Bong Joon Hos first film In space is a specific hold of sci-fi, there, As you can expect from the “parasite” directorEach detail is carefully thought out when he put his unique stamp on the genre. The film is based on Ashton Edward’s novel 2022 “Mickey 7”, but as “”Mickey 17“Author/director told IndieWire about the tool kit PodcastThere were some things he was drawn to before reading the book, after getting a summary of 10 pages of the novel.
“When I first read the treatment, I was only directly imprisoned by the concept of human printing and also that they go on this colon food to another planet and meet creatures there,” Bong said via translator Sharon Choi, while on Podcast.
The most important ingredients triggered images, ideas and concepts that sent Bong’s mind racing and delivered the visual metaphors he could build off.
Human printing
From the beginning, it was a visual who spoke to the director: human printing. Bong has never been drawn to the concept of cloning – so much, Warner Brothers has asked pressure to refrain from using the “C” word – but the idea that a fictional technology, which combined organic material and 3D printing to generate a new version of the same person, was slightly different. For a filmmaker whose stories often pull against the class’s politics, human printing bore a very specific meaning while the accused Bong’s humor.
“What was important to me were the feelings that come out of humanity being so devalued through their job,” Bong said. “If you think of the inkjet printers we had back during the day, you would always get paper stops and the paper would come out everything wrinkled. And I started to think, “Well, what if it’s a human not a paper?” And I thought it was just like people see human value, how it has hit the rock bottom in this world, was what I focused on. “
A dirty, utilitarian and anonymous spaceship
The medical laboratory found in the human printer is the only pure, high-tech and traditional space-age sci-fi area aboard spaceship. Bong told Indiewire that he wanted the “very futuristic and advanced” laboratory to be in sharp contrast to the rest of the ship, where the crew worked and lived. Production designer Fiona Crombie drew inspiration from today’s vessels such as submarines, oil tanks, cargo vessels, engine rooms and crew blocks in each. Director Bong wanted a dirty, functional, but also incorrect design, which spoke to a certain shortage of care that went to create spaces for the workers. Their neighborhoods are tight, and the huge spaceship never feels expansionary to the crew.
“You have this ginormou’s spaceship that is almost like a cargo ship, and it’s not nice. It doesn’t look like a sci-fi ryster, it’s very dirty and dirty,” said Bong. “The whole point of this ginormou’s space is that you never get a feeling of how many people are actually there. Everyone feels quite anonymous.”
Crombie and Bong created an interior where the camera and the character’s field of vision are limited. There is no spatial orientation, there are no long corridors to look down, nor a sense of how different areas of the ship connect. On an expedition, where the crew is expected to start a new colony and population together-a “big sex pedition” promises leader/dictator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) – The environment is insulating.
A very recognizable future
Director Bong would often reject any designs or costumes that were too futuristic. The world needed to be related. Instead of reinventing the tiles, cups, pens and furniture in 2025, “Mickey 17” is filled with a modular and minimalist version of our daily lives.
“We actually wanted to focus the futuristic elements on the smaller articles in the film, which you see the external hard drive that stores Mickey’s memories, it looks like a red brick, so it’s a mixture of past and future,” Bong said.
The less futuristic props are often surrounded by a world that is very familiar to the audience. A good example of this is when Mickey and Timo (Steven Yeun) run from the back of the loan sharks – in a Flashback showing what motivated them to register for the colony of the colony.
“The city sequence where you see Timo and Mickey get chased by gangsters, the place looks like a back street that we know, even their suits look very modern, and I guess you can say that the costumes and places sometimes look quite nostalgic,” said Bong. “But the only thing that seems futuristic is that metal orb that beeps and goes after Timo and Mickey and electrocutes them. We tried to use the smaller props to make it seem like a future society and bring these more different elements. “
A not so post-apocalyptic soil
While the majority of “Mickey 17” takes place aboard the spaceship and planet NiFlheim, the movie touches on the motivations for workers – beyond Timo and Mickey, who run from the gangsters to which they owe – to leave the earth and sign up for the expedition. The Earth’s environment has deteriorated beyond the higher temperatures and more powerful storms of today’s global warming, but Bong does not go full post-apocalyptic. Life is still relatively recognizable on earth, it just seems to be harder – we see windstorms, followed by extreme rain in the background of the large glass dome building where hundreds of people register for the expedition.
As Bong said in the press notes the interview, “It is not a mass migration or emigration. The film’s tone and mood make it feel quite factual. Leaving the earth and migrating to another planet seems to be a fairly common choice. “
Niflheim: How they created the icy planet
When the colonists arrive at their new planet, NiFlheim, they discover an Arctic winter. The winds, snow and freezing temperatures-not to say anything about the deadly airborne virus that Earthlings immune system cannot handle pre-vaccine-is impossible at first.
To create the Niflheim texture, “Mickey 17” production moved north of its London studios when Winter started entering, but only with 60 miles to Cardington, where they built their wintry plane from scratch. The environment in Niflheim was pure film magic and combined special and visual effects. The SFX team used hundreds of tons of salt, soap and huge rocks and created actual undergraduate temperatures on the set, along with huge wind machines for the snowstorm conditions. The VFX team hung a quarter mile of both soundproof fabric and white screens around 172 x 433-foot set-which decided on white over traditional blue screen, to help with the effect of how easily bounces of snow and then adds far from the landscape in the post-production.
The grooves
To create Niflheim’s native population, such as Marshall degrading studs “The Creepers”, Bong turned again to his long -standing partner, concept artist Heechul Jang, who helped the director of the eponymous creatures in “The Host” and “Okja.”
“This can be a little irresponsible, but what I say to Heechul, the creature designer, is exactly what I want to see on the screen, the final result,” Bong said. As an example, the director of the designer described the most important stage where the monster hangs from the bridge and performs an acrobatic move. Continued bong, “So when I list all the things I want, heechul starts by implementing (creatures) with their biological background and comes with a basic anatomy of these creatures that would justify the actions or the things I want to see at the end. He has great knowledge, (including) animal anatomy and biology. “
With “Mickey 17”, Bong shared with Heechul how he imagined that the younger creeps would curl up in a ball and roll, but heechul then not only created the anatomy of the animals, but the evolutionary backstory for the creature.
“He really thinks about the relationship between these creatures and their environment,” Bong said. To survive the icy planet, the creature designer considered: “How they restore the heat in their bodies and the fur coat that mother Creeper has on her shell or skin and how the caves they live in the cold. Only all these elements in their environment that would be reflected and how these creatures look and work, that is why he is such a great animal specialist and creature designer. ”
A huge part of the creature design originated from Bong’s vision of the climatic battle, which he said on the podcast was a direct reference to “Battle of Algiers”, and the noise that the Algerians do as a sign of rebellion against the imperialist French army. Bong actress Anna Mouglais as the voice for Mama Creeper (after first meeting the actress when he was the main lawyer at Venice Film Festival 2021) but it was his creature designer who worked directly with “Mickey 17” sound and the VFX team to see that every each each each each each each other’s.
“He had to think about the structure of their mouths and how their tongues worked, so he actually worked with our audio team and the VFX team,” Bong said. “They all worked together to enable that sequence.”
To hear Bong Joon Howhole interview, subscribe to Filmmakers Toolkit Podcast on AppleThe SpotifyOr your favorite podcast platform. You can also look at the entire interview on indiegees Youtube page.
