Edward Cullen! Cedric Diggory! Bruce Wayne! Lighthouse Guy! Crisis on Infinite Pattinsons!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: class warfare rules in the hands of South Korea’s Bong Joon Ho, from the improbable post-apocalyptic supertrain metaphor of Snowpiercer to the widely celebrated Parasite, Winner of Four Academy Awards Including Best Picture™. Whether it’s the filthy-rich versus the dirt-poor, the genteel-affluent versus the barely-getting-by, or the dirt-poor versus the dirtless-homeless-everythingless, satirical skewerings of the eternal tug-of-war between the have-it-alls and have-nots over their variances in have-measures are very much his favorite field of cinematic dissection.

As we waited patiently through the nearly six-year gestation of his post-Oscar follow-up Mickey 17 (the pandemic’s at fault for some of the hold-up), fans rightly expected his priciest foray into the American big-budget mainstream (with a budget twice that of his Netflix Original Okja) would play to his hot-topical interests, and that his knack for outlandish approaches would suit the material. He enjoyed access to better resources, bigger-name actors, and apparently more negotiable schedules for getting it all accomplished. Bong is in his element for much of the film’s first half, up until a midpoint onset of commentary mission-creep pivots everything off the opening premise and lurches toward another course, broader and much tireder.

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