The film runs the gamut of modern human experiences with a ceaseless air of gallows humor until it finds light in its last moments
BY JULIE HUANG – arts@theaggie.org
“Mickey 17” is many things. For one, it is directed by Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean director most famous for “Parasite,” his 2019 film that could be described as a darkly comedic, psychologically unsettling thriller that is also a clear critique of the stratified nature of capitalistic societies. This description of “Parasite” fits just as well when applied to “Mickey 17.” In fact, this 2025 release may be even more heavy-handed than its predecessor in its pursuit of relevant social commentary.
The film’s protagonist, Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, is an unfortunate pushover of a young man whose opportunistic and backstabbing friend Timo (whose surname is never given, really giving the audience a sense of how deep their friendship is) convinces him to start a foolish business venture that fails, causing them to end up on the run from murderous loan sharks with chainsaws.
Through Mickey’s tragically pathetic backstory, the film has already clued you in on what kind of familiar world he lives in — one where money is everything and lacking it is akin to being handed a death sentence. Perhaps realistically, Mickey does not face these circumstances with grace, and Pattinson’s squeaky voice for his character is truly impressive in its ability to induce pity.
Hoping to escape his sad fate, Mickey signs up for a space expedition to colonize a faraway ice planet named Niflheim. This expedition is headed by a charismatic leader played by Mark Ruffalo, a failed politician named Kenneth Marshall, whose character is very clearly satirizing the current president of the United States. The Marshall spirit means everything to the members of the expedition, who are extremely enthusiastic about colonizing a distant planet all in the name of their favorite leader.
On the other end of the spectrum, Pattinson’s character has unwittingly signed up to be the lowest of the low. He is an “Expendable,” a worker whose contributions to the expedition effort take the form of willingly dying over and over again, each time being restored as a clone of himself with his memories updated to a database. The science behind the cloning technology is waved away even in the movie universe — scientific curiosity is not once privileged at any point in the film.
Instead, “Mickey 17” revels in putting its protagonist in a series of awful, stomach-dropping situations over and over for the first half of the film, hammering home how truly expendable Mickey is viewed as by the rest of his callous community. (As one can guess, he dies 16 times and is embodied by his 17th clone by the movie’s beginning).
Mickey’s perceived worth is shown to be tied up completely in his ability to die and produce research results for the scientists aboard the spaceship, regardless of how much pain it causes him. It is as if the film is turning to the audience and asking, “Wouldn’t it be messed up to treat human beings as unfeeling commodities?”
The only regular reprieve that Mickey has is the romantic relationship he starts with Nasha Barridge, a member of the ship’s security force who becomes his tether throughout all the personally meaningless pain that he suffers by rote. Nasha is beautiful and secure, whereas Mickey is perpetually distressed, and their relationship turns out to be one of the most straightforward sources of stability in the entire film.
Unlike the romance, the rest of the film is chaotic and dizzying as tonal shifts puncture the atmosphere that one starts getting used to every half-hour or so. The already outlandish premise becomes hopelessly bloated with plot threads as the film consistently leaves some scenarios feeling incomplete in order to chase new ideas. Two-thirds of the way through, “Mickey 17” has more or less dropped the intrigue surrounding clones, deciding that it has exhausted that concept after portraying some outrageous interactions that include attempted murder and sex, in that order.
The film instead devotes its last major arc to exploring a dynamic between colonizers and the Indigenous inhabitants of the land they are hoping to colonize, adding a critique of the imperialistic extraction of natural resources to its repertoire of scathing social commentary. The only segment of the film that does not lean into dark comedy is the ending, which wraps up the conflict more neatly and relatively peacefully than you might expect.
By the end, Mickey is finally allowed to grasp the possibilities of his future as the film closes his story on an alien planet, in new and tender circumstances familiar to anyone who has had to start anew without completely giving up everything. For once in its runtime, “Mickey 17” draws a parallel to reality in a way that illuminates the hope that comes with living.
Written by: Julie Huang — arts@theaggie.org
