Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho on Life, Death, Mickey 17, and Being “Such a F–king Nerdy Film Geek”

Nearly six years after the worldwide success of Parasite—and four Oscar wins—South Korean director Bong Joon Ho has followed up with Mickey 17, an epic sci-fi satire in which Robert Pattinson dies over and over again. Bong wrote, produced, and helmed the movie, and he admits he’s feeling pressure. He’s now completed eight films in his 25-year career but says he’s never grown accustomed to the nerves that come with releasing a new project. It’s a trait he shares with Pattinson’s character, Mickey, when he starts every new life.

“Mickey repeatedly says he always gets scared despite how many times he’s died,” Bong says. “It’s similar for me. Every time I release a new film, I get scared and worried. There’s a lot of anxiety. Of course, it’s fun and exciting, but it’s always a mix of emotions.”

Bong makes this charming revelation while sitting next to his longtime interpreter, Sharon Choi, on a recent morning in New York. The 55-year-old director speaks English well but prefers Choi’s precision and nuance for his answers. I thank him for the honest answer about his somewhat agitated mental state at the moment and tell him he’s relatable. “I’m such a fucking nerdy film geek!” he says, suddenly switching to English for added effect. I tell him he’s not just a cinephile, but a prestigious, widely beloved filmmaker. “Does my life seem like that?” he says. “No, no. I’m worried about the release of the film. The countdown has begun.”

Mickey 17, is a dark, comedic, science fiction thriller set aboard a colonist spaceship bound for a distant icy planet inhabited by fantastical creatures. Based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the movie centers around Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), an average, befuddled, and heavily indebted man who joins an intergalactic expedition as a low-ranking expendable—a worker doomed to harsh labor until death, only to be cloned over and over again through a reprinting technology with his old memories intact, and sent straight back to work. This plot of the book immediately caught Bong’s attention. “What would it feel like to get printed all the time?” he says. “I put myself in their shoes and think about what it’s like. Then you sense all these emotions associated with that experience.” He adds, “A nice, unfortunate guy who keeps getting printed out so that he can die—that in itself breaks your heart. That feeling was so important to me.”

With Mickey 17, Bong taps into his signature themes of class, power, and exploitation, examining a hierarchical society that often treats workers as if they’re literally disposable. “I don’t have a particular political or ethical agenda—it’s more of a matter of personal taste and what I’m biologically drawn to,” he says. “I’m not interested in superheroes like Tony Stark in the Marvel movies. He’s so cool and sexy, but I’m more interested in people who aren’t that smart, and how they are faced with a mission that they can’t really handle. I think true human drama comes out of that set up.”

Pattinson was instantly struck by Bong’s bitingly satirical tone. “He’s extremely fearless and totally idiosyncratic, and he touches on deeply personal and emotional aspects of the human experience,” he tells me by email. “I’ve never worked with a director who has Bong’s unique style. He has an incredibly powerful aura, is systematic, and executes his vision flawlessly, and just makes you see things differently. That’s always the kind of director I want to work with.”

Bong’s unique storytelling has propelled him to mainstream stardom. At the 2020 Academy Awards, his Korean-language thriller Parasite picked up the trophies for director, original screenplay, and international feature film prize, and then made history as the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for best picture. “It was such an honor to win the awards,” Bong says. What he remembers the most about that momentous night, though, was feeling fatigued and longing to see his Norwich terrier. “I was so exhausted,” he says in English. “It was the very last day of the whole campaign. I was, like, ‘Let’s hurry up and go home! I want to go rest with my Zzuni.’”

He recalls arriving home in Seoul a few days after the ceremony and watching on YouTube the moment he won the original screenplay award. As his name was announced, the camera had captured Sandra Oh suddenly jumping out of her seat and applauding enthusiastically. “I’ve never met her and she looked like she was going to cry,” he says. “Seeing her cheering so passionately for me made me really emotional. I got choked up, and that’s one of my lasting memories.”

Following the Oscars, Bong says “nothing really changed,” and his work and lifestyle remained the same. He didn’t take any time off and continued on working on various projects, including Mickey 17 and an animated film about deep-sea creatures, which he plans to finish next. The majority of the cast of Parasite remained busy and went on to star in highly popular and acclaimed Korean dramas that were featured on Netflix. But, in December 2023, beloved movie and TV star Lee Sun-kyun, who played the patriarch of the wealthy Park family in Parasite, died from an apparent suicide at the age of 48. Lee was under investigation for alleged recreational drug use, which is illegal in Korea. Reportedly, he had submitted to multiple police interrogations for months and was questioned for 19 hours the weekend before his death. Bong and other Korean artists made an unprecedented display of support by holding a press conference to publicly inquire about how the police and media had handled the prolific actor’s death.

“As someone who has worked with him, that’s what I had to do,” he tells me. “Aside from his personal life, the way the police conducted the investigation and the way things were leaked to the press—I think a lot of filmmakers really wanted to ensure that it doesn’t repeat itself.” As a result of the public outcry, Bong says, one of the detectives that investigated Lee was arrested for illegally providing information to a newspaper and has been punished. “Now that we have this great precedent, hopefully, that doesn’t ever repeat,” he says.

In South Korea’s entertainment scene, celebrities deal with intense societal pressure to maintain an image of perfection and are at the mercy of unforgiving public scrutiny. Even minor mistakes destroy careers. If a public figure is perceived to have erred, they will often be considered irredeemable no matter how much they express deep remorse. They are also ridiculed in the press and face harsh online harassment from toxic fans. Feeling permanently ostracized, a significant number of Korean celebs, in particular pop stars, have died by suicide in recent years. I ask Bong how he deals with fame and public perceptions of him.

“My friend told me, ‘Reading comments is like you’re walking down the street and you suddenly open a trash can and smell it—so why would you read comments?’” Bong says. “‘There’s some beautiful comments out there, but to get to those, you have to withstand all the vicious and stinky ones.’ After my friend told me that, I haven’t been watching. I’m, like, they can think whatever they want, and fuck it. My friends and family will only send the good ones, ‘cause they know I don’t read it. Only the good ones get to me.”

Pattinson appreciates Bong’s candor and insights: “He’s an extremely witty director. He’s also a really sweet guy and very self-deprecating. There’s something about Bong’s attitude. He’s very unruffled all the time, and it just seems like nothing’s going to go wrong when you are working with him.”

Although he’s been nervous about releasing Mickey 17, Bong is looking forward to having audiences discover that he’s actually made a romantic movie. “Ironically, the movie may seem to be about the cruelty of the system, but it’s actually about the love that Mickey and Nasha [who’s played by Naomi Ackie] have, and how it saves them from this cruel system. So it’s about the power of love,” Bong says.

I tell him that fans will be pleasantly surprised by the romance, since he generally doesn’t go there in his films. “I can’t get through life just making movies about murders,” he says. “I need to do a love story here and there!”