Mickey 17 is the latest film from director Bong Joon-ho, known for Parasite, and it stars Robert Pattinson in a futuristic, thought-provoking story about cloning, identity, and human survival. This film takes us to a starship where humanity is attempting to establish a colony on a far-off ice planet, and in doing so, it raises some fascinating questions about what it truly means to be human.

You can read the review below or watch the video review on YouTube:

Mickey 17 follows the story of Mickey Barnes, a down on his luck guy who is desperate to escape his life on Earth after racking up an unpayable debt with a loan shark. So, he signs up to become an “expendable” to get a spot on the next ship going off planet. In this future world, expendables are workers who sign up for high-risk space missions, and whenever they die, their consciousness and memories are transferred into a newly printed body. Essentially, they’re clones with a large amount of continuity from life to life, with each iteration preserving most of the thoughts and experiences of the previous one.

As the title suggests, Mickey is now on his 17th iteration. The twist? Well, he doesn’t die as expected during a mission, yet an 18th version of him is printed because the company thinks he is dead. Now there are two Mickeys, which is a serious problem because the rules dictate that only one instance of a person can exist at a time. If duplicates are discovered, they must both be destroyed. As Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 look for ways to survive, they find themselves caught in a web of existential dilemmas, political intrigue, and a clever love triangle – all against the backdrop of harsh realities of life on a frozen, unwelcoming planet.

First Impressions

Right off the bat, Mickey 17 is a mix of comedy, existential drama, and hard science fiction. It explores everything from futuristic 3D printing processes to advanced neural networks capable of preserving consciousness and memories, to space travel, alien species, and even the politics of colonization. There’s so much packed into this film that it easily could have become an incoherent mess, but somehow, Bong Joon-ho pulls it all together into a cohesive and interesting movie.

What makes it work is that it doesn’t focus solely on one element of the story. Instead, it leans into its nature as a science fiction film and juggles multiple “what-if” scenarios: What if we could print living bodies? What if we could transfer the data in our head into a neural net? What if we encountered an alien species? What if society followed a single cult-like leader to another planet? This interconnected web of questions is what makes Mickey 17 such a strong example of thought-provoking science fiction at its best. The thing is, great science fiction isn’t always perfect storytelling. It’s storytelling that makes you think and breaks you out of today so that you can image tomorrow.

Artistic Direction and Technology

I love when films tackled technology in ways that could be realistic in the future. So, I was actually pretty impressed with how Mickey 17 visualizes its futuristic tech. The process of “printing” a new human uses this massive, MRI-like machine that takes waste material and bioprints a fully-formed, living human body – including functional muscles, bones, and skin, along with everything else a living body needs. A lot of this technology actually exists today giving us the ability to bioprint parts of human bodies from functioning muscles to bioceramics for bones and 3D printed skin grafts. The movie is clearly building on these real-world medical advances, but takes a leap in being able to print an entire body and implant the memory data into the body’s brain. What’s different about this film, is that it feels weirdly realistic in how they do it.

They also do a good job of mimicking a neural scanning process that can capture a human’s personality by copying the data in their brains. Mickey’s consciousness is uploaded weekly, so when he dies, the new version of himself can pick up right where he left off. But there’s a catch—each version of Mickey is just slightly different, suggesting that the printing process isn’t perfect. Are these differences caused by flaws in the neural transfer? A slight misalignment in the printing? Or does each iteration naturally diverge over time, introducing tiny mutations of personality and behavior?

The Philosophical Side of the Story

The film raises some really interesting psychological and biological questions. There’s this one moment in the film, during the printing of Mickey 1, when a technician briefly unplugs and then reconnects a cord. Was this small interruption what caused the glitch in Mickey’s printing, leading to slight divergences in personality for each future iteration? Or is the concept of an exact copy inherently flawed? This raises deeper questions about bioprinting human duplicates, or expendables. If a printed Mickey isn’t a perfect replica, is he really the same person? And if two Mickeys exist at the same time and have different experiences, does this make them distinct individuals rather than copies?

This reminds me of the philosophical and ethical dilemmas explored in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where genetically identical clones develop unique identities based on their personal experiences. The film takes a similar approach, questioning whether nature, memory, and identity are shaped more by lived experience than by genetic or technological replication.

This imperfection is what makes Mickey 17 such a compelling exploration of identity. At what point does Mickey stop being “Mickey”? And if he never truly remembers his death experiences, because that part of his experience never gets saved to his neural net, how does that affect each copy’s identity as a Mickey? Worse, what must it be like to never remember what death feels like, despite having everyone around you watch you die repeatedly, and would the repetitive birthing process create any kind of mental trauma? These are the kinds of philosophical questions that elevate Mickey 17 beyond being just another sci-fi adventure.

Pacing and Structure Issues

While the film delivers a fascinating story, it suffers from pacing issues. At 2 hours and 17 minutes, Mickey 17 could have easily been trimmed down by 30 minutes without losing any of its impact. Certain scenes overstay their welcome, with humor and absurdity stretching beyond what was necessary. The dinner scene with Mickey and Congressman Marshall, for instance, drags on too long, as do some of the relationship scenes with Nasha and other scenes between Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette. The result is lots of side characters who only serve as tools for exposition, comedic effect, or to amplify the film’s surreal tone. While this isn’t a huge complaint of mine, a tighter script would have allowed the film to maintain its intellectual weight with a punch.

Robert Pattinson’s Performance

What truly makes this film work is the cast. Robert Pattinson carries this film. In Mickey 17, his performance goes beyond playing twins or people who look like each other. He’s not just playing one character, he’s playing multiple versions of himself, who are each subtly different. It’s when he is in a scene with himself that you see how well he holds the same character in his head, presenting different personality traits and ticks that convey the nuanced personality shifts between the different Mickeys. This film pushes his range as an actor, and he may be on his way toward quietly becoming one of the great character actors of our time. If another actor had taken this role, I don’t think the movie would have had the same impact.

Performances: Naomi Ackie & Steven Yeun

Beyond Pattinson, the supporting cast is strong. Naomi Ackie, who plays Nasha, brings warmth and energy to the film. She helps ground Mickey’s character, making him more relatable and sympathetic. Steven Yeun plays Timo (Mickey’s highly questionable friend), and though he’s not in the movie as much as I expected, he still delivers a solid performance. However, guys, please remember that if you ever find yourself in a friendship with a guy like Timo, you might want to find a new friend.

Performances: Toni Collette & Mark Ruffalo

Then we have Toni Collette, who plays Ilfa, the over-the-top wife of former congressman Kenneth Marshal. She’s a calculating leader who controls her husband to a large degree and has a really weird obsession with food that borders on the absurd. She becomes a foil for almost every other character, heightening the film’s comedic level of absurdity. And finally, Mark Ruffalo plays Kenneth Marshal the failed, power-hungry bureaucratic whose fanbase follows him like a cult leader, and honestly, his performance is frustrating. He is so off-the-chart that his character stretches his credibility making him look weak and insane at the same time. I honestly can’t tell if he’s a great actor or a horrible actor in this film because his character is so grating.

Final Thoughts and Recommendation

So, is Mickey 17, is it worth the price of admission? Absolutely. If you love thought-provoking science fiction, this film definitely delivers. It’s a little absurd, a little serious, and a little technologically wacky, but it’s also an intellectual journey that will leave you thinking long after the credits roll.

That being said, the film isn’t perfect. It’s a bit too long, with some scenes that could have been trimmed to tighten the pacing. There are moments where it leans too heavily into visual spectacle rather than storytelling, and some characters who could have either been developed more or cut. While these are minor issues compared to what the film achieves overall, if you don’t like smart, absurdist sci-fi, you might not like this film.

So, Mickey 17? Have you seen it? Are you planning to? If you have seen it, what are some of the biggest questions this film left you with? Let me know in the comments!

While you’re here, be sure to like and subscribe for more reviews. Thanks for reading. That’s it for now, see you next time! Bye.

If you’d like to read the MICKEY 17 novel by Edward Ashton, here are my Amazon Associate links:

• Paperback Book: https://amzn.to/43phtcK
• Audiobook: https://amzn.to/41Iexq7
• Kindle: https://amzn.to/4ihL7Vo