Following up the record-breaking Parasite was never going to be an easy task, but South Korean cinematic supremo Bong Joon-ho is clearly game for a challenge. Six years on from his quadruple Oscar winner, the director teams up with none other than Robert Pattinson, shooting the Twilight star into space for Mickey 17, a sci-fi comedy based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel.

Set in the year 2054, the film follows hapless Earth-dweller Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) who, in a desperate attempt to flee the clutches of a loan shark, signs up for a mission to help colonise a new planet. Failing to read the paperwork properly, he becomes an ‘expendable’, whose job it is to die again and again in various dangerous experiments and endeavours, thus ensuring the safety of those around him.

After each death, Mickey’s body is reprinted and his memories are restored, allowing him to maintain a reasonably normal relationship with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie). Following a near-fatal accident and an encounter with the planet’s native ‘creepers’, Mickey returns to base, discovering that the next version of himself has already been created.

Mark Ruffalo is in buffoonish, faintly Trumpian mode as a moronic, nasal and toothy politician who is leading the mission and married to smirking string-puller Ylfa (played by Toni Collette). Pattinson excels as the endearing Mickey 17 and more volatile Mickey 18, amusingly taking inspiration from Ren And Stimpy. It’s a highly likeable, slightly lightweight film whose heart is in the right place and whose snowy, socially divided dystopia recalls the director’s 2013 triumph Snowpiercer. While it’s unlikely to completely satisfy fans of Bong’s more meaty offerings, the director’s twisted sense of humour remains pleasingly intact.

Mickey 17 is in cinemas from Friday 7 March.