Ambition and unconventional ideas fuel much of Bong Joon Ho’s followup to Parasite: Can it stick the landing? Head of Reviews Robert Flynn digs into Mickey 17, an unpredictable Sci-Fi blockbuster that is filled with hilarious characters and outrageous scenes of violence.
It's not often that a director is able to take Hollywood by storm anymore, with film studios becoming increasingly more cautious in selecting whom they wish to give the keys of the kingdom to. Director Bong Joon Ho has made two forays into Hollywood filmmaking before but after the historic success of Parasite (2019) all eyes fell on the South Korean director as everyone wondered how he would follow up one of the most acclaimed films of the modern era.
After being granted a budget the size of any other large American blockbuster, director Bong has crafted a response to Parasite that is an affront to expectation and typical Hollywood filmmaking. Mickey 17 (2025) is tonally confusing, borderline unwieldy, and viscerally brutal. Despite how strange of a film it is, director Bong’s followup to Parasite is undeniably interesting and rich in exciting ideas.
The film predominantly follows Mickey 17, who is the seventeenth iteration of a man named Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson). When Mickey 17 is introduced, he has already lived 16 lives, some lasting several years and others lasting 15 minutes. Each time that he is ‘printed out’, he comes back as the same man that he was originally, with the same memories and appearance, give or take a few new personality flairs.
Barnes chose this life accidentally after needing to leave Earth due to a lack of employment and a worsening climate. He blithely applied to be an ‘expendable’, without reading the fine print, on a space voyage to a planet named Niflheim that is led by the bumbling, brash, and protuberantly pouting colonialist autocrat Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) who feels particularly inspired by a certain American political figure. In becoming an expendable, Mickey has fallen into the hands of a deeply exploitative corporation who have chosen to clone him indefinitely, a practice which is illegal on earth but permitted in space, enabling them to run whatever cruel experiments or trials that they wish on him.
The themes of authoritarian leadership and the allegory for worker exploitation both become clear within the opening moments, however, the film takes an intriguing turn when Mickey 17 survives a near fatal fall into a steep ravine and returns back to the space shuttle with the help of the native species of Niflheim: woodlouse-esque towering monsters that are adorned with horns and legs. Upon returning to the spacecraft, Mickey finds that he has been cloned preemptively, coming face to face with the next incarnation of himself, Mickey 18. Both Mickeys, along with the aid of their now-shared girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie), must conceal their incident of “multiples” to avoid complete deletion, all while trying to avoid an internecine war between their leader and the native species.
The experience of watching Bong Joon Ho’s Sci-fi ethically focused blockbuster is the same as having to describe it: complicated. A scene will often unpredictably become out of hand, swinging between graphic depictions of violence and showy, irreverent performances that sprinkle in childish one liners. Time even flashes forward and backward mercurially in an attempt to further establish the laws and ethical concerns of the world that director Bong has created. It is a choice that can go against the narrative tension and overall structure of the film, though Mickey 17 never feels bloated.
Director Bong’s well of ideas proves to be continuously entertaining, even if not all of them stick their landing. His direction feels delightfully frenetic and almost completely free from convention which can be disconcerting when the film has the veneer of a Hollywood blockbuster. Director Bong’s cast are also evidently fueled by the film’s choice to re-invent the blockbuster wheel. Pattinson is tasked with what can only be described as an insurmountable task: having to play two versions of the same character within the same scene.
He gives a performance that is entirely in tune with the films off-kilter tone, building both Mickeys through a series of recognisable, bright eccentricities that allow Pattinson to play up the comedy or to convey the brutal stakes of the narrative, depending on what the scene demands. It is a performance that will inevitably go overlooked, as is an unfortunate pattern within his career, but is an undeniable testament to Pattinson’s incredible versatility.
At its core, Mickey 17 is a film that is concerned with the misuse of emerging technologies, a topic that feels particularly timely. With its parallels to several real life figures and systems, it can feel odd to see such severe circumstances presented in such an irreverent manner. However, director Bong’s latest film is infused with humanity and hope, never being flippant in its portrayal of contemporary issues. It's the type of Hollywood film that may only ever be made once, which is a testament to the film's ambition.