It’s not often that a science fiction film comes along that deals with serious themes like dictatorship, human rights and extermination of indigenous populations and also manages to be laugh aloud funny.

Such a film is “Mickey 17”, which had its world premiere, out of competition, at the Berlinale film festival on Saturday. It stars Robert Pattinson, reputedly the world’s highest paid star, and is directed by Korean director Bong Joon Ho, who won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2019 for the international hit “Parasite”.

Pattinson’s legions of fans will also be delighted to know that for much of the film he is on screen as two versions of his character — Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Why? Read further.

The earth is a pretty horrible place in which to live in the near future, which is why Mickey Barnes, played by Pattinson in goofball mode, in part channelling Jim Carrey from “Dumb and Dumber”, takes a job with a space exploration and colonisation expedition.

The hitch is that with his total lack of qualifications, the only way he can get on board is as the expedition’s sole “expendable”. That means he will be given life-threatening tasks, such as performing repairs while exposed to high radiation, or testing for viruses, that will kill him.

That’s not as bad as it might sound, however, because the near-future society has invented a printer that can re-print a human exactly as he was before he died, including his memories and personality.

The human printer has been banned for ethical and moral reasons on Earth, but that doesn’t stop the charismatic political leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) from taking one to outer space on a multi-year trip to colonise a planet called Niflheim. Marshall needs to take an expendable along for the literally lethal dirty work.

Marshall has a cult-like following that wears T-shirts with his name emblazoned on them and baseball caps bearing a slogan for his movement. His wife Ylfa (Toni Colette) has a trace of a foreign accent.

But any resemblance to a current resident of the White House and his Slovenian-born wife is purely in the mind of the film goer, Bong told a press conference.

Asked directly if Ruffalo’s character was inspired by Donald Trump. Bong, as translated from Korean, said: “It seems like you have certain politicians of modern times that you’re thinking of. But I made this character with drawing on my inspiration from the past. And as history always repeats itself, it might seem like I’m referring to someone in the present.

“So even if I make something thinking of an event in the past, it seems to cover current events as well.”

That’s all right, then, and perhaps the film won’t be banned in Trump’s culture-warring America. If it is, filmgoers will miss out on an uproarious spectacle that combines elements of Star Trek and Mel Brooks’s classic parody “Space Balls” with the exploration of some deadly serious themes, including what happens if the Niflheim that the expedition plans to colonise is inhabited?

It is, of course, and the creatures resemble nothing so much as huge cockroaches, perhaps crossed with walruses. Once they are encountered, Marshall dismisses them as bugs and plans to exterminate them with a nerve gas (called Arkady 3, for those who might see a precedent). But Mickey — who by this time has died 16 times and is in his 17^th iteration, hence the film’s title — is saved by the creatures when a sortie onto the planet goes wrong. He even thinks he has communicated with them, and they could be intelligent life forms, despite appearances.

An Egyptian journalist asked at the press conference how Bong could treat as satire and comedy a film which portrays one of the central issues of the modern world, which is displacing people — or in this case intelligent creatures — from their native habitats.

“Although it’s a story of the future it kind of seems like a story that could happen in the present or the past,” Bong said, maintaining that sci-fi can deal with the big issues. “I think that science fiction is not only limited to a certain frame, but to try to make it more human.”

There’s much more to this two-plus hour film than can be mentioned here, including Mickey having a love interest in expedition security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie). Mickey’s sketches of various love-making positions he thinks he and Nasha should emulate plays a key role at the end.

For much of the film Pattinson also plays two Mickeys on screen at the same after an unauthorised extra printed duplicate of himself is made.

Pattinson said it was difficult to get the “rhythm” of a scene when he had to act Mickey 17 for a scene, and then the more aggressive “Mickey 18” for the same scene. He does it in part by noticeably changing his voice, facial expressions and even body language.

“You obviously do one half of it and kind of just hope that it’s going to fit together,”Pattinson said. “But it was fun, it was really fascinating to see the final product.”

— By Michael Roddy