MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Say you're a director and your last movie won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and picked up a Golden Globe and then - icing on the cake - went on to win the Academy Award for best picture. How the heck do you follow that up? If you're Bong Joon-ho, the answer would be wait six years and then follow "Parasite," the South Korean juggernaut, with a dark comedy set in space. Bong Joon-ho is back. His new movie is "Mickey 17," starring Robert Pattinson as Mickey, a guy who fails in the macaroon business, heads to space to escape his loan shark and becomes an expendable.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MICKEY 17")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) How many times is this? You're Mickey 16?
ROBERT PATTINSON: (As Mickey Barnes) Seventeen, jerk. Eighteen after this one.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Well, it's nice knowing you. Have a nice death. See you tomorrow.
KELLY: Bong Joon-ho and his interpreter, Sharon Choi, are in our New York bureaus. Welcome.
BONG JOON-HO: Hello. Hi.
SHARON CHOI: Hi.
KELLY: Hi. Explain the whole concept of an expendable and how, by the time we meet him, we are on version 17 of Mickey.
BONG: (Through interpreter) So the number 17 indicates that Mickey has died 17 times. And we spend most of our time with the 17 iteration of Mickey. And he dies because it's his job to be an expendable, to go through these repeated deaths. He's sent out to do all these dangerous missions - usually fatal missions - and he can go through these multiple deaths because he is reprinted after each death. Yeah, so to put it simply, it's a movie where Robert Pattinson gets printed again and again.
KELLY: (Laughter) Yes, his body gets - I mean, I'll call it - it's 3D printed out, basically. His memory gets reuploaded, then we're on to the next version. What struck me is this is so weird and sad because he does keep being forced to die, and yet you also make it really funny. I mean, we're laughing as we're talking about this.
BONG: (Through interpreter) Yeah, it's very sad and funny, especially because the character that Robert Pattinson plays, he's kind of this, you know, guy who's too nice for his own good, gets into so many sort of unfortunate situations, but really tries hard to live out his life. And there are some mistakes that happened in the film. He ends up coming across the 18th iteration of himself. So Robert plays two different roles in this film, you can say. But unfortunately, 18 is a crazy nutjob.
Totally different.
KELLY: (Laughter) Yes, he is. So just setting aside the ethical questions for a moment - a practical question. How do you direct that? 'Cause as you said, you have Robert Pattinson, one actor, playing two characters on screen at the same time for much of this movie.
BONG: (Through interpreter) So finally, today, I get to reveal a very big secret that we've all been trying to keep hidden. Actually, Robert Pattinson is a twin, and his twin brother has been in hiding, and I was very lucky to be able to cast his twin brother for his screen debut.
So there is no VFX (laughter) for the two Pattinsons...
KELLY: (Laughter)
BONG: ...In the only one frame - is a very realistic approach. Thank you (laughter).
KELLY: Wait. I'm trying to figure out if you're actually kidding me.
BONG: (Laughter).
KELLY: This is - you're kidding me, right? Yes. OK.
BONG: (Through interpreter) Yes, so that was definitely a joke, and the VFX department worked very hard. But Rob also worked really hard to make sure the differences - the delicate differences between 17 and 18 really land on the screen. And especially because Mickey 18 goes through a transformation in the film, we also see many different sides of Mickey 18. So with Rob's amazing work and effort, we really get to see these very different characters.
KELLY: I kept - as I was watching all of the Mickeys dying and then coming back and doing another job and another mission and then dying and being reprinted, I kept thinking about the pandemic and about COVID and about real-life essential workers who were being asked to show up on site to do their jobs, often at great personal risk and for the benefit of the rest of us. Was any of that on your mind as you thought about expendables?
BONG: (Through interpreter) Yeah. So, as you said, Mickey goes through all these deaths in the film, and everyone is just like, well, you signed the contract. It's your job to die. We don't have to feel guilty about the fact that you are constantly going through these grueling deaths. And I think that really shows the cowardice of the society, the community and the system around him, where they all sort of make him do all these dangerous things and they really - they're able to relieve themselves from the guilt by saying, oh, that's just his job. There's a way they can justify it. But then you see sort of the creepers, the unique creatures in this film who operate through a totally opposite mechanism. And I think the contrast we see from the humans and the creepers is very important to this film.
KELLY: Just to help people visualize the creepers, they look to me like kind of cross between a giant roly-poly and a Snuffleupagus from "Sesame Street."
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: But they're really smart. Is that accurate?
BONG: (Laughter) "Sesame Street."
(Through interpreter) Yeah, I think people have been interpreting their look in many different ways. Some have pointed out the resemblance to roly-polies. But the creature designer and I, early on in the stage, we talked a lot about armadillos. And the - sort of the starting point, the genesis of the creepers' look, is actually croissants.
KELLY: (Laughter) I want to ask about "Mickey 17" and how it lines up - or doesn't - to your past work. I mentioned "Parasite" in the intro because it was such a huge success, both for critics and in the box office. "Mickey 17" seems very different. It's in English - all in English - not Korean, for starters. But do you find your films in conversation with each other? Are there callbacks here to your past work, things you're still playing with?
BONG: (Through interpreter) You know, at the bottom of all these films, I think, is a story about the human condition. You know, exploring questions of what does it mean to live a truly human life and how can we live a truly human life? I think that's the central question about the story of the young son in "Parasite" and also at the heart of a Mickey story. You know, he has this very extreme job, but he somehow tries to find a way to get treated like a proper human being, to live a truly human life. So in that sense, I think "Mickey 17" is also an extension of the questions that "Parasite" explores.
KELLY: I love that. Well, not to spoil the ending of "Mickey 17," but it is kind of a happy ending, which I was not expecting. What takeaway do you hope people will walk away with?
BONG: (Through interpreter). Yeah, a lot of people were quite surprised at the ending. I guess my endings have always been a bit unhappy. But making "Mickey 17," I sort of looked back on the characters that I dealt with before and kind of felt that I was quite, perhaps, overly harsh to them. And regardless of whether this ending is happy or sad, I just really wanted to prevent this character of Mickey Barnes from being destroyed. You know, he lives a very difficult life. Nothing is easy for him, but I just wanted to stop the world - this harsh world - from destroying this young man.
KELLY: Director Bong Joon-ho and his interpreter, Sharon Choi, talking about the new movie "Mickey 17." This was fun. Thank you both.
BONG: Thank you.
CHOI: Thank you.
BONG: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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