REVIEW: Mickey 17 [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 137 minutes
Release Date: March 7th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director(s): Bong Joon-ho
Writer(s): Bong Joon-ho / Edward Ashton (novel Mickey 7)

Hey! I’m still good meat!

Bong Joon-ho’s latest Mickey 17, adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey 7, must be labeled science fiction because, as we discovered post 2024 election, not voting for the fascist, purity evangelist, buffoon doesn’t happen in reality. No, we give the Donald Trump charlatans of the world a second chance to destroy the country. So, the rest of us can only aspire towards the Americans who rejected their obvious Trump caricature in Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) so hard that he was forced to lead an expedition into space to finally realize his dream of autocracy. We can only vicariously revel in the assumption that this veneered cretin will inevitably meet a gruesome demise.

Before that day arrives, however, we must first meet Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson). Or, better stated, the former Mickey Barnes. Because the original Mickey is long since dead. So is the second. The third. The fourth. The … you get it. Why? Because he’s an “Expendable” now. A pristine copy of the body Mickey had when he signed away his life on the dotted line and the most recent back-up of the memories of his previous iteration. Thanks to a controversial scientific procedure banned on Earth, he is Marshall’s expedition’s designated guinea pig. He’s died so they know how long the human body can withstand space radiation. He’s died to help them create a vaccine for a mystery virus found upon landing. He’s died simply because it was easier to leave him behind and print another.

Mickey is an object now. The lab coats (led by Cameron Britton’s sycophant Arkady and Patsy Ferran’s innovator Dorothy) trick him into testing their latest products. His opportunistic best friend (Steven Yeun’s Timo) treats him like a dog. Marshall and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) don’t even bother calling him “Mickey” when “Expendable” is more deliciously dehumanizing. If not for his devoted girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie), even he would forget he still has a soul. Because it’s difficult to care about survival when you know you’re going to be reprinted tomorrow. Why suffer to stay alive when dying sooner means less pain? It’s why Mickey begs for the giant “Creeper” (tardigrade-looking alien inhabitants of his new home) to eat him whole so he can avoid freezing to death.

The first thirty minutes of Mickey 17 serves as an entertaining recap of everything we missed before watching him wake-up in a desolate icy cave after somehow surviving a bad fall. We learn what happened to make him become an “Expendable.” How he fell in love with Nasha. Why he was in the snow in the first place. We get the lay of the land of Bong and Ashton’s mythology: meeting the Marshalls, learning about the oppressive hierarchy within their spacecraft, and receiving a crash course on human printing. Narrated by Mickey himself with a healthy dose of sardonic indifference to his unavoidable circumstances, we eventually find our feet firmly planted and ready for the main plot to begin.

Well, that central narrative isn’t quite as engaging as the exposition dump. Not because it isn’t effectively presented or executed, but because it’s pretty familiar territory thematically speaking. If you forgot Bong directed Okja because you’re still riding the Oscar high of Parasite, this will definitely remind you. The over-the-top cartoon that is Kenneth Marshall. The animals in need of saving from mankind’s hubristic bloodlust. It’s anti-colonial, anti-rich, and pro-morality. It’s about how the person at the very bottom of the totem pole can ultimately become a hero because, through his steady cycle of death and reincarnation, he’s the one person who truly understands the value of life.

It’s a fun ride despite running into an hour-long lull once the excitement of two Mickeys being alive at the same time wears off. That’s when all the stuff we learned during the recap comes back to complicate matters and we discover a few other key details left out for dramatic purposes. The “good vs. evil” battle between death cult Brownshirts and empathetic civil servants commences and Ruffalo is let off-leash to bring everything his consigliere (Daniel Henshall’s Preston) advises to fruition in the loudest and most idiotic ways possible. And with everything starts to go full bananas, we can devote our focus to the Mickeys and Pattinson’s dual performances showing how different the same person can be when forced to consider the violence committed upon them by outside forces and themselves.

He’s by far the best part of the film. Embodying both 17’s sheepish compliance and 18’s justifiable yearning for homicidal vengeance. The latter doesn’t exist without the former, but the former isn’t beholden to the latter. So, 18 can be angry about everything 17 experienced and 17 can finally remember what mortality feels like knowing that a forthcoming 19 will be printed from 18’s memories rather than his. Everything after they meet each other is therefore made precious. Every decision holds consequences from which they haven’t felt the weight in years. It leads to some great philosophical ruminating and even better comedy when their conundrum gets exploited by others. I almost wish Marshall and the “Creepers” didn’t exist so the whole could simply be about 17 and 18 contemplating their coexistence.

But that’s not what wins big budgets. Frankly, I’m amazed something this weird was given its budget at all—even with its action-based colonial overtones. Because it’s Okja goofy. Not Snowpiercer cool. Not that I’ll ever understand Hollywood economics considering Snowpiercer doubled its forty-million-dollar budget, Okja didn’t get a theatrical release on a fifty-million-dollar budget, and Mickey 17 (presumably on the back of Bong’s recent Oscar win) had Warner Bros. forking over a whopping one hundred and eighteen million. It made it back, so good for them and good for the future of non-IP driven scripts, but it just goes to show that studios don’t care about content as much as brand. Bong and Pattinson sell tickets. WB probably wrote that check without reading a word.