Mickey 17 (2025)

Finally after just over two weeks since seeing it in theaters, I’m writing about Mickey 17 (2025). This movie was directed and written by Bong Joon-Ho, in collaboration with Edward Ashton on the writing side. Believe it or not, this is the first Bong Joon-Ho film I’ve ever seen; I haven’t watched Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017), or even Parasite (2019). I’ve mentioned this to friends before, but my priorities when it comes to what I should watch next can be pretty weird. Nevertheless, the trailer got me interested to see the film, particularly Pattinson’s interesting accent for his character. 

I saw this film on Thursday 3/6/25 with some friends at the Cinemark 16 theater in Victorville, CA. As with Wolf Man (2025), I saw this movie in the XD auditorium. It was the beginning of a series of rainy days that came and went over the past couple of weeks. There are a few other groups of people in the auditorium that didn’t seem to engage much with the movie (from what I remember). In terms of trailers, there were a few of the usual suspects familiar to you (if you’ve read my previous posts), but quite a few new previews did come up. Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) seems to be a musical thriller, starring The Weekend and Jenna Ortega. From what I just read looking it up again, the movie seems to be connected to The Weekend’s album of the same name. I’m not really familiar with The Weekend or his music, outside of his appearance in Uncut Gems (2019) and his attractions at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, but it did look visually interesting. There was also a trailer for a new Jurassic Park/World movie, starring Scarlet Johanson. The only movie in that franchise that I’ve seen is Jurassic World (2015) interestingly enough and thought it was the movie equivalent to having a bag of chips. The trailer gave off Kong: Skull Island (2017) vibes. I’ve never been invested in this franchise to care about new entries anyways. However, it was pretty funny to see the usual suspects complain about the franchise going woke because the lead of this sort of action movie is a woman, nevermind that Scarjo has been in many action roles (Marvel and non-Marvel) in the last decade. The Alto Knights (2025) is an upcoming crime drama, starring Robert De Niro in a dual role as real life mob bosses: Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. Unless others want to see it, I’ll probably stay at home and watch The Sopranos. Finally, Sinners (2025) is an upcoming horror period piece, written & directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan. From my hazy memory, I initially thought the movie took place in the post Civil War Antebellum South, but upon looking it up, the movie seems to take place in the 1930s American South, where Jim Crow laws are still in full swing. Out of the new trailers I just described, I’m the most interested in this one; Ryan Coogler with Michael B. Jordan is typically a win in my experience, so I’ll look forward to its release in April. 

Mickey 17 (2025) is a science fiction adventure movie with dark comedy thrown in for good measure. Robert Pattinson plays a down on his luck young man named Mickey, who in order to escape a dangerous situation on Earth, haphazardly signs up for a job on a starship crew leaving to colonize another planet. The job being what’s known in-universe as an “Expendable”. Mickey finds himself tasked with extremely dangerous jobs during the ship’s voyage, only for cutting edge cloning tech that was banned on Earth to “regenerate” him for the next fatal job. It’s not all bad for Mickey as he finds solace in his girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), a security agent for the starship. However, a problem arises when Mickey 17 (the 17th clone) survives an encounter with the native creatures of the distant planet and returns to the ship, only to find that the staff have already made another clone, Mickey 18. Having two clones exist at once is a crime punishable by total extermination as bad actors took advantage of duplicates back on Earth. This is compounded with the leader of the ship, a failed politician and egomaniac named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), who has sinister plans for the planet he is colonizing. 

In terms of what works for me, I’ll start with the performances. It should come as no surprise that Robert Pattinson does a great job with the material. I think the accent he uses for the movie is fun and fits with the nature of his primary character. I say primary character because Pattinson sort of plays two roles in this film, Mickey 17 and his duplicate Mickey 18. Where Mickey 17 is timid, more fearful, and a little goofy, Mickey 18 is much more aggressive and rash. It’s fun to watch these two clones play off of each other, whether in conflict or working alongside each other. Then we have the two main antagonists of the film: the aforementioned Mark Ruffalo as former failed politician turned cult --erm colony leader, Kenneth Marshal, and his just as if not more devious wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette). Ruffalo brings a stupidly arrogant and excessively vain charismatic energy to his role as a dictator-to-be, who courts religious zealotry and thinly veiled white supremacist ideals to get to the top job. Bong Joon-ho has clarified that the character of Frank Marshall is not based on any specific real-life individual, but a mix of dictators and other shitty politicians throughout history. While it is true that shit-ass authoritarian dictators share similar traits and tactics, it is pretty clear that the character of Frank Marshall is Donald Trump coded. This can be seen in the character’s mannerisms and cadence, as well as the iconography seen from his supporters on the ship. This is also not to mention how often Marshall puts himself in front of a camera to convey his messages to his audience of supporters. It’s not just Trump though, Frank Marshall has a little bit of Joe Biden in him too, as seen when the character goes live on camera and often loses his train of thought, only for his wife, Ylfa, to whisper in his ear. Speaking of which, I also enjoy Toni Collette’s performance alongside Ruffalo. In actuality, I find her to be a bit more compelling as her sinister nature is often hidden beneath a piercing grin, which is disturbing in its own right. These two performances aid in conveying the film’s commentary on exploitation of the worker and foreign lands at the hands of a late-stage capitalist society and it was certainly cathartic to me as someone none too pleased with the state of things in the US, but I also think that this satire wears thin as the movie progresses. 

Now anything negative I have to say about this movie is automatically canceled out by the fact that you can hear the Wilhelm Scream during an action sequence (for those that aren’t familiar, see the link below).

Putting this iconic scream in the movie proves that Bong Joon-Ho is a true gamer and filmmaker. Jokes aside, I found that you can definitely feel the little over two hour runtime of this movie after a point and feel that has to do with how disjointed the movie can get at times. There are few instances where the movie jumps back and forth in time to give context or exposition. While I understand it’s important to bring the audience up to speed and I’m no screenwriter by any means, I feel there could’ve been a more natural way to convey information. In addition, there are additional characters and story elements in the movie that seem like they would be important, but either get resolved anti-climatically, fall by the wayside of the main plot, or are just not fully developed. For example, Steven Yeun plays Timo: Mickey’s old friend whose shady dealings lead to them fleeing Earth in the first place. In the movie’s first flashback sequence, I got the impression that Yuen was doing a cameo more or less and his character wouldn’t factor more into the story, but he keeps coming back as a sort of incidental roadblock. I’m not writing this to say that I don’t want to see more Steven Yuen, but his story revolving around his character’s shady nature, and its by-the-numbers conclusion in the end, doesn’t leave much of an impression to justify the time spent on his character if that makes sense. On the other hand, we have Anamaria Vartolomei as Kai Katz and Patsy Ferran as Dorothy. Kai seems undercooked as a high ranking security agent onboard the colonist ship who seems to start to question Kenneth Marshall’s leadership, but is nearly forgotten about after a certain point in the movie; in addition, her character also very briefly serves as a wrench in Mickey and Nashsa’s relationship that you wonder what the point was. Dorothy fares a little bit better as a scientist onboard the colonist ship that often assists in printing a new Mickey when he dies. In the beginning of the film, we see inklings of her being the only scientist sympathetic to Mickey’s plight as an Expendable to outright help the Mickeys as they try to thwart Marshall’s plans later in the movie. I don’t mind this arc, but I feel it would’ve made the movie more compelling to see prominent members of the starship’s military and scientist crew gradually side against the establishment as more is revealed. All this to say that the movie’s uneasy structure unfortunately gets in the way of conveying its themes. 

I feel that the previous paragraph gives off the impression that I ultimately dislike this movie. That’s not quite the case. I want to like the film even more than I do, as I think the premise and what it is trying to say is compelling and relevant. As I said earlier, I found the satire and commentary on cult of personality leaders being self-serving buffoons to be really cathartic in the moment, but I think it, and the movie’s structural issues, ultimately overshadow the true message on the exploitation and dehumanization of the worker in the quest for riches. As in real life, you can be mad at shit-ass leaders doing shit-ass things and hope they’ll eventually go away, but it should be understood that they are oftentimes perpetuating problems that have existed for all-time. That aside, performances across the board are still generally great (regardless of whether I feel certain characters are well developed or not), visual effects are well done, and the movie is still pretty funny. I’ll give Mickey 17 a Just a Movie. If you have not seen it yet, I would implore that you see it in theaters if you still can. Apparently the movie is not doing so hot financially and that is a bummer. Regardless of the criticisms I have with this movie, it is a shame to see otherwise competently made non-franchise films from respected directors like Bong Joon-Ho not reach its audience in the theater. My next post should be on the movie I decided to watch for the first time last week, Demolition Man (1993). Have a good night!