The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Mickey 17.

This is a wonderfully imaginative film that has so much to say. Can you talk about your adaptation process?

Bong Joon Ho: So I first read a ten page treatment of the novel, and I was just immediately fascinated by the concept of human printing. I had this desire to continuously print out an actor that you kind of feel sorry for! The concept of “human printing,” it’s like two words that should never really be combined. Printing out human beings as if they are pieces of paper…and already the idea encompasses so many different sorts of emotional and ethical issues. And so I started thinking what would it be like, for me to be printed out? What would it be like to watch someone that I love or know get printed out from this printer? I found it quite sad and funny. So before thinking of it as a sci-fi tale, I found it to be a very human story where you can almost smell the pit stains of the characters in that world, and that’s what I was trying to go for, which is why I changed a lot from the novel. In the original novel, Mickey’s character, he’s more of an intellectual. He’s a historian. And with Timo (played by Steven Yeun), he’s more of this, like, popular hotshot guy. But I wanted Timo to be more of a grifter from the streets, and I wanted to bring everyone down to reality and even make the timeline closer to our own.

I think we all have a 17 inside of us

Can you talk about the design of the ship? There is a sort of central bubble where the working class exists, and there is a whole different section for those in control.

BJH: So the production designer and I talked a lot about how when you go to these luxurious department stores and hotels, everything seems fancy and sleek. But the minute you open the door to the employee-only places, then you see pipes hanging from the ceilings and the floors are rough, and the atmosphere of this space changes instantly. And most of the ship, I guess, is the staff-only place. Marshall and Ylfa’s rooms are the only exception in the spaceship: for them, it’s opulent, and you see these weird art pieces displayed. And everyone else has these dingy rooms that are like those staff-only places. And then you have Ylfa making her sauces in her luxury rooms!

Was that an invention on your part? Where did that come from, about the sauces?

BJH: In the novel, we only have Marshall. So the character of Ylfa is a creation that I added, and I added her because, you know, historically we’ve seen dictators move as couples and they feel even more ridiculous and more horrifying when we see them do that. Kind of like the Ceaușescu couple from Romania back in the day.

Of course reprinting oneself is a crazy act and it requires an incredibly versatile actor to pull off, like Robert Pattinson. Can you talk about developing the characters of Mickey 17 versus Mickey 18?

BJH: I think we all have a 17 inside of us where, you know, sometimes we get taken advantage of, and we kind of miss that perfect moment to get angry… kind of like how 17 says thanks for dinner after he’s been horribly abused. We say the wrong things. And so all of that pent up anger is just kind of inside. And in those situations, I think a lot of people, including myself, we imagine what it would be like to have a twin, like an 18 who just comes out and beats up the bad guys for you, who screams at all the people who made you angry. And you know, 18 is kind of the manifestation of that desire that we all have.

I know you do editing while you are on the set, which is very different from how movies are made in Europe and America. Can you discuss that approach?

BJH: So it is pretty standard in Korea to have an onset editor, perhaps because we’re so impatient, we just need to see you right as we’re shooting! We want to know right away how it would cut, and when international actors see it for the first time, they’re all a bit… disoriented and surprised, but they quickly get used to it and they’re constantly coming to me saying, “oh, can I see what we shot yesterday?” And with this sort of temporary cut, they get to see how their performances and the tone connects, and how the movie is coming to life.

You’re known for not doing much coverage, and for editing on set. Are you able to do that because you’re so familiar with the story and the script that you can see every shot and every cut? How are you approaching the visual language and shot progression?

BJH: So it’s not that I construct all the shots as I’m writing the script, I only have sort of key images in my mind. For the storyboard to be actually applicable and practical, you kind of have to have all the locations and spaces constructed and confirmed first. So after the sets are designed and locations are confirmed, I start doing the actual storyboards and determining the camera position and the tracking, and I do it myself. And that’s how I avoid shooting coverage. Sometimes editors who have never worked with me before, they find it a bit boring, because they feel like there’s not a lot of room to play around in the editing. But no matter how tight the storyboarding and the shots are, there’s always room to play around with things in the edit. With Mickey 17, I worked with the editor Jinmo Yang, and it’s my third time working with him. We also did Okja, Snowpiercer, and Parasite together. So even if I don’t have coverage, he always finds room and feels quite free to do his edits. That was true for this film particularly with the vaccine sequence, when they first arrive on the planet and Mickey’s exposed to the virus in the atmosphere. And he becomes this lab rat dying for the vaccine test. With that montage in particular, it’s really Jin’s work. It’s quite different from the storyboard. I just kind of let him do what he wanted.