Mickey 17

A Sci-Fi Spectacle Derailed by Chaos and Indecision

Following up a cultural hit is always daunting—expectations are raised to the max and often prove unrealistic or impossible to meet. Parasite (2019) struck the perfect balance between director Bong Joon Ho’s wacky humor and his blunt social commentary. It became a relative box office success for a foreign-language film and made history as the first non-English-language movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Ho’s follow-up was announced soon after, yet the release of Mickey 17 (2025) has faced constant delays. Initially screened in 2023 and given a spring 2024 release date, Warner Bros. eventually postponed the film indefinitely, finally premiering it in early 2025.

Mickey 17 is adapted from Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel Mickey7. It follows Mickey (Robert Pattinson), an "Expendable" on a colonizing spaceship. An Expendable is someone who has signed over their body to be cloned and used for experiments involving deadly diseases, extreme conditions, and potential alien encounters. While treated like a lab rat, Mickey finds romance with security officer Nasha (Naomi Ackie). Meanwhile the entire ship follows the orders of the demagogic leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Toni Collette). However, when Mickey is left for dead on a mission, he unexpectedly returns to the ship—only to find a new clone of himself already there, a strictly illegal situation that they must hide or risk their permanent deaths.

The Mickey 17 trailer has felt like it's been playing in theaters for years, so I’m relieved the film has finally premiered—if only to be free of its repetitive beats. The production is undeniably impressive, yet the film itself, like some of Ho’s earlier, more uneven works, is convoluted, confused, and indecisive. The humor and tone are more similar to Snowpiercer(2013) and Okja (2017), but the film suffers from an incredibly confusing edit and a tangled plot. Mickey 17 is weighed down by an overwhelming number of subplots, characters, themes, and lore. Ho’s editing jumps around in time like a grandfather telling a war story—constantly doubling back to insert crucial details he forgot to mention earlier. The result is a stuttering pace and a lack of flow in both the narrative and character arcs.

As with Snowpiercer and Okja, the characters in Mickey 17 never fully transcend the cartoonish caricatures they are meant to represent. Ho has struggled in his English-language films to bring the same depth to his actors’ performances that he achieved in Parasite and The Host (2006). While those films still featured outlandish humor and exaggerated moments, they managed to deliver characters we cared deeply about. Mickey 17, despite its social commentary on how lower-class and uneducated humans are discarded for the so-called advancement of society, ultimately fails to make its characters feel anything but… expendable.

That said, there are still compelling conceptual elements. The film lightly touches on fascinating ethical questions surrounding cloning—should we pity a being that will simply be re-cloned?—and explores Okja-like themes of animal cruelty in the name of science. However, these interesting ideas are never explored in depth. Instead, the film constantly shifts focus to a dizzying array of subplots, including drug smuggling, a loan shark chasing a passenger, a love triangle (that then becomes a square), an assassination attempt, and more. While small moments stand out, the surrounding chaos drowns out any meaningful exploration of the film’s best ideas.

Ho assembles a strong cast of dedicated actors, led by Pattinson. I've enjoyed watching Pattinson’s post-Twilight career, as he has jumped across genres, countries, and mediums, each role revealing a new side of his range. In Mickey 17, his dual performance is a showcase of impressive subtlety—despite the ridiculous voice he employs. Though the two Mickeys look identical, Pattinson differentiates them through subtle shifts in intonation and body language, making it easy to tell them apart. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast falls into the kind of hammy overacting that sometimes emerges under Ho’s direction, with Ruffalo delivering an especially over-the-top performance.

In the end, Mickey 17 is a messy film. It has standout moments that raise interesting questions, yet the plotting and adaptation feel like they are still in the brainstorming stage—uncertain about which themes to focus on and which subplots or side characters to prioritize (or sacrifice). I commend Ho for continuing to push boundaries and take risks with his films; that kind of experimentation is what keeps cinema evolving. The risks paid off perfectly in Parasite, but here, they result in a frustratingly indecisive letdown.

4.8/10