If a gonzo satire of autocrats and oligarchs might give you relief from the blood-boiling quality of the daily news, consider the latest film from South Korean writer-director Bong Joon Ho. While his Best Picture-winning Parasite was a class-war drama set in the real world, Bong also explored inequality in the 2013 dystopian epic Snowpiercer. So it’s no surprise that he chose to adapt Edward Ashton’s 2022 sci-fi novel Mickey7, which likewise foregrounds the plight of the proletarian — this time in outer space.
The deal
Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) never wanted to fly to the stars. His dream was to launch a fast-food empire based on macarons (tag line: “Macarons are not a sin”). But when business goes south, he and his best bud (Steven Yeun) land in the crosshairs of a sadistic loan shark.
To escape a gruesome death, Mickey signs up for an off-world colonization mission led by a grandiose failed politician (Mark Ruffalo) with the backing of a mysterious religious organization. His new job, as it turns out, is to endure many gruesome deaths. He’s been hired as an “expendable,” who can be cloned using 3D-printing technology and implanted with a backup of his own memories. This secular form of immortality, illegal back on Earth, makes it “acceptable” to put Mickey in situations where other crew members wouldn’t be risked.
Mickey is a good sport about his frequent deaths, mainly because he’s found love on the spaceship with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie). He dutifully explores the ice planet Niflheim, offering himself as bait for the giant centipede/mole inhabitants known as Creepers.
Then one day, the 17th iteration of Mickey returns from a mission he wasn’t expected to survive to find the 18th iteration already sleeping in his bed. The scientists jumped the gun on cloning him, and now Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 must cooperate to avoid perma-death. Problem is, they hate each other’s guts.
Will you like it?
If this all sounds broad and goofy, it is. Mickey 17 is a wild sci-fi yarn in the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with breakneck pacing, a time-jumping narrative, and a Looney Tunes commitment to its premise. Mickey’s frequent demises are a recurring gag. So are the chipper stoicism with which he endures them (Wile E. Coyote would be envious) and the casual incompetence of the scientists who oversee his resurrections.
While the “body-printing” technology is inherently sinister, this is no chilly, control-freak dystopia. Instead, think Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Absurdity, sloppiness and human error dominate Bong’s futuristic vision, never more obviously than in the scenes involving Ruffalo’s Nero-esque mission leader and his scheming wife (Toni Collette). Both are so devoted to grandstanding over substance that it’s a wonder the space mission ever got off the ground.
Mickey’s bosses speak unabashedly of practicing eugenics on their new “Pure Planet” — and, in case you were wondering, their supporters sometimes wear red hats. Subtle Mickey 17 is not. But it’s also scattershot enough in its satire to apply to a whole raft of modern, TV-ready demagogues.
The movie is all over the place, but Pattinson’s everyman performance glues it (more or less) together. When we meet Mickey, he’s already died 16 times, and his scratchy, nasal voice-over conveys just how exhausting that’s been. Never the sharpest tool in the shed, the likable Mickey has resigned himself to letting others steer his narrative — the opposite of a traditional leading man. All he has going for him are loyalty to his friends and a cockroach’s determination to survive to die again.
If Mickey 17 — our protagonist — represents the underclass crushed into near-submission, Mickey 18 is the devil on his shoulder, who mocks him for his passivity and dares him to resist. Did a glitch in the cloning process produce this divergence, creating the possibility of revolution? Or is Mickey 18 only a rebel because he’s the first Mickey who’s ever had to confront himself, and he doesn’t like what he sees?
Mickey 17 never gives these questions an answer, nor do the two Mickeys get the sort of meaty scene together that might yield one. While Pattinson makes the two iterations amusingly distinct, their encounters are more slapstick than philosophical. The issue of what it takes to transform a meek fall guy into a pissed-off firebrand gets lost in the many subplots involving romantic rivalries, misunderstood aliens and palace conspiracies.
Though Bong’s film falls short of the potential of its premise, it remains an entertainingly ludicrous and heartwarming tale that affirms the value of everyone’s humanity (yes, even the aliens’) against a technocratic calculus of worth. If it troubles you to hear people in power unironically refer to their fellow humans as “parasites,” Mickey 17 has your number.
If you like this, try…
Snowpiercer (2013; PLEX, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, Tubi, YouTube Primetime, rentable): One of the most inventive sci-fi epics of recent times, Bong’s film about climate crisis survivors on a high-speed train spawned a TV series of the same name (four seasons, 2020-2024; AMC+, SlingTV, YouTube Primetime, rentable).
The Host (2006; Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable): While the Creepers in Mickey 17 are more Jim Henson than kaiju, they rouse memories of Bong’s excellent monster movie, in which a workingman fights to rescue his daughter from a pollution-born river cryptid.
“Severance” (two seasons, 2022-2025; Apple TV+): Here’s your daily reminder to watch a groundbreaking sci-fi show about workplaces that do bizarre, dehumanizing things to us. Season 2 is currently wrapping up.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!