"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Mickey 17

MICKEY 17 is one of those lucky breaks humanity gets every once in a while where for some reason some American company gives South Korean master Bong Joon Ho (THE HOST, PARASITE) a whole bunch of money for a big, weird, wonderful English-language goof that they have no idea how to make money off of. The fucking Weinsteins did it as distributors of SNOWPIERCER, Netflix did it with OKJA, now it’s Warner Bros.’ turn with a movie that shares elements with both of those but speaks directly to this specific era of capitalistic exploitation, idiotic cults of asshole personality, and just all-around reckless stupidity. But in a fun sci-fi way. It’s based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, but its sensibilities are unmistakably Bong Joon Ho.

Robert Pattinson (THE ROVER) stars and narrates as the 17th clone of Mickey Barnes, a harmless doofus who, in debt to a loan shark over his failed macaron business, tries to flee by signing up as an “expendable” on a flight to colonize the snowy planet Niflheim. This is not a common line of work – everybody acts shocked when he writes it on the form, and keeps double-checking that he read the paperwork. Basically, nobody’s been stupid enough to sign up before, but he agreed to it out of ignorance and because a lady’s shampoo scent reminded him of his mom. He admits this with embarrassment but also like he’s telling a funny story you might be able to relate to.

What they do is send him on dangerous jobs, or even just do fucked up medical experiments on him, and when he dies they just “print out” a new clone body and upload his memories to it. He’s reticent to complain, even to us, but it’s not exactly like having unlimited lives in a video game – he still has to experience the pain and suffering of each death, and nobody he works with (even/especially earth friend/business partner Timo [Steven Yeun, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU]) seems to notice or give a fuck what he’s going through.

There was much controversy about cloning on Earth, all the religious scholars, ethicists and philosophers “were stumped,” he says, by the implications, especially after its inventor (Edward Davis, EMMA.) was caught using clones to aid in his side project as a serial killer of homeless people. So demagogue ex-Congressman Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, THE DENTIST) proposed the loophole of using it only in space, and only for this job.

Marshall is on the flight, and treated as royalty, which is how Mickey meets his soulmate Nasha (Naomi Ackie, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER) – they spot each other across the cafeteria when they’re the only ones not applauding for Marshall. Nasha might know better than to celebrate him, Mickey might just not know who exactly the guy is, but they meet and become inseparable and she’s the only one who bothers to comfort him when he’s suffering.

The Marshall character seems to be make-or-break for many people’s enjoyment of the movie. Like Jake Gyllenhaal in OKJA, or himself in POOR THINGS, Ruffalo gives a very broad, intentionally grating performance that makes me laugh but may just be annoying for others. It also makes it a little on the nose because undeniably some of the stupid voice and bizarre expressions he’s using are an imitation of the specific idiotic goon we currently have doing car infomercials on the White House lawn. The character is not a direct parallel – he has a controlling wife named Ylfa (Toni Collette, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE), he comes up with a few policy proposals, he lost enough elections to leave politics, and he makes at least a half-assed effort to fake being Christian. (Oh man, do I wish they could get the real Trump to try leading a prayer like this one does. That would be pretty funny.)

I don’t like having quasi-Trumps in movies, but I do think there’s a point when the satire really intersects effectively with the moment and makes it all worth it. For some reason Marshall hosts a late night talk show called Tonight with Kenneth Marshall, he has a giant chunk of Niflheim rock placed on the stage, and he keeps talking about how manly and beautiful it is. You gotta admit it doesn’t even feel that exaggerated at this point. I can absolutely see Trump deciding he’s a late night talk show host and then insisting on doing something as random and nonsensical as putting a giant rock and gushing over it. Of course he would do it and of course his people would do what he says and of course people would watch it and act like it made sense. We’re there. It’s funny/sad because it’s true.

(Incidentally, PARASITE had an important chunk of rock in it too. I’d like to hear/think more about Bong and his rocks.)

I do think it’s good that Marshall has somewhat sparing screen time. There are many great small characters, and it’s always fun when Yeun gets to play a dick, but the movie is mostly on the shoulders of Pattinson, giving a great comedic performance as a semi-likable dumb guy. Funny voice, funny physicality, perfect delivery of oddball jokes like a crucial scene where he expects some giant caterpillar things called creepers to eat him, instead they carry him out of their cave to safety, and he takes offense that they thought he would taste bad. Only much later when he recounts the story to Nasha does he realize that they saved his life, and then only because she points it out to him.

For me this is legit sci-fi because part of the fun is the details of this world, the way the cloning tech works, the way the people on the ship operate, the lab lady with the round glasses (Patsy Ferran, Miss Austen) who works for horrible people but you find yourself liking her because she’s more observant and has more of a conscience than the others. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism I guess so even rebel dream girl Nasha has to work as a cop/soldier (and also firefighter), though she ends up in a cell as often as Mickey does. At times I kind of thought of this as a cousin to ALIEN RESURRECTION and the more pure Jean-Pierre Jeunet movies. Funnier, no Alien, but similar, in a way. With notes of Jodorowsky comics, Terry Gilliam and Paul Verhoeven. But all this stirs together into pure Bong.

I’ve heard complaints that it’s long and messy, and since it was delayed for a while there is speculation about this or that being done in reshoots. I would argue that it is perfectly reasonable to not like those qualities of the movie, but that they are intrinsic to it; that a tighter and more disciplined version would be not as distinct or memorable. I think it’s especially of a piece with OKJA – this is Bong’s sense of humor, and part of the ride he wants to take us on in these ones. I like that Nasha doesn’t fall perfectly into a box – we can be invested in their love while also seeing her sometimes be petty, or quickly won over by the kink value of getting with two Mickeys at the same time. I like that Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO) is going to narc out the crime of “multiples” until she thinks she can keep one of them. I don’t think characters being more reasonable would be better. I also like that the authorities are too stupid to figure out that the hordes of creepers are surrounding the ship because of the baby creeper they recently captured. Sometimes a caricature is more appropriate than a photograph.

But I like that under that sketch of a cruel, stupid universe there’s still a strong optimism – a pure-hearted belief that the nice people among all these dumbasses could get a chance to try to create a better world, and also a Miyazaki-ian sense that nature will persevere. Those creepy/adorable creepers aren’t gonna put up with our shit, and they shouldn’t.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2025 at 7:07 am and is filed under Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

16 Responses to “Mickey 17”

  1. I applaud whatever the hell this is getting made in this day and age of across-the-board cowardice, but I can’t see myself pulling the trigger on this anytime soon. On-the-nose satire of *gestures broadly* is a hard sell right now, but mostly I wish this starred somebody else. I find it completely impossible to get excited about anything with Robert Pattinson in it. Whatever alleged charisma he’s got I seemed to have been inoculated against at a young age. To me, he always comes off as distractingly sullen and dull. I find him completely uninteresting as a screen presence. A handsome, vaguely movie star-shaped void where a leading man should be. I cannot get invested in him no matter how many chances I give him. The one time I’ve gotten even the slightest hint of whatever all the millennials see in him was TENET, and even then, anybody with cheekbones and the ability to smirk on cue could have played that role. Normally, I’d try to get over may distaste for an actor in the case of a movie that’s clearly a lot more than just a star vehicle, but he’s the title character. Apparently, there are 17 of him. That’s about 18 times more Pattinson than I can handle.

  2. It’s OK Majestyk, I’ve already seen this twice, so I have used up your go. I’d agree about TENET being Pattinson’s best movie prior to this, but here he really rises to the occasion. If it’s still on l may go see it again.

    Truly, it is a joy to see what a 120 million dollar Sci-Fi movie made by Bong looks like, and, to be clear, it looks bloody great. The ALIEN RESURRECTION reference is bang on, as though the aliens and the space truckers realise what assholes Weyland-Yutani are. But the dinner party scene is OG ALIEN by way of Luis Bunuel. Complaints that this isn’t PARASITE are totally missing the point. This is Hitchcock following REAR WINDOW with THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (he didn’t exactly, but go with it).

    Also, this makes it very clear that Bong really means it – in case there was any doubt after SNOWPIERCER or PARASITE etc. He may affect a cuddly late night showbiz personality, but Nasha’s big, expletive-fueled speech is Bong from the heart and a very fine articulation of the contempt we should all feel right now for these people.

    Sure, I expected a gut punch ending, but right now hope was an evening bigger surprise.

  3. “even bigger surprise”!

    Two asides: I can’t speak for all British folk, but I was particularly pleased to see Thomas Turgoose – last seen in AVENGEMENT – and Tim Key in this.

    Also, Mrs Borg9 detected notes of Brando’s Jor-El in Ruffalo’s performance, beyond the more obvious point of reference. I kinda get that. It’s superficial, but so is the character.

  4. I used to feel like Majestyk, but eventually something clicked with me on Pattinson. I like that he swerved away from sullen dreamboat roles into playing Weird Little Guys. Even his Batman is a Weird Little Guy. THE LIGHTHOUSE and GOOD TIME are tops for me, but I’m looking forward to finally catching MICKEY 17.

  5. I think Pattinson works really great for the character because you still get why the girls on the ship like him, since he looks like Robert Pattinson, but he’s also very good at coming off as a weird, mildly creepy idiot, so you can believe that a lot of people on the ship, including his “friends”, are mostly indifferent to all the horrible shit that happens to him. Rambo says that an “expendable” is the kind of friend that you invite to a party but if he doesn’t show up it doesn’t really matter, and Pattinson as Mickey really seems like that kind of expendable friend. It’s not that they don’t like him at all, but if the scientists need to torture him for the greater good, eh, whatever, it’s just Mickey. I don’t think I’d buy Charlie Hunnam or Taron Egerton in that role. They’d have friends who’d have their back. Ryan Gosling maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, Bong needed a guy who was willing not to be cool, clever or charismatic at all, just some kind of handsome dork, and Pattinson is good at that.
    Overall I liked it and it’s a pretty unique movie, but I’ll admit I liked it less than PARASITE.

  6. Saw this weeks ago. I liked it a good amount, but I heard all the comments about jokes that only half-work, or that some of the world-building was too long and uneventful, and I conceded that people had a point here and there. But I related to the small tragedies of Mickey, the loss he suffered, the constant deaths, the obliviousness regarding being the lowest spoke on the wheel. The idea that maybe Nasha is, initially, just using him for sex (which thankfully evolves into actual affection).

    And yet, weeks later what sticks with me is the sense of outrage, the idea of standing tall in the face of ignorant nihilism, and the concept that revolution might be brought about by the of the dumbest guys around us who are still smart enough to know the difference between right and wrong. It feels like it means more. Maybe it will age well?

    I get that some also found the Trump/Kenneth Marshall comparisons to be too unbearable given how on-the-nose they were, but unfortunately Trump has literally personified some of the worst tropes in genre storytelling. His shadow ultimately looms fairly large over that type of storytelling. It’s his fault, not Mark Ruffalo’s or Bong Joon-ho’s.

  7. Adored this film. Its my kind of weird science fiction. While it can wander at times in story its pacing keeps up and the weird situations Mickey gets into is always fun. Having a character this dumb leading a movie in this era seems perfect.

  8. I have to say, I liked much of this, but Ruffalo’s awful Trump analog sort of ruined it for me. As an American, I feel like it’s a huge, huge problem that Bong is coming at this as an outsider — obviously there’s no escaping Trump anywhere in the world, but without speaking the language fluently or living in the culture here, he obviously just doesn’t “get” Trumpism at all, and his satire feels completely empty because of it. Ruffalo captures some of Trump’s essential callow cluelessness, but you can’t really satirize this culture without at least understanding his appeal enough to dimly imagine why people would willingly support him, and MICKEY 17 simply can’t do that, and so it’s left with a toothless “well, he’s an idiot, and they’re idiots, but don’t worry, smart people will win in the end!” angle that simply misses every important point about this bleak future we’re actually looking at. Frankly, if Bong was genuinely interested in engaging with this material, the place to start is not with Trump, but with his followers. The fact that it never even occurs to him that this flashy, take-charge figure might have some dangerous appeal to the endlessly shit-upon Mickey is proof enough that he simply doesn’t understand what’s happening to the world well enough to have anything meaningful to say about it.

    Once again proof that Trump sucks so bad that he even makes people trying to make fun of him also suck by association.

  9. I have to say I agree with Mr Subtlety on this – I really wanted to like this more than I did! I dug the look of the whole thing, including the terrible recruitment station on earth where Mickey signs up, and I liked Pattinson’s performances quite a bit. But the satirical aspect just felt too slapdash to really land. Ruffalo did a great job of representing a seething, smirking buffoon but everything around him was so inconsistent and weird that nothing really made sense. When the security guard blasts into her straight-into-the-camera speech, and then the crew rebel (apparently they’ve been secretly planning to fight back the whole time except we don’t find out about it until that moment), I totally felt like I was hearing what the director himself wants to scream at Trump and co – and god knows I’m with him! – but in the world of the movie it just felt like, where is this coming from out of nowhere?

    There was a moment – when the two Mickeys and Nasha fall into bed, and then things quickly unspool – where I felt like the movie was hitting a kind of live-action looney tunes level of goofy mayhem that I was totally into. That cooled off fast for me but I’m glad it worked better for others.

    I hadn’t heard of the novel before the first trailer for this came out but I checked it out – it’s pretty good! Very different than the movie – the commander who hates Mickey is no demagogue, his main gripe is that Mickey represents a waste of resources that could go into feeding the starving crew, and the aliens are far less cuddly and intelligible. A big chunk of the book is a kind of screwball farce with the two Mickeys sneaking around station trying to cadge enough food for them both to survive without letting it slip that there are 2 of them. And the sex scene plays out differently. Having read the novel, I was really interested to see what the auteur of PARASITE was going to do with it, but other than upping MICKEY 7 to MICKEY 17 (which I freely admit is way funnier) it felt to me like every step away from the book was counterproductive.

  10. I remember that some people hated TEAM AMERICA because since the backdrop was a satire of the G. W. Bush era they wanted the authors to make fun of Bush himself and not Sean Penn, Matt Damon, or Michael Bay. And they had to explain that everybody was already making fun of Bush so they didn’t feel that they had much to add, but what they really wanted to do was parodying dumb militaristic action movies. Now seeing that people think MICKEY 17 sucks because it’s an inaccurate/incomplete caricature of Trumpism feels similar, people being mad at Bong for not satirizing/analyzing what they wanted him to satirize/analyze, and thinking he’s missing the point when it’s more likely that they’re missing his.
    Mickey makes a stupid decision based on the fact that he’s not too bright and he’s in a shitty situation and he doesn’t really know what he’s stepping into. Then he sees the reality of his new life and regrets his decision, and because he’s not fundamentally a bad person, he realizes that he doesn’t want to keep following the buffoon he blindly followed and who exploited him. So yeah maybe that’s a very charitable way of looking at your average Trump supporter but then again it’s a crazy sci fi movie and not a spiritual successor to the works of Michael Moore, and thinking that “if we rebel against the evil people in power there’s hope that we can build a better future” means that Bong just doesn’t “get” it because he’s a foreigner is kind of a weird take.

  11. I don’t think Bong was trying to make a movie about Trumpism, I think that character is a whole bunch of assholes from a whole bunch of countries and time periods. I just think Ruffalo couldn’t resist putting some Trump in there and even if he hadn’t we’d see him that way right now because we’re on the brink of Trump-induced national suicide.

    But I researched it and found an interview with /Film where he kinda says it’s Trump but also other people.

    /Film: What lessons are you hoping that American audiences might be able to learn from watching characters living under a ruler like Marshall?

    Director Bong: I sense the clear intentions of your question with Marshall’s character played by Mark Ruffalo. [laughs] If you ask us, is it a satire of a particular character? I think it’ll be difficult for Mark and I to say, “No, absolutely,” to that. [laughs] But even in Korea, there was recently some political turmoil, and not-so-good things happened. Yeah. And in the modern age, all of us have gone through bad leaders and political sufferings. And I kind of wanted all of that to be mixed into this character.

    https://www.slashfilm.com/1800665/mickey-17-bong-joon-ho-naomie-ackie-toni-collette-interview/

  12. I liked it but, to be honest I would rate every other Joon-ho movie I’ve seen over it. A few stray observations:

    Everyone taking turns in being a petty asshole is thematic, and one of my favorite things in the film! Even Mickey, in his 18th incarnation.
    Being a dick is all down to circumstances, environment, temptations, mistakes, short-sightedness, biases, you name it – everyone can fall into it. But there’s still some human decency somewhere, hidden at varying depths (except for the villains, which is what makes them the villains) and can be reached and work together for the common good. The optimism felt rushed and a bit hollow to me but it’s integral to the movie.

    It’s really funny/depressing that Marshall and his wife worry about not sounding like assholes at one point instead of being all performatively anti-woke; Even cartoony, dystopian villain satires are better than what we’ve got. I loved Ruffalo and Collette’s performance in this, by the way – they’re clearly having a blast. Collette’s preoccupation with sauces was hilarious.

    I’m a sci-fi nerd, so I’ll split hairs and take exception with this being called good sci-fi; It’s good! and it’s good Hollywood sci-fi! But as usual scientific rigour, exploration of ideas, consistency, etc. take a distant back seat to humour, plot needs and the message. All of which is fine and probably as it should be. I’ll go back to my cave and read some Peter Watts or something.

    The designs for the future tech are amazing, though; The trucks, ships, vehicles, everything. The Mickey printer behaving exactly like an inkjet printer made me belly-laugh every single time. The aliens look like woodlice but move like French Bulldogs and I want one.

    And holy shit that dinner scene is beyond magnificent – you can criticize Joon-Ho for a lot of things, but on a pure visual level he’s one of the best directors out there. I completely get why people keep throwing money at him.

  13. It’s worth remembering that Bong grew up in a country being ruled by the military and may have other insights into what makes for asshole leadership. I can’t speak to how this plays to an American audience in this moment, but yeah, those red hats, and I think we may assume Ruffalo had a clear idea of what he was doing even if it doesn’t chime perfectly with Bong’s screenplay.

    I do however think Bong is quite clear about why people, even Mickey, should follow someone like Marshall: sheer bloody desperation induced by capitalism. For the most part MICKEY 17 goes easier on capitalism than SNOWPIERCER or PARASITE, or at least is less explicit, being more interested in ripping into idiotic leaders. But why does Mickey end up as an expendable and following Marshall? Because he bought into the con of setting up his own business and ended up with life-threatening debt.

    Ylfa’s sauce obsession is brilliant and hilarious and not just an amusing side note. It speaks directly to a key element of the mindset Bong is critiquing. The sauce is the blood and suffering of others, be they expendables or creepers. It’s not enough that these people are rich and powerful, without the suffering of others they can’t taste anything!

  14. I mean, it’s obvious that Marshall has some differences from Trump (the Lady Macbeth wife, for one thing, although I also don’t really understand why that character exists here at all) but… like, come on. It’s like saying the character Charlie Chaplin is playing in THE GREAT DICTATOR is just an amalgam of various assholes, maybe a little Hitler snuck in there too. If they didn’t want us to read this as a direct analog for Trumpism, they needed to back way the fuck off all the signifiers here. Besides, not only is it a tepid and superficial satire on Trump, all the Trump baggage just makes it a weaker story;

    The problem is that it just utterly lacks insight into why Trump and others like him have such a terrifying pull on people. The movie pretty much begins and ends at “he’s a blustering idiot,” which is true but doesn’t even begin to get at the mechanics of what makes him appealing and dangerous, which Bong just plain doesn’t seem to exactly understand. He gets that it has something to do with coded racism and performative masculinity and religion and Bad Conservative Stuff, but without a real sense of how all that stuff preys on people, and especially what kind of people it appeals to (his supporters are barely even glimpsed, and only to depict them as mindless sheep — the main characters barely even seem aware of them), “Kenneth Marshall” just doesn’t even really make much sense as a character. Without the movie just straight-up telling you “he is Trump, just think of him as Trump” he would be a completely baffling villain whose goals and hold on power are completely inexplicable. Even with the assumptions that it’s a 1:1 analog, he makes for a weirdly vague villain: I have absolutely no idea what Marshall is attempting to accomplish in the dinner scene, for example. I don’t even understand why he would be so adamant about destroying Mickey when he finds out they’re doubles — he’s benefiting personally from this program, which was his idea in the first place, is he actually more serious about his religious principles than the movie has thus far led us to believe? It’s just sort of a fuzzy mess. And, yeah, I mean, it may just be my overwhelming hatred of the original, but Ruffalo’s performance is surely one of the most insufferable I’ve seen in many a year, and not really in a productive way: I don’t love to hate him, I just hate him and wish he would stop Jim Carrying. It’s not funny and it’s not interesting. I cannot sanction his buffoonery.

  15. Obvious or not (and I would argue that he’s at the very least Trump AND Musk combined, not just Trump) I think a crucial difference is that THE GREAT DICTATOR is called THE GREAT DICTATOR and takes place in a context that is very similar to the real events that inspired it, while MICKEY 17 is NOT called KENNETH MARSHALL, and takes place in the future in a spaceship and on an alien planet. So maybe it can be excused for not really being an in-depth study of Trump’s rise to power, and maybe it’s not at all because “Boon just doesn’t get it”, but because it’s not what he intended to talk about.
    The ROBOCOP remake has a major character that can be seen as an “he’s obviously supposed to be Steve Jobs!” kind of character, it’s still ok that the movie is not really about Steve Jobs and the people who idolize him. I think the same can apply to MICKEY 17.

  16. Correct me if I’m wrong, but at the start of the movie Mickey seems like a “Was there an election recently?” kinda guy. But during the first half at least, doesn’t it seem like he kinda likes or respects Marshall in a thoughtless go-along sort of way? Or did I imagine that? Because if so, I think that’s an interesting element.

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