Only 34 days after Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy “Parasite” made history at the Academy Awards by becoming the first non-English film to ever win the Oscar for best picture, the world as he so searingly satirized it in his class conflict thriller shut down. As quickly as that win seemed primed to open countless doors for international cinema, the rapid spread of COVID-19 slammed those doors shut again. Days later, Donald Trump began to refer to COVID as “the Chinese virus,” a xenophobic and racist term that critics warned would contribute to the already rising numbers of hate crimes and racism against Asian American residents stateside and those of Asian descent globally. The number of Asian American hate crimes rose by 145% over the next year, while Trump’s foot-dragging response to the pandemic and xenophobic terminology had lethal ripples around the world that we’re still contending with today.
In Bong’s highly anticipated follow-up to his groundbreaking 2019 hit, the sensational Robert Pattinson vehicle “Mickey 17,” the South Korean writer-director is determined to keep all that horror at the front of your mind. Not that subtlety was ever one of Bong’s strong suits. “Mickey 17” is Bong’s first English-language film since 2017’s “Okja.” Like that movie about a girl who befriends a super pig being hunted by meat industry overlords — along with almost all of his other work — Bong is completely uninterested in the concept of subtext.
