They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, but Bong Joon Ho was no spring chicken when most of the filmgoing public first met his acquaintance. Despite laying claim to feature directing credits dating back over two decades, the Korean helmer’s Best Picture-winning global breakthrough, Parasite, calcified our collective perception of his work with clean lines, interpersonal intrigue, and meaty social commentary. Those last two parts have always been true, but the real heads know that the Bong experience is generally less tidy, prone to enthusiastic flights of fancy, fantastical environments, and a healthy dose of pure lunacy. As the eighth title in a filmography that includes giant monsters, vegan advocacy, apocalyptic frozen tundras, and a subversive sexual undercurrent, Mickey 17 fits like a glove. As a follow-up to a tightly-focused, class war dramedy, it battles uphill.

Which is sort of perfect when you consider its protagonist, or protagonists, as it were. Set in a ruinous projection of our 2054 future, the auteur’s gonzo sci-fi epic stars Robert Pattinson as the eponymous figure, though the number that stands in for his surname is still waiting in the wings. Seeking refuge from vicious loan sharks after a hairbrained business venture goes awry, Mickey hastily boards a soon-departing spacecraft with eyes on an intergalactic fresh start, a prospect made all too literal by his recruitment as an Expendable. Recently banned from terrestrial use, the program employs a dystopian 3D printer to forge innumerable clones of our almost-titular hero, with bioscans and memory downloads saved to a brick-shaped harddrive. Geared toward reincarnation, and, more pointedly, on-the-ground scientific exploration with more palatable mortal consequences, the process turns Mickey into a guinea pig for the ships’ unscrupulous overlords as they make their way to an uncharted planet with colonization at top of mind.

What awaits them there is a frost-bitten wasteland that will be recognizable to anyone who’s seen Snowpiercer, Bong’s 2013 English language feature debut, though the scope and expanse are less familiar. Storming the Oscars’ stage will earn you some extra stateside cash to play with, but even by those standards, Mickey’s reported 120 million dollar budget is astounding. It’s the kind of studio gambit you can’t even call a risk due to the impossibility of a compensatory financial reward, and while Warner Bros. is probably kicking themselves for funding the project so lavishly, the money is right there on the screen. A veritable feast for the eyes and ears, the movie has little trouble clowning the rest of a crowded blockbuster landscape, with Fiona Crombie’s grimy and immaculate production design never less than tactile, bolstered at every turn by a meticulous, enveloping world of sounds. When shot through cinematographer Darius Khondji’s intricate and roving lens, the whole thing plays like the painstakingly mounted tentpoles of yore, and that’s before we even get to its creature feature bonafides.

Niflheim, as the voyagers take to calling their new home, isn’t exactly vacant upon their arrival, inhabited by a race of organisms that split the difference between buffalos and giant potato bugs. Equal parts off-putting and endearing, the movements and textures of these invented animals prove once again that CGI is only a regrettable tool when carelessly wielded. Watching them interact with our human characters requires no suspension of disbelief, making the film’s inevitable pivot toward pro-beast bromides palatable and even engrossing. That the powers that be can’t think of anything more creative to call them than Creepers says more about the expedition’s chosen leaders than it does our husked, hairy friends.

Sporting puffed-out lips and a stilted manner of speech, Mark Ruffalo’s turn as bloviating leader Kenneth Marshall is an obvious stand-in for Donald Trump, right down to the bright red baseball caps worn by his staunchest followers. Lampooning political bad actors is nothing new to the Bong canon, as warnings against creeping totalitarianism are ever present in his work, but it’s curious to see him take such a direct shot, especially one this broad. Mickey joins a long list of movies and cultural ephemera whose satirical framing of the sitting president can’t help but wilt in the blinding light of the real thing; it’s impossible to make a caricature of someone who’s so willfully taken on a mantle of oversized cartoonishness. Ruffalo tries his best, or at least his hardest, a description that also befits Toni Collette’s performance as Ylfa, his first lady by way of Lady MacBeth. There’s amusement to be had, particularly when their governance veers directly into cockeyed televangelism, but it’s neither biting nor incisive. At least they’re not going it alone.

There was never any real chance of Pattinson playing it safe while inhabiting multiple roles in a zany space opera, but his going-for-broke calibration is still a marvel to behold. The premise might prime you for a Peter Sellers-esque multi-persona romp, but it’s the nasally, contorted affectation of the central figure that sees the thespian detonating the most actorly explosives. Naomi Ackie gets in on the fun as the badass apple of his eye, but this is truly the Pattinson show, even if the count on his manifestations skews closer to two than anything in the teens. What reads as a bit much on first encounter slowly wins the audience over during the course of the film’s runtime, but perhaps that’s simply because the myriad whistling kettles on hand eventually make his performance look mild-mannered by comparison.

You hardly notice how much Mickey has going on during the ascent, too dazzled by the imagery and thematic ambition to acknowledge the on-coming difficulty of properly chewing such an enormously large bite. Humor aids in the subterfuge, with black-hearted needling of callow bureaucracy providing a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments in the early goings, but if capitalism has taught us anything, it’s that the bill eventually comes due. Bong’s press tour insistence that the movie was subject to precious little studio interference is likely a retort to those who left early screenings puzzled by the picture’s sloppy dismount, with entire plot lines and characters arcs woefully unresolved by the time the credits roll. You know you’re doing too much when a performer of Steven Yeun’s talents is rendered an afterthought, to say nothing of the delicious sexual tension between Pattinson, Ackie, and a fellow crew member played by Anamaria Vartolomei. When you have this many plates spinning, a few are destined to crack.

Is too much of a good thing really a salient complaint? Odds are that those compelled by Parasite’s pristine construction and masterful conclusion will probably think so, but don’t be too harsh on the straw man; he’s new here. Those previously enthralled with Bong’s overture will find plenty to admire, though their occasional gripes will arrive from the opposite direction. The imagery and motifs at hand hew closely enough to the aforementioned Snowpiercer, as well as Okja and The Host, to warrant claims of self-plagiarism, a duplication of ideas that would make the nefarious forces behind the Expendables Program proud. It might be an echo chamber, but the cacophonous hull of Bong’s mind and interests is worthy of revisitation. Mickey 17 will be too new to some and too old to others, but those are the detriments of wider context and exposure. In a vacuum, it’s a livewire buffet, and the gluttony isn’t enough to drown out the taste of a singular chef at work.