Mickey 17, 2025.
Written and Directed by Bong Joon Ho.
Starring Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Anamaria Vartolomei, Steven Yeun, Patsy Ferran, Steve Park, Tim Key, Holliday Grainger, Michael Monroe, Edward Davis, Cameron Britton, Ian Hanmore, Ellen Robertson, Rose Shalloo, Daniel Henshall, Angus Imrie, and Anna Mouglalis.
SYNOPSIS:
Mickey Barnes, an “expendable” employee, is sent on a human expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. With one regeneration, though, things go very wrong.
“What does it feel like to die?” In Mickey 17, it’s a question posed to expedition “expendable” crewmember Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who signed up for the thankless job of tackling dangerous tasks guaranteeing death, subsequently reprinted onto an operating table with his memories and personality transplanted from digital storage, only to do it all again whenever there is a fatal ship error that needs investigating or an airborne virus he needs to contract and die from over and over so the scientists aboard can use as research to create a vaccine.
Given that Bong Joon Ho is rarely subtle, with his latest, Mickey 17, being no exception, that question repeatedly lobbed at someone of the lowest social status and job ranking among this vessel paralleled to a real life USA government currently stripping away funding to essential programs designed to keep lower classes alive, well, the question stings in an of-the-moment effect the acclaimed Oscar-winning Parasite filmmaker likely wasn’t intending considering the movie also includes a failed election-loser Trump figure in control and looking to start up his corruption after colonizing the ice planet Niflheim.
Bong Joon Ho evidently thought Trump would lose the 2024 election, meaning that one could argue this film is already slightly dated to an extent, which doesn’t necessarily impact the quality but is an interesting observation. The way it is now (after numerous delays from Warner Bros., partially due to quality and partially because CEO David Zaslav likely stubbornly cried at the thought of releasing a big-budget tentpole flick taking satirical aim at Trump through its cartoonish, buffoonish evil villain), Mickey 17 is releasing at a time where one should consider themselves lucky if they don’t know what it feels like to be slowly dying.
Accidental timeliness and a few solid laughs do not alone make a movie memorable or cut deep, though, for Mickey 17 is also a bloated and unwieldy assemblage of Bong Joon Ho’s favorite themes and concepts to explore, ranging from working-class exploitation to animal rights activism and single-setting transportation locations. Based on the recent novel by Edward Ashton, the story, as previously mentioned, concerns Mickey Barnes, a tragically unlucky figure having inadvertently contributed to the death of his mother as a child and now flat broke struggling to pay off a loan shark at the expense of buying into his goofball friend Timo’s (Steven Yeun) dopey business venture.
At rock bottom, he signs up for the Niflheim expedition to be an “expendable” where he dies repeatedly and is treated nearly subhuman by anyone and everyone (even the scientists occasionally forget to attach the operating table to the reprinting machine, meaning his body is sometimes amusingly dumped out onto the floor) except for Naomi Ackie’s soldier Nasha. They instantly click and fall for one another, with Mickey’s inner thoughts confused about what she sees in him. The movie doesn’t explain it much, either, beyond that he is attractive and played by Robert Pattinson. It arguably reduces Nasha’s character to a dull love interest until the third act, where she gets in on the action in an admittedly hugely satisfying way.
On life #17, Mickey falls into a cavern surrounded by creatures resembling smaller variations of the Dune sand worms, but if they were covered in snow and acclimated to those conditions. Left for dead by his lousy friend Timo (writing the situation off as inconsequential since he will be reprinted again the next day), Mickey’s otherwise horrendous fortune turns for the better, allowing him to survive and return to the ship. There’s only one problem: Mickey 18 has already been printed, and if they are discovered as living, breathing duplicates, they will be executed by that Trumpish Kenneth Marshall, played by Mark Ruffalo.
Mickey 18 also happens to have a polar opposite perception of self from Mickey 17; he is a more assertive and arguably alpha, rebellious and resistant, prepared to topple the corrupt regime controlling the ship, and much more carefree, letting loose consuming a pure unfiltered drug aboard the ship alongside Nasha who loves every version of him. There seems to be more to explore here, especially when another crew member starts falling for one of the Mickeys, but this side development ends up feeling like an underexplored distraction. This is also a nitpick, but the shift in personalities doesn’t make much sense if those defining characteristics are preserved and transplanted into the new copy every time.
Robert Pattinson prevents the movie from falling apart completely, throwing himself into the bumbling physical humor of Mickey 17, giving that version an idiosyncratic screechy gremlin voice appropriate for his wacky personality. In contrast, Mickey 18 is fearless and aggressive. It quickly becomes clear that part of the journey will involve these mismatched doppelgängers learning and adapting from one another even if they spend every waking moment bickering.
Speaking of the drug, that’s the key component of another subplot that hurts the pacing here. Mickey 17 never generates narrative momentum and struggles to match the ensemble’s kooky energy. Even that isn’t all grand, as Mark Ruffalo detrimentally overplays Trump’s mannerisms to an obnoxious degree, which renders the performance grating more than daring or hilarious. In fairness, a dark and funny dinner sequence involves him, his equally coldhearted and repulsive wife Yifa (Toni Collette), and Mickey.
Aside from that and a mildly exciting finale (primarily for letting Naomi Ackie give one hell of a speech bursting with pent-up frustrations of a real-life political moment), Mickey 17 isn’t so fine. It’s often uneven, under the impression that more movie equates to more substance. In other words, it’s what happens when a filmmaker crams a career’s worth of fixations and passions into one overstuffed narrative. This is what it feels like to watch a movie flail and die.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
