Robert Pattinson in a scene from Mickey 17.Warner Bros.
- Mickey 17
- Directed by Bong Joon-ho
- Written by Bong Joon-ho, based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton
- Starring Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Pattinson (again)
- Classification 14A; 137 minutes
- Opens in theatres March 7
Critic’s Pick
After cycling through a distressing number of release dates – first March, 2024, then January, 2025, April, 2025, and, finally, this weekend – Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi comedy Mickey 17 became the subject of a persistent industry rumour: it was being cut to shreds by clueless studio executives.
The theory wasn’t too difficult to swallow. Bong had infamously tussled with Harvey Weinstein over his English-language debut, the 2013 action-thriller Snowpiercer. And as the director’s filmography has proven time and again, Bong possesses a singular sensibility that is distinctly anti-Hollywood, the South Korean filmmaker embracing wild messiness where L.A. suits can only see wrinkles in need of ironing. Bong movies only work because they refuse to “work” in accordance with traditional genre templates. Okja is a remix of E.T. crossed with a demented corporate satire. The Host is a monster movie whose mutated DNA is spliced with sweet family melodrama. And Parasite, Bong’s most recent film and the one that elevated his name to the global stage after it won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards, blends prickly social commentary with the bloody gash of a home-invasion thriller.
Yet it is abundantly clear that Bong and only Bong retained Mickey 17’s final cut. A deeply chaotic existential comedy set in the darkest reaches of space, the new film might be the angriest, strangest and intentionally unpalatable big-studio production to arrive in years. There is simply no way that anyone comfortably residing inside the Hollywood bubble wrested the film from Bong’s grasp and turned it into something so resolutely, weirdly beautiful.
Loosely adapting Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7 – but nearly doubled in numerical and metaphorical size – Bong’s film follows the cruel misadventures of Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a hapless dolt who is on the run from a ludicrously violent loan shark in the not-so-distant future. With nowhere on Earth to safely escape his debt collectors, Mickey hitches a ride on an interstellar colonization mission led by a disgraced politician named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), who has set his eyes on the icy planet Niflheim (the world of the dead, per Norse mythology). There is just one catch: Mickey has no real skills other than being a body, so he’s hired aboard the vessel to be an “expendable” – a day-to-day grunt who can be cloned and regenerated every time he gets himself killed in a work place accident.
Loosely adapting Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, Bong Joon-ho’s film follows the cruel misadventures of Mickey, a hapless dolt who is on the run from a ludicrously violent loan shark in the not-so-distant future.Warner Bros.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, life in space proves itself to be especially perilous. Mickey is regenerated after being sliced and diced by galactic debris. Or exposed to poisonous gas. Beamed with heavy radiation. Infected with extraterrestrial bacteria. The list goes on, with Mickey’s new body sometimes slinking out of the regeneration machine like a slab of highly processed ground beef – fresh from the grinder and fit for consumption. But there are some on the ship who see Mickey as more than a mere cog in off-world capitalism. He quickly finds a ravenous lover in the security officer Nasha (Naomi Ackie), and maintains a contentious rivalry with the prickly pilot Timo (Steven Yeun), whose financial malfeasance back on Earth helped get Mickey stuck in such a sticky situation in the first place.
Life (and death) continues apace for Mickey until the 17th iteration of his body is presumed to be killed in action while he’s investigating an alien-infested cavern on Niflheim. So, Marshall’s minions regenerate an 18th Mickey. Oops. Now, there are two expendables – an ethical lapse in cloning technology that is given a hilariously complex bureaucratic back story all its own – with the new Mickey now needing to decide what to do about the old. Or perhaps it is vice versa?
In many ways, Mickey 17 feels like Bong’s very own version of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill – a high-grade concentration of his previous work, influences and preoccupations that has been blended together into something new. There is the gentle creature comedy of Okja and The Host (the native habitants of Niflheim are grotesque but thoughtful critters), the upstairs-downstairs social satire of Snowpiercer and Parasite, and the senseless violence of Mother. Squint just a little more, and you can also spot traces of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, Duncan Jones’s Moon and a heaping serving of cult-TV duo Tim & Eric. (This latter bit comes out especially strong during a running gag involving Toni Collette’s character, the scheming wife of Marshall, who is obsessed with “sauces.”)
Like his title character, Bong sometimes struggles to figure out just what kind of future this terrible world is barrelling toward. And some plot devices – including a crude translation device that allows humans to converse with the aliens – start off cute before the joke is hammered deep into the cold Niflheimian ground. But the entire spectacle is so unabashedly outrageous that you cannot help but side with its many excesses.
This sentiment extends to the film’s international cast, who build upon Bong’s sense of mischief with care and affection. Pattinson is especially game as Mickey, the actor loosening his body into a constantly gesticulating flail of limbs and lip curls, all while adopting a nasally voice that can only be described as Tom Hardy Goes Looney Tunes. The great trick of Mickey 17 is that you end up rooting for this pathetic little ne’er-do-well. He’s a loser whose only purpose on this mortal coil is to shuffle off of it, but he’s our loser, dang it.
Ruffalo, meanwhile, delivers the best Donald Trump impersonation of our generation precisely because he treats the President as a grifter whose brain has been so rotted by lies that he’s forgotten just which scam he is supposed to be selling. It also seems that Ruffalo has been keeping busy watching HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, so deeply is Marshall imbued with the spirit of Walton Goggins’s performance on that series as the slippery televangelist Baby Billy.
It has been a long five years between Bongs – between Parasite and now, we’ve endured a pandemic, economic upheaval, the rise of AI, the spectre of at least two possible Third World Wars, etc. But if Mickey 17 teaches us anything, it’s that living – under any circumstances – is still better than the alternative. May Bong continue to kill Hollywood over and over again.
