“Mickey 17” Production Designer Fiona Crombie Creates a Playful Pattinson-Verse for Bong Joon Ho’s Black Comedy Space Epic
The underdog hero of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is sweetly naive everyman Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a failed macaron shop owner on the run from a bloodthirsty creditor in the year 2054. Mickey finds a way out of his predicament, but it’s bleak—he signs up as an Expendable, a human test subject for a space mission whose sole purpose is to die in not one but many gruesome experiments, having turned over the rights to his DNA to be infinitely reprinted for any and all of the mission’s needs.
The ship Mickey finds himself on is headed to Niflheim, a far-off planet that failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his sauce-obsessed wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), intend to colonize. Kenneth is a charlatan, a cut-rate cult leader whose flock seems, at best, only halfheartedly in his clutches. Nevertheless, his adherents’ life on the spaceship is obsessively micromanaged, and Mickey, in his various iterations, lives a particularly dreadful existence of tests, death, and reprinting, though he does have a genuinely loving relationship with his girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie).
The ship lands on Niflheim, which is inhabited by a race of inscrutable creatures whom the mission christens Creepers. With a vaccine—concocted at Mickey’s expense—rendering the plane’s atmosphere safe for humankind, the mission continues along the lines of what Mickey signed up for until Mickey 18 inadvertently gets printed out while number 17 is still alive. So-called multiples are banned, and the snafu puts the two Mickeys in a kill-or-be-killed situation right as the ship’s crew are preparing mass entry onto the creepers’ planet.
The spaceship the Marshalls command is both technical and rudimentary, a believable vessel for a leader who couldn’t make it back on Earth. The film’s most high-tech elements are reserved for the Human Printer, demonstrably the most specialized tool in the mission’s arsenal. We had the chance to speak with Fiona Crombie (The Favourite, Cruella), the film’s production designer, about her process behind the conception of this vast ship, how she arrived at and put together the menacing central incinerator known as the Cycler, the challenges of creating practical landscapes for a far-away planet, and more.
How did you come up with the particular aesthetic to make the ship seem older and more worn?
When I met Director Bong for the first time, I put together images, and they were all kind of messy. I suppose what I was really attracted to was functional vessels. I looked at cargo ships, I looked at naval craft—not the exteriors, but what happens when you’re inside them walking through the corridors, and they’re really narrow and low. Nuclear submarines were something we talked about because you’re basically operating around the crucial part of the vessel. I had this vision, in a fantasy version of sci-fi, that was so amazing and sleek, and actually, what I ended up wanting to do was make it feel functional, non-aesthetic, and like some of the furniture has been decommissioned.
That non-aesthetic aesthetic works really well to support what’s happening onboard the ship.
For me, there is something very recognizable about that, even though it’s on a spaceship in the future. It’s something that’s not a massive departure, so therefore, the character dilemmas and what’s happening also feel like it’s not too far away from us. Our logic was that you don’t reinvent things that work. A cup is a cup; a pen is a pen. Again, the aesthetic is relatable. And then, Director Bong wanted it to be that almost rust-proof gray. What that did for me was that I became really interested in all the graphics. There are a lot of color pops with graphics and signage everywhere—danger of death; watch out, you might trip—because all these people on the ship are being hyper-managed. We looked at ways for color to come in in the details.
Color also makes a statement in Kenneth and Ylfa’s living quarters. How did you design that space?
A lot of the references were from the 1960s. We got into the idea of this sunken space. What we did, practically, was repurpose the real bedrooms that we used for the other characters because we didn’t have the stage space to be constantly building. I actually joined two bedrooms together, and we painted it pink. I had this great reference of the spiral staircase with the fur for treads, and that started the ball rolling. Of course, Ylfa thinks she’s a culinary genius, so the kitchen was really important. With my set decorator [Alice Felton], we talked a lot about this idea that you’d move to a foreign land and bring all your spoils, all the things you think are of value. As you go into this land you don’t even know, you’ve already decided what is still precious or important. As an Australian, it made sense to me, what happened with colonization, this imposition of architecture and dress.
How did you deal with scale inside the ship? You get the sense that it’s enormous. Was that intentional?
Yes, absolutely. I remember doing a plan for Director Bong, so there was a journey. This is where they’re living; they come through here, and this is where the containers are. What it takes to create a Cycler is a huge amount of machinery and electronics, and that would actually take up the bulk of the ship. There’d be a big engine, basically, that everybody has to live around and maneuver around. So, something that looks enormous may have very little living space. We built the walkways very deliberately to make it feel like you’re going around something. There are almost no straight lines.
Was any one aspect of the interior more challenging than the others?
I think the Cycler was very complicated—understanding what a Cycler is, but also, how to present that. I remember going through quite a lot of processes with Director Bong, where we arrived at the idea that this was not exceptional. It’s not otherworldly. It’s an incinerator. Yes, it feeds matter up to the human printer, but at the end of the day, it’s where your trash goes. Because we didn’t have a lot of stages, we built the cafeteria, the long corridor, and the committee room next to the Cycler. While they were shooting there, we were trying to build the massive Cycler set. Every time they were doing a take, people were going, quiet please, quiet please. That was the most complicated, both conceptually and logistically.
The high-tech focal point of the ship is the human printer. What was your inspiration there?
Like everything in the film, we looked at real-world versions. We looked at MRIs and X-ray machines. We also wanted it to have the texture of an old computer, so it has that old IBM computer color and a slightly pimply surface. It’s nice to touch, actually. It does have practical elements because we needed Mickey to come out. There’s movement in it. The idea was that it was almost like a camera lens focusing. And then all the tubes, they were running something that was supposed to look disgusting.
Did director Bong Joon Ho’s penchant for storyboarding become a part of your process?
I remember being told very early on to look at the storyboards because that will tell you he doesn’t deviate. But when I say that, he doesn’t impose, either. He is constantly communicating as things are evolving with the design. We provided a lot of information really early, whether it was the translator device, the shape of a room, or anything that we were in the process of designing. Director Bong was always involved; he was always given that information, so the storyboards were very reflective. He’s drawing the things we’ve designed, and he was always asking questions, so there was a constant exchange of information. Some of the sequences that were really complicated were the ice caves, and that was done through the boarding.
How was the process of creating the Niflheim landscapes?
The big open area was very easy. But the caves were hard to do because we had real materials, and there’s a limit to what you can get. It took a lot of testing and lighting. We were throwing glue and salt, putting in paint, spritzing, and trying to get it to have an otherworldly, really vivid quality, but we also knew the effects team was going to take it over.
Does the world inside and outside the ship look how you hoped?
It does. I always watch the rushes, so there’s never any real mystery. But the thing is, when you’re watching the rushes, you’re watching the takes for Mickey 17 or 18, and I’m actually watching what happens around them, so seeing Robert’s performances cut together was a complete surprise. In the rushes, I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but seeing it cut together was just extraordinary.
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) ROBERT PATTINSON as Mickey 18 and ROBERT PATTINSON as Mickey 17 in “MICKEY 17,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
