Mickey 17 is the kind of movie that bursts through the door with a bottle of Casamigos and a flush red face. He charges at the party host and gives voice to your frustrations before passing out in a pool of his vomit. It’s bold and entirely unafraid.
Bong Joon-ho’s adaptation of Mickey7, Edward Ashton’s novel about a disposable clone on an ice-world colony, is a sci-fi think piece and a chaotic fever dream. Look away for a moment and you'll be asking yourself 'what happened?" Despite this, the story manages to keep itself together and move forward.
Robert Pattinson, always game for a role that demands both existential dread and deadpan humor, delivers a performance that oscillates between bleak resignation and manic defiance. This is a testament to his skill as an actor. As Mickey 17, a man contracted to die repeatedly for the survival of others, Pattinson brings an exhausted yet irreverent charm that anchors the film’s heady premise. He is the heart of this film and the movie wears that heart on its sleeve.
Visually, Mickey 17 leans into Bong’s signature contrast of the sleek and the grotesque. The colony’s sterile corridors clash with the raw, flesh-and-bone reality of Mickey’s endless deaths, making each resurrection feel less like a miracle and more like a punishment. The world-building is fascinating but unafraid to get weird—think Snowpiercer meets Edge of Tomorrow but replace the action and Tom cruises running with an extra shot of black comedy.
Yet, like its reckless party-crasher energy suggests, Mickey 17 isn’t always in control. The film throws out big ideas—about identity, expandability, and the ethics of immortality—faster than it can fully explore them. Some moments land with gut-punch intensity. Some moments and ideas are left and not addressed again. This is a trend in Bong Joon-ho’s filmography though. It lingers like the moments in life where things are left unsaid and you have to move on.
Either way, Mickey 17 makes an impression. It’s loud, brash, and willing to make you laugh and gasp at the human condition—just like its titular character. And sometimes, that’s what you want from sci-fi.