was released over the weekend. You're gonna get our reactions, a little recap, and then after our review, Karen Hahn, the author of Boon June Hoe, Dissident Cinema and General Film Legend, joins us to discuss the director's career and how his latest project shapes his legacy.
But first let's talk about Mickey seventeen. Okay, Mickey seventeen. Here's the quick recap, and then we can give our reactions. Mickey barnes a naive kind of go along to get along. Poor kid from Earth and his much more confident, much more aggressive friend Berto fall under the thumb of the world's scariest loan shark. In order to escape him, they decide to sign up with a fateful mission to another world.
This colony mission essentially is being run by former Congressman Ken Marshall, and they are going to the faraway ice
world of Nifflheim. Mickey joins up as an expendable, which is basically a member of the crew whose job it is to die all the time by being given the most hazardous jobs, like being exposed to radiation or breathing the air on the planet before anybody else to discover there's any pathogens in it, and when he inevitably dies, his consciousness is then loaded into a fresh three D printed body and he's ready to go and die again.
When we meet him, he's on the seventeenth version of himself and he's fallen into a gravass left by his supposed friend Burto it turns out is a huge dick and like he's used to dying, so it's not gonna be a big deal. Right to Mickey, it's a big deal every single time. But the huge hairy pillbug like inhabitants of the planet that seem ready to eat him instead rescue him, depositing him on the surface of the planet, and when Mickey returns to the ship, he discovers they've
already printed out at eighteen. Now, this is a big no no and is strictly outlawed on Earth. In fact, all three D human printing is outlawed on Earth, but it's okay in Spain under the laws of the mission. In the event of multiple what they call multiples, which is the thing that's happening now there are two versions of the same person that are running around. All versions are to be destroyed, including the memory uploads, so just erase everything. Eighteen is the much more prone to violence,
much more aggressive, kind of like the angry side of Mickey. Meanwhile, Ken Marshall and his wife Gwen are absolutely deranged ideologues whose plan is to create a pure white colony basically anytime, and they're not shying away. They're not shying away from it, and they don't really lay out the details, but it does certainly seem like this will involve a harem around mister Marshall. Marshall has a baby pillbug on the ship
that he's running experiments on. Gwen wants to make sauces out of their tails, and true, that's the actual detail in the movie, and meanwhile on the planet, the rest of the herd are extremely distressed at the capture of one of their own, and they begin to surround the ship. Marshall puts Mickey seventeen and eighteen and explosive vests and tells them go out there amongst the herds and see how many tales you can cut off for Gwen's sauces,
and the winner will not be blown up. Instead, seventeen and eighteen talk to the herd mother, who tells them that unless they return the baby and kill one of their own human crew members as recompense for one of the dead pill babies that the humans killed, she and the herd will blow up everyone's brains and eyes by screaming really, really loud, which is a thing that they seem like they are capable of doing. In the end, the baby is saved, Marshall is blown up by eighteen
with his explosive suicide vest. Essentially, Gwen kills herself out of sorrow and despair at losing control of the mission. Three D printing on the colony is outlawed, and the colony lives in peace with the bugs. Yes end of movie.
End of movie. I will say I love this movie. I thought it was so fun. I thought it was classic weird bong, which I love. If you like Okja, you like snow Piercer, this is definitely in that vein. It still has a lot of the political kind of residence of a lot of his movies. The commentary here is directly on the nose, and there are some moments that me and Jason were like, I mean, did they go back and add this in because it's so specific
to what has occurred. I loved Rob's I love Robert Pattinson's performance in this movie.
This is a really it's two performances, yeah, one, and he's just wonderful. I was saying to you, Rosie at the screening, like, at some point, need to do maybe an episode just on his choices, because this guy has made since Twilight, has clearly decided to issue like popular stardom and just do like the weirdest, most interesting roles he can come up. But then this is one of them.
This is definitely one of them. I thought the way that Mickey seventeen and eighteen are differentiated and the way that Rob plays eighteen was so different from anything that we've seen. I also am a big Naomi Akistan, so I have been ever since Lady Macbeth. I think she's fantastic and I thought she killed it here as Nasha, who's kind of the girlfriend slash real hero. She's very
much in that kind of Ripley esque vein. She's an elite agent who falls in love with Mickey, and there's a lot of really hilarious kind of I guess, like crude humor about their relationship, and there's a great moment. I love the moment where she realizes there are two Mickeys and she's like, hey, can we have a three
for everybody? Which I thought was so fun. Yeah, I just I really enjoyed this movie, and I'm I'm really excited for other people to see it because I do think it's very different from Parasite, but there is so much to love and this is like any It's it's not in the same vein, but you know what, Parasite has a real dark humor to it, and I think that is still here. Also, sometimes when times are rough, you don't need something subtle. You need something that's like
hitting people over the head with a shovel. And also gotta shout out here Tony Collette is so funny as the wife of the even funnier Mark Ruffalo who plays Ken Marshall. And I also love how much of Bong's veganism is like such a massive part of this movie. Same with Okja, but like in this movie, like I was really getting grossed out and kind of interested in the obsession that the Tony Collett character has with her sources. It's really it's like you've got to get the right
amount of ballarred in this source. And I was thinking, like, oh, this is probably how Bong just sees like every single me who talks about this stuff.
There's so many there's so many classic Bonk themes that you know, there's no Bonng movie that does not deal in some way with like the rapaciousness of capitalism, claw and control class hierarchical systems in general. This one certainly doesn't colonial things, certainly that those are dealt with here, but in a much more like et like.
Way with definitely gone weird Amblin vibes. Even though yeah, grotesque.
I will say that to your point of this being like very on the nose, to those who will see this movie, you will you will recognize the Ken Marshall ruined, you know, but somehow still successful businessmen, dirty politician, no longer in politics, but still you know, like lusting for power who every night has his own television show that hears live on the ship. You will recognize this person.
I will say that, like, this is the most part of this movie, and part of the message of this movie is very much like, hey, just kill that guy killing and then live in peace with the with the with the bugs and living together. So there's this is a very uh, this is a very cathartic and good feeling film and has none of the kind of ending. It's almost as if Bong was like, hey, guys, you're gonna need a happy ending after right now, and so the movie it gives you an unambiguous happy Yeah.
They begin in a dystopian situation where you know, you're talking about the exploitation of labor workers, you're talking about the idea of essentially being able to print out people specifically to do hard jobs and die. That stuff will feels really resonant. But then also because of who Bong is,
he manages to make it funny and relatable. And then yeah, at the end, they end up in a more utopian situation where Nasha played by Naomi Aki, it kind of retakes control of the council that makes the decisions about colonies. She blows up, She gets Mickey to blow up the three D printer so that they stop printing humans. And yeah, and Bong says, Hey, maybe if that person died, you'd
just be able to do this. There would be opportunity for a black woman to run this beautiful space expedition if it wasn't run by like an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. But Mark Ruffalo, you killed it in this role, my friend. It's like it's just enough scenery chewing and not an impression of who it is obviously meant to be about, and is instead kind of this It's almost like a mixture of different kinds of
terrible political figures. And I honestly just loved it. And I'm so so excited for our discode to see I'm excited for the super producers to see it. Adam so excited to talk to Karen about it. Off to this break.
Yeah, we're delighted now to be joined by Karen Hann, a screenwriter and cultural critic living in Los Angeles, who wrote the book on Bong Juno titled Dissident Cinema. Karen, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to be here to chat with you.
Well, first, let's some your thoughts on Mickey seventeen.
I really loved it. I don't think that's going to be a surprise to anybody who knows me, Like, obviously I'm very in the bag for this movie, but I thought it was just it's such a big swing, which is I think what I love from him, Like he's always doing something that you're not necessarily expecting from any given movie, and especially in this case, Like I think the immediate categorization you'd put this in is like America
and sci fi blockbuster. But at the same time, there's so many things to me that really stand out as not necessarily blockbuster e or like even a little Korean like in the way that the movie has been made, and so it's a really unique piece for me, and also like a showcase for some really really incredible performances.
Yeah, unbelievable performances from Was there anything that really surprised you when it came to those performances because it's an incredible cast and director Bong is known for getting really brilliant performances from actors from around the globe. But the you was there one that stood out or felt a little bit different?
I would say, I think there are kind of two big performance aspects that stood out to me. I know you said, what.
Please go great, I didn't want to put you on the spot. Tell us as many as you like.
The first one being obviously you have these dual performances, or at least dual performances from Robert Pattinson. And it's not just the fact of him being such a brilliant actor that he can make these two Mickeys so distinct even when he's like on the same screen, but also the way that that character is written, where like the scenes, the multiple scenes where Micky eighteene's like this situation is
so nuts, what did you do? And Mickey Seventeen's like, I didn't do anything, and Micky eighteen getting mad at him, Like I think so many of us have kind of had that kind of response to our within ourselves, which is one of the beautiful things about The Mickeys, which is it ultimately is one person it's just these different facets that are being brought out by the different copies, and like everyone has had that moment where you're out and something sort of upsetting happens to you, but you
don't do anything in the moment, and then later you're like, oh, like I should have said this or I should have done that. But then another standout for me in particular was Mark Ruffalo's performance as Kenneth Marshall. I think in talking to other friends who've seen this movie, the comparison, the immediate comparison point is like what Jake John Hall was doing in Oakja, which was I think very polarizing. Some people really liked it, some people really did not
like it. I am pro Jake Jolen Hall and Oacha, and I'm also very pro Mark Ruffle in this, and I think in particular in this in orc Ja, Jake Joleen Hall has given the opportunity to go through kind of a bigger gamut of emotions than you necessarily think when you see that character in public, and the same kind of goes for me for Kenneth Marshall, like not to I guess we'll get into spoilers eventually, but at the end of the film when he has that really
short bargaining moment with Mickey eighteen and he sort of says like, we're both scared. Like that's such a small and really intense moment that you don't think will come to it from a character that's so overboard.
Now, having seen Mickey, I wonder again, having written the book on Vong, what do you see in it that ties it to the rest of Bong's work? How do you classify his work? What do you see as the themes that this director is fascinated with.
I think the really easy one to call out is like themes of socioeconomic disparity and like kind of class warfare, which is very, very prevalent in Mickey, where like he goes on this expedition because he has no other option. He'll literally be killed if he stays on earth because
he can't pay back this loan. And then the life that he ends up living is one that everyone kind of looks down on and thinks is horrible because it is he has to die over and over again, but that's the only option that's available to him within the system that he's in. And obviously I think like looking at Parasite which probably is his most seen film at
this point, Like, that's all that movie's about. It's about the way that we move within the class structures that have been set for us and how we deal with it.
And it fits into that pretty neatly, as well as fitting into his pensiant for really bouncing around in tone and genre, like there's not really one word that you can use to some up Mickey seventeen or any of his movies really, And then I think the other big thing is it sort of if anything, it's it's almost closest to snow Piercer in a way, like not just because that's another English language film of his, but because that's I think the only other one of his films
where the end result is, oh, we had to completely dismantle the structure that we were living in in order to make it better or more livable, whereas the others, I think because they are taking place in a more quote unquote like realistic setting, like Parasite is in our contemporary society, arguably in which case, like those characters cannot meaningfully affect change in the way that they might want to.
What was your entry point into his films? What was your first memory of watching a film by direct Bong and being like, Oh, this is someone whose work is really speaking to me.
The first thing that I saw was The Host on home video, I think like maybe a year or so, like after it had come out in theaters, and I remember being so shocked and kind of so traumatized in the food that I saw it, because It's so unlike any other monster movie that I'd seen, and also especially like the death of the Grandpa in that movie was so so striking to me in the way that it was executed and shot. What about both of you?
Who? Oh god? I think I think for me, I think I did see The Host first, and I really liked it. But I remember the first time I watched Memories of Murder Yeah, and just feeling like, oh wow, like that's the kind of movie that made me feel like electrified, you know. I immediately wanted to watch more of his movies and just discover Also when I was growing up, Mother was like such a cult kind of everyone was like you've got to watch this, yeah, like
you won't believe this movie. And then from then on, I mean, hilariously, I think now it's hard to pick a favorite, but I do just love Oakja so much. For me, I think, like Mickey seventeen feels so akin to Oakture that it's been really really great for me for my friends to be texting me going, oh wow, this is like so different from Parasite. What should I
watch next? And I'm like, go watch Joke Snoopy obviously, but yeah, I think for me it was that kind of double bill of the Host and then Memories of Murder and being like, oh wow, this is so eclectic, Like I don't know any other director who the first two movies I've watched are so different.
Yeah, it was The Host for me. It was the first one that I saw, although I'll admit that I was not. I thought it was a great movie and very fun. I didn't think that did he had the depth that would come to the four through. I mean really, oak Joe was where I was like, oh, there's something more here. Snow Puercer I enjoyed also, and then Parasite.
I saw his films in those in that order. Yeah, Parasite was really the movie where I understood that he had some very trenched things to say about the world that we live in, and he was saying them through these sometimes seemingly unrelated genre films in a really interesting way. So yeah, the host the host because it was like, hey, hey, monster movie, let's go see this fun monster movie.
Yeah. That was also, I guess, like the first movie that kind of made it overseas.
Yes, Yeah, I think that that's a really great kind of unifying thing between the three of us because it says a lot about Bong's work where it's like they're like, oh, it's a monster movie. You can release this around the world, but then people stop rewatching it and they're like, wait a minute, this is actually like incredibly deep. But yeah, themes of family and how hard it is to be a parent and how hard it is to be a kid, and kind of the ways that people react to disasters.
And I think it's kind of funny because I remember when Parasite was kind of before we'd seen it and the general public had seen it, and the kind of buzz coming from people who weren't you. Karen, who understood his work was like, Oh, it's a horror movie. Bong Juno's doing a horror movie. And I was like, oh,
that will be interesting. And then I was at the Beyond Fest screening which turned out to be like the kind of North American premiere ish that you were at, and I remember all me and my friends watched it and we were like, oh, it's not a horror movie. Like so it's kind of those interesting people don't really they still don't know where to place them, And I
think that's really interesting. What was it like for you as somebody who had seen Parasite and then I remember, you know, Bonghive really rising up after Can and everything. What was it like to be a part of the journey that that movie took kind of globally.
It was really shocking and even today my instinct, I feel like, is to downplay it where I'm like, there's
just no way that. Like, of course, social media worth of word of mouth is a big part of getting to get people to go see movies to a certain degree, but ultimately it's still not I don't know, it's just as much a part of the apparatus as like marketing or things like that, which I think, like the Neon team did such a good job with Parasite and also knowing that that was a movie that they could and should push right, which I think is it's not easy.
Like again, when I was watching the Oscars and Parasite won Best Director and Best Form Film, I was like, Oh, it's not going to get Best Picture because that's just so not the traditional narrative for a film that's not in English for a foreign language feature, and which made it seem just like all the more like a miracle when it did win Best Picture.
Researching your book, what did you learn about Bong's process to help us understand how he puts these, how he decides what project to do next, how he spins up production, the writing process, etc.
I guess, obviously not to speak for him, but in the different stories that I found about where various films came from, it seems kind of like everything comes from a very pure storytelling level, like there has to be some really brilliant seed to germinate these amazing ideas. Like Mother, for instance, that came about because of Kim Hitcha, the main actress in it. He knew of her because everyone
in Seth, Korea did at that time. Everyone knew of her and had this image of her as like the ideal Korean mother, like this very warm maternal image, and he was like, well, what can I do exactly? And in that case, it's like that movie was for her. If she'd said no, He said that he wouldn't have gone forward with the film. That was kind of it.
Whereas stuff like Barking Dogs and Every Bite his first film, he was just like, this was just born out of like stuff that kind of had happened around me, my personal experiences, as much as Parasite was because he's talked about being a tutor for a rich family and how strange that experience was. And in Barking Dogs, Never Bite like that, I think he said it was filmed like in his brother's apartment complex or something like that, Like
it was based on experiences that occurred around him. Whereas then you have SNOWPERI, certain Miki seventeen, which are based on pre existing materials, but like in both in the adaptation process, have been spun into kind of very different things.
Do you have obviously, is there one movie by director Bong right now that feels like the closest to your heart or that is your kind of favorite, because I know that stuff shifts and changes, but coming out of the book and in this new era where he has a new, you know, wide release film, is there one that particularly stands out to you as your favor.
I feel like the answer always sort of shifts, like and ebbs and flows, But the host is someone that I keep coming back to because it was the first one and for me, is so emblematic of the things that he can do as a filmmaker. But as I've as the years of past, I think about Mother more and more. I think like, because I feel like it's sort of maybe you would agree with this, and one of the most underrated of his films, like just it's kind of underseen in his overall works, and yet is
I think one of the biggest impact pieces. Like when I watch it, I kind of have to just sit for a while and not do anything else or find a different way to decompress because it is so intense and so striking.
Well, Ken, thank you so much for joining us.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, it was a joy. Feel free to come back anytime. Talk about Bongo anything else, please, I would love to.
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