‘Mickey 17’ Is A Darkly Comic Sci-Fi Tale For Our Moment

A dark, twisty and often hilarious science fiction story about cloning technology isn’t what anyone expected South Korean director Bong Joon-ho to tackle after winning Best Picture for his modern masterpiece Parasite. Yet as it turns out, Mickey 17 is a perfect fit for Bong; a film bursting with ideas about capitalism, insane politicians and colonisation, the film slots right in to the director’s wider filmography.

Though the film is less focused than his previous effort and has so many ideas that they don’t always fully cohere, Mickey 17 nonetheless prove for a deeply entertaining and memorable film that’s held up by an expectedly incredible Robert Pattinson and superb ensemble cast.

Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) is an ‘Expendable’, an employee on an interstellar colonisation mission led by an insane politician whose job entails dying repeatedly to be brought back with cloning technology that’s illegal on Earth. After Mickey 17 doesn’t die during an encounter with planetary wildlife known as creepers, Mickey 18 is printed. The two versions of Mickey soon clash, and soon come to learn the truth about the people running this colonisation mission.

As expected from Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 is rife with commentary about how the ultra-wealthy utilise capitalist systems for their own benefit. The cloning technology that’s used to keep bringing Mickey back to life is literally fueled by waste, and the rulers of the ship look down upon him as “trash meat” in spite of how crucial he is to their malicious ends.

When the film introduces duplicate Mickeys, it becomes apparent that the intention of this program is to disillusion Mickey from his own personhood through his job. In having to come face-to-face with himself, the meaning of what Mickey’s life is becomes inexplicably tied to his job. (Turns out 2025 is the year of split consciousness at work, between this and Severance!)

The incredible cast of Mickey 17

Robert Pattinson is nothing short of splendid in Mickey 17, and plays variants on the same character with seeming ease and a superb sense of comedic timing. His skill becomes most clear when both Mickey 17 and 18 share the screen; though the only distinguishing characteristic between the two is often just a number sloppily painted on, it’s still easy to tell which is which through Pattinson’s incredible control over facial expressions, body language and voice.

Each member of the wider cast matches the aesthetic of Mickey 17 to a tee, too. Naomi Ackie plays Mickey’s no-nonsense partner Nasha, and Steven Yeun his neurotic childhood friend Timo. A good chunk of praise, though, has to be directed at Mark Ruffalo as the unhinged Kenneth Marshall, and Toni Collette as his wife Ylfa.

It’s pretty clear immediately that Ruffalo’s character and performances are taking cues from… a certain United States president who is known for his use of spray tan (in case the analogy is lost on you, Kenneth’s loyal followers wear red hats!). Though we might be a little tired of Trump analogies, I think director and writer Bong brings a level of particularly incisive commentary that showcases how cults of personality and their leaders care very little for anyone but themselves.

Kenneth and Ylfa are both hilarious onscreen, especially with actors like Ruffalo and Collette at the helm. But the humour derived from their incompetence is also paired with horror as you realise the power they hold over the outcome of not just these humans, but the native population of the planet they’ve arrived on. I believe their extremely mechanical view of human emotion and intimacy as tools to create a “perfect” set of humans, while utilising control over the lives and deaths of Mickey for laborious tasks, belies where Bong’s head is at politically in the film.

Mickey 17 is a perfect fit for Bong Joon-ho

Despite the conceptually complex nature of the material, Bong Joon-ho still seems right in his wheelhouse with Mickey 17. A kind of choreographed chaos is indicative of the film’s style, striking a superb balance between the physical action and humour of any given scene while taking visual cues from past work like Snowpiercer and Okja.

The writing also takes a similar approach, with Bong penning a genuinely funny script that got more than just a few heart chuckles out of me. I admit, though, that the script does take a little while to get going and overall feels more scattered than Bong’s previous outings.

Across its runtime, Mickey 17 raises a huge number of interesting ideas about work, colonialism, and what it means to be human – but simply by virtue of having so many concepts, none of them are as singularly developed as they are in films like Parasite or Memories of Murder.

However, it’s hard to knock the film too much for this when it still manages to feel focused on presenting a deeply engaging, satirical sci-fi story. Thanks to Bong’s usual filmmaking flair and one of Robert Pattinson’s best ever performances, Mickey 17 has secured a spot as one of the most bitingly relevant sci-fi films of the 2020s so far.

★★★★

Mickey 17 is in cinemas now.