Golden Globes-nominated director Bong Joon Ho makes his long-awaited return with “Mickey 17.” Six years after “Parasite”(2019), the South Korean auteur told me “I want to captivate the audience and keep them entertained for two hours.”

The day of the interview, Bong was in London and I was in L.A. right before heading to the Berlin Film Festival, where the film debuted. “I don’t want them to feel like they’re being force-fed a message or theme. I don’t want to shove any ideas in front of their noses to eat with a fork,” he said.

“Mickey 17,” featuring Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie and Toni Collette, is a blend of black comedy and romance within science-fiction, all wrapped up in the signature Bong Joon Ho genre. The film maintains his unique humor, with dialogue that feels strangely resonant. Rather than focusing on deep social criticism, the film invites viewers to immerse themselves in a 137-minute journey, an extension of Bong’s distinctive cinematic universe.

The movie is a coming-of-age story about an ordinary, powerless and somehow pitiful young man with an extreme job. The production crew playfully refers to it as a “stinky sci-fi movie,” capturing its offbeat tone. Bong was particularly intrigued by the concept of human printing, drawn from Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel “Mickey 7.”

“The idea of human printing in the novel fascinated me,” Bong explained. “The character of Mickey is not a superhero but a normal, ordinary man who goes through this wild, crazy journey. Human printing is like humans being pieces of paper-documents to be printed. The very concept conveys the tragic nature of the profession.”

Bong’s vision for the character of Mickey Barnes evolved further. “I wanted to make him a bit more of a ‘loser,’ more lower-class, more relatable,” he added.

Set in 2054, Mickey Barnes signs up for an “Expendable,” a mission to colonize an icy planet. He doesn’t even read the application thoroughly, despite having experienced failed ventures like opening a macaron shop. These Expendables are essentially human sacrifices, discarded and reprinted through a human printer after each death.

Bong, fascinated by the concept of human printing, decided to have Mickey die ten times more than he does in the novel. “It’s not that I wanted to kill him more for excitement,” Bong said. “It’s an extreme job, and I thought more deaths would emphasize the grueling, repetitive nature of his work.” Sometimes Mickey’s deaths are purposeful, used for testing bio-weapons or vaccines. But most of the time, he just dies doing his job: His genetic information is thoroughly analyzed and input, his memories are stored, and when he‘s printed out again, his passing goes largely unnoticed.

Mickey 18 is exactly what Bong intended it to be: a human print that encounters errors during the printing process. No matter how advanced the technology, when applied in the real world, it will always have errors and require checking for missing data. “It could be Mickey 27 or more, but I chose 18 because I wanted to tell the story of a good guy who dies over and over again and grows up. In Korea, 18 is the age of adulthood.”

The film introduces unique creatures native to Niflheim, the icy planet. The “Creeper,” originally described as centipede-like in the novel, becomes croissant-shaped in Bong’s adaptation, resembling a reclusive armadillo. The film follows Mickey’s encounter with three sizes of these creatures, from pet-sized Baby Creepers, action star Junior Creepers and the charismatic Mama Creeper.

Bong also introduces Ilfa, a character entirely of his own creation. “In the film, sauce is a litmus test for civilization,” Bong explains. “Ilfa’s obsession with it isn’t a political statement, it’s just a matter of taste.” Similarly, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) is a star-struck dictator who hosts a TV talk show midway through the film. As the credits roll, his hymn plays, ensuring the audience is left laughing until the very end.

Bong depicts the Marshalls as a new breed of dictator, albeit in a cute and funny way. “The characters in ‘Mickey 17’ aren’t meant to be specific political figures as they are an amalgamation of different dictators in our history, and we’ve melded them into a universal form,” Bong explains.

Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” will be released in U.S. theaters March 7.