Oh, Robert, you’re so fine (CREDIT: Warner Bros./Screenshot)
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Anamaria Vartolomei, Holliday Grainger
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Running Time: 137 Minutes
Rating: R for Violent Illnesses, Bloody Accidents, and Fictional Illicit Drug Use
Release Date: March 7, 2025 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Things aren’t going so well for Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) on Earth in the middle of the 21st century. So he decides to try his luck on an interstellar mission to colonize the distant planet Niflheim. But here’s the kicker: he’s signed up to be an “expendable,” meaning he carries out the most dangerous mission with the expectation that he is almost certainly going to die. But that’s no big deal, because a new version of him with all of his memories and the same personality is just going to be 3D-printed every time that happens. After a particularly blistering day, the 17th iteration of Mickey returns to his bed, only to find … Mickey 18! And that status quo just cannot stand, as multiples are not supposed to exist side by side.
What Made an Impression?: Pushed to the Limit… and the Limit and the Limit and the Limit: Mickey 17 is just the latest triumphant example of director Bong Joon-ho indulging his speciality of characters hanging on the economic precipice who wind up in absurd scenarios to achieve some semblance of peace and justice in this ridiculous universe. Mickey is in such dire straits because he and his buddy Timo (Steven Yeun) are impossibly indebted to a loan shark. And he ended up an Expendable because he basically didn’t read the dozens and dozens of pages of fine print. Now, he and the rest of the ship finds himself at the mercy of garish politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), aka Lady Macbeth by way of the Real Housewives of Outer Space. And the slop served on board the ship runs the full spectrum of the dystopian rainbow: from gray to brown to chrome to sepia. Mickey’s situation is not enviable in any way according to any reasonable analysis, but at least he has a droll humor about it all, not to mention a wildly enthusiastic and slightly unhinged girlfriend (Naomi Ackie). If you can see yourself in Mickey, you’re probably doing all right at not doing all right.
Our New Alien Neighbors: Niflheim is not a barren planet, as it’s populated by a species dubbed Creepers that are essentially giant pill bugs. If this were a B-movie from the 50s and 60s, the appropriate response to them would be, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Monsters!!!!!!!!!!!!!” But if they had instead arrived on the scene in the 80s in the wake of E.T., we probably would have said, “Oh, I think they might actually be our friends.” In 2025, it’s a little more complicated, especially in one of director Bong’s signature loony landscapes. They’re kind of like the creatures from Arrival in their attempts to communicate with the humans, but a lot edgier and scrappier. And that’s the key that Bong continues to successfully play in: his influences are clear, but this isn’t quite something that moviegoers have ever quite had the opportunity before to experience or make sense of.
Mickey 17 is Recommended If You Like: Any of Bong Joon-ho’s other movies, but you wished they’d been set on another planet
Grade: 4 out of 5 Mickeys
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