Mickey 17
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Writer: Bong Joon Ho
Based on: Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Michael Monroe, Patsy Ferran, Cameron Britton, Holliday Grainger, Naomi Ackie, Anamaria Vartolomei, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette
Seen on: 21.3.2025

Plot:
Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is in some dire financial trouble, thanks to his friend and business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) who has a knack for racking up debt and letting others pay for it. In his desperation, Mickey signs up to be an expendable, unfortunately without having read the fine print. His new job consists of doing all the dangerous work in space, including being a subject in medical tests, and if he dies, well, he will just be reprinted with most of his memories intact and ready to tackle the next task. Trouble comes when the 18th Mickey is printed when Mickey 17 is wrongly thought to be dead. Having two Mickeys will lead to the termination of both, so they are both very interested in avoiding that fate.

I was looking very much forward to Mickey 17, but unfortunately, the film didn’t really work. It has good parts, but they never come together into a pleasing whole.

Mickey 17 has a lot going for it. Robert Pattinson hamming it up in his double role (who both get slightly different personalities, which I rather enjoyed). Class conscious criticism of the social order. A nice, dark sense of humor when it comes to Mickey’s deaths (probably the film’s strongest point). Steven Yeun [yes, I am actively ignoring that he stuck with David Choe after his podcast comments on sexualized violence]. Cute animals. Good production design. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette doing Trump(ism). An interesting core idea.

Throw all of these things together with a director like Bong Joon Ho and you should be set for a really good time. Unfortunately, the resulting film is uneven, often boring and overly relies on Mickey’s voice-over narration to explain what is actually happening.

There is also an inordinate amount of time spent on Mickey’s two love interests (one for each iteration, kinda, but not really), with one – Nasha (Naomi Ackie) – being so sexually active that it felt vaguely racist and misogynist, especially considering the history of hypersexualization that Black women often had to face. (That I still don’t understand why most of the world thinks Pattinson is a hottie only compounded my frustrations with this part of the film.)

In short, the film is a bit of a mess. Or a lot of a mess. I actually fought with sleep in the last third (and ultimately lost for a bit), and I was hoping for so much more than that. Let’s hope that Bong Joon Ho gets his groove back for the next film. In the meantime, I’d rather rewatch Snowpiercer.

Summarizing: disappointing.