Mickey 17 director Bong Joon-ho insists Mark Ruffalo's politician isn't based on Donald Trump
Bong Joon-ho insists that Mark Ruffalo's egomaniacal politician in 'Mickey 17' is not based on US president Donald Trump.
‘Mickey 17’ director Bong Joon-ho has insisted Mark Ruffalo’s antagonist was not based on Donald Trump.
The 55-year-old filmmaker addressed speculation that Ruffalo’s egomaniacal politician Kenneth Marshall was inspired by the US president, but Joon-ho has stressed the character was not based on Trump and was instead influenced by “a mix of many different politicians” and “dictators that we have seen throughout history.”
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the director said: “When we showed the film in Berlin and talked to people from many different countries, it seemed like people were projecting the most stressful political leader onto the character of Marshall.”
Joon-ho added Marshall’s wife Gwen - portrayed by Toni Collette - played as much a role in the movie as the dictator.
He explained: “They move as a couple.
“To me, that was quite important. So think about the Ceausescu couple from Romania and the Marcos couple from the Philippines.
“It's always very uncanny when dictators move as couples. It makes them even more ridiculous and more terrifying. And it's true love that [the characters] have.”
‘Mickey 17’ - which is an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel ‘Mickey7’ - follows Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) as he signs up to be an ‘expendable’, allowing himself to be endlessly cloned to carry out often-fatal tasks aboard a space expedition as Kenneth Marshall (Ruffalo) tries to colonise the ice world of Niflheim.
While ‘Mickey 17’ certainly has political undertones, the ‘Parasite’ filmmaker described the movie as more of a romantic flick between Pattinson's alter ego and Naomi Ackie’s Nasha.
The director said: “Although ‘Mickey 17’ has all these political layers, in the end, the story really revolves around this individual of Mickey.
“In the end, the story is: how does he manage to survive this horrible system and not get destroyed? How does he manage to protect himself? And that's why Nasha is so important for this film.
“ For me, the film is a love story.”
As well as a romance, Joon-ho also described ‘Mickey 17’ as a “very human sci-fi film”.
Speaking at a press conference in Seoul in January, the director said: “‘Mickey 17’ is a sci-fi film as we commonly know them, but at the same time, it's a very human sci-fi [film] filled with [a] human scent.
“It's the story of Mickey, a plain, powerless and pitiful young man played by Robert Pattinson. It's a new kind of sci-fi that is overflowing with human scent.”
Pattinson added he found portraying his titular character’s sense of humour “quite hard”.
‘The Batman’ star explained: “The script is very funny. My first read of it seemed deceptively simple. It's crazy and it's funny. It's a really quick read.
“But then when you try and break down the actual mentality of why he is the way he is, it gets very complicated very quickly. And even trying to play the humour of it was quite hard, because he’s a character who has a total lack of self-confidence, but he doesn't feel sorry for himself.”
