Robert Pattinson Impresses in Mickey 17‘s Silly but Declawed Social Satire
The first thing the audience learns about Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson doing a Steve-O voice), the protagonist of Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho’s latest Hollywood film Mickey 17, is that his best friend and space pilot Timo (Steven Yeun) prioritizes the safety of Mickey’s weapon over that of Mickey himself. As an “expendable,” a merciless job he signed up for without reading the paperwork, Mickey cannot fully die. Each time Mickey dies, a team of scientists on the icy intergalactic colony of Niflheim reuploads his personality into a newly cloned Mickey, making him the perfect guinea pig for experimentation. They reprint a number of Mickeys to experiment on anything from new vaccines to nerve gas. By the time the audience meets him, Mickey has died painfully and been reprinted 17 times.
This being a Bong Joon-ho film, acute class structures are at work here. Back on earth, Mickey 1 and Timo had been financially desperate enough to leap into the stars to escape from their violent debt collectors. Timo is the socially smooth one, therefore grifting his way up the social ladder to the position of pilot, leaving Mickey at the bottom of the heap in the role of town fool. Niflheim is ruled by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a tacky, explicitly fascist politician with his own reality television show, a vain wife consumed by wealth and image (Toni Collette) and a league of fanatic supporters who wear red hats. Marshall’s main goal is to establish “a pure white planet full of superior people.” Sound familiar? Ruffalo’s Trump caricature is vague enough that it barely touches the line of being too on the nose, but doesn’t cross that line.
Mickey gets a lucky break when he makes sultry eye contact with a cute space cop named Nasha (Naomi Ackie) from across the cafeteria, sparking an instant, fiery romance in an environment where sexual relations are discouraged due to a lack of resources (I couldn’t help but be reminded of the food rations given to those at the back of the train in 2013’s Snowpiercer). This is one of the first major truly Romantic storylines in Joon-ho’s career, and it’s one of the weaker points of the film because Nasha’s character isn’t fully developed. Although I’m supportive of her bravura and sexy romance with Mickey, my connection to her– and by extension, my connection to the protagonist– would have benefitted from knowing a little more about Nasha outside of her badass persona.
If the first half of Mickey 17 serves as a pseudo-metaphysical exploration on the value of human life, then the second half is a skillfully edited, purely fun Hollywood sci-fi spectacle, with Joon-ho flexing his strong sense of craft for the entire runtime. When Mickey 17 is assumed dead, the scientists print Mickey 18, without knowing that Mickey 17 has been saved by a population of large, toothy bug mammoths, creating an illegal double. 18’s cocky, rebellious personality has sprouted from a repressed place inside of 17. Much of the comedy is derived from the two Pattinson roles clashing with each other, as well as Joon-ho’s deft ability to both frame a shot and time his cuts for maximum comedic effect. There are shades of Riley Stearns’ 2022 film Dual, which also pitted Karen Gillan against her own clone.
Mickey’s function as a protagonist is less to dismantle the political system of Niflheim and more to take the audience on a journey of personal growth with spectacular sci-fi trappings. The declawed, goofy social commentary and traditionally clean Hollywood ending will no doubt disappoint those who are expecting Joon-ho to declare a take down of the system, within both the context of the film and the studio system that produced it. Mickey 17 is in no way a revolutionary follow up to something like 2019’s Parasite, but it’s an entertaining, well crafted ride.
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writer: Bong Joon-ho, Edward Ashton (Original Writer)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette
Release Date: March 6, 2025
Brooklyn-based film writer Katarina Docalovich was raised in an independent video store and never really left. Her passions include sipping lime seltzer, trying on perfume and spending hours theorizing about Survivor. You can find her scattered thoughts as well as her writing on Twitter.