{"id":486563,"date":"2026-05-15T20:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T20:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486563\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T20:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T20:14:15","slug":"bong-joon-ho-on-the-lessons-he-learned-from-mickey-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486563\/","title":{"rendered":"Bong Joon Ho on the Lessons He Learned From ‘Mickey 17’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a lot of excitement around Mickey 17<\/a> before it finally, after some<\/a> release date shuffles<\/a>, arrived in theaters. Not only was the sci-fi epic Bong Joon Ho<\/a>\u2018s first film since his Oscar-winning triumph with Parasite, but it also starred Robert Pattinson and was based on Edward Ashton\u2019s best-selling novel. What could go wrong?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Bong, the question soon became, \u201cWhy wasn\u2019t Mickey 17 a much bigger hit?\u201d The reviews were generally positive, even with some heavy-handed themes<\/a> that winked at current events a little too obviously. But the movie underperformed at the box office and didn\u2019t seem to wow audiences as much as it could have.<\/p>\n

Over a year after Mickey 17\u2018s release, Variety<\/a> asked Bong about his experiences behind the scenes that may have contributed to that.<\/p>\n

Bong pointed out that while Mickey 17 wasn\u2019t his first English-language film, it was still \u201cmy first time working with a classic old Hollywood studio. In terms of the actual filmmaking and the mechanism of creating the film, I thought there weren\u2019t really any differences in the process. But because it had quite a big budget\u2014it was my first film that had a budget above $100 million\u2014I felt a lot of psychological, mental pressure. So I think naturally I\u2019m going to work on smaller films from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that pressure, though, Bong said he was still able to bring his vision to the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cDirector\u2019s final cut was part of my contract and everyone at the studio and at my agency tried their best to protect me. Of course, during post production, there was lots of discussions and a lot of opinions going back and forth, but it wasn\u2019t ever like someone was forcing something on me or giving me pressure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And to those who thought Mickey 17 sucked, he\u2019s aware you\u2019re out there\u2014and he has a self-deprecating way of dealing with it. \u201cLuckily, all my films have been released as my director\u2019s final cut, even a movie as big as Mickey 17, and all the good parts of that film and all the bad parts of that film came from me,\u201d he said. \u201cI take full responsibility. So shit on me if you didn\u2019t like it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a lot of excitement around Mickey 17 before it finally, after some release date shuffles, arrived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[88622,18,117,19,17,212441,327],"class_list":{"0":"post-486563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-bong-joon-ho","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-mickey-17","14":"tag-movies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116580428390193144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}