MICKEY 17 (Bong Joon-ho 2025)

[Chris Knipp]

BONG JOON-HO: MICKEY 17 (2025)

Dying as a living

Robert Pattinson tries the gritty sci-fi thing again - hoping to get it better than Claire Denis' somewhat off-kilter 2018 space-travel film High Life, perhaps. He can tick off another on his bucket list of prestigious directors: the Oscar-winning Korean impresario Bong Joon-ho. Pardon me if I'm a tad underwhelmed, though, by Mickey 17, or more accurately, worn out by another big production that grows loud and wearying toward the end and overwhelms what might have been a witty and thought-provoking tale of life and death and human exploitation the way it appeared on the pages of Edward Ashton's original novel.

The action hinges on the notion of an organic 3D printer like the one used to print a Glock pistol only now so insanely sophisticated it can reprint a whole human being in every detail. What a piece of work is a man. So why not crank out a duplicate? And if one Robert Pattinson charms, why not two on screen at once? Well, that's what happens, but more isn't always more.

Pattinson's role, Mickey Barnes, is an "expendable," which means he can be used in tests and experiments on a new space colony on an ice planet a four-plus-years' ride away from Earth called Niflheim. Mickey is "expended," but when he dies, he's immediately reprinted to be used again. He gets a little sex now and then, but more often he gets burned up or poisoned or his hand blown off. Actually Mickey's status is complicated. For the terrible abuse he takes, which has experimental value, he's very useful. He's the planet Niflheim colony's sole "expendible." But the organic 3-D printer makes him a superhero.

Time is spent exploring this reprinting process, and the many Mickeys who have led up to #17, glimpsing and describing how it's done - with a separate brick-shaped object that is the file to 3-D print Mickey's brain. We learn that this whole process has been outlawed on earth, because duplicating humans simply couldn't be morally justified. In the novel there's a list of failed space colonies, and one is a place that became overrun by odious oligarchs who replicated themselves over and over, as, of course, they would.

And it's not a surprise that there's a sleazy overlord for the planet Niflheim project called Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) with his glossy, unlikable wife Yifa (Toni Collette), who provide comic relief we love to hate, and further demonstrate that, despite the evidence of Bong Joon-ho's $118 production budget, this movie isn't meant to be taken dead seriously. Marshall is a two-time failed US senator with links to some fundamentalist religion.

But while a zero-budget sci-fi film like Shane Carruth's 2004 Primer or a mini-budget one like Duncan Jones' 2009 Moon (the latter touching - in purer form - on many of the themes here, especially cloning, exploitation of lowly employes, unethical pracrices in space) can be thought-provoking because we have to use our imaginations, $118 used with skill by a famous Korean director, as it is here, is going to demand all our attention. When we see a landscape full of plausible creatures as in Villeneuve's Dune movies or this one, we tend to stop thinking and just admire. (There is more to admire in Dune, though.) Or we are awed or disgusted or whatever happens when we see the critters that swarm across the screen in Mickey 17, which are called "creepers." They are one of those combinations of menacing and cute. Mickety does communicate with them using a translation device. And when he was trapped down an ice hole, the giant creeper pulled him out and saved him.

Mickey definitely should have read the job description. But hordes were lining up to leave the Earth at this future moment. "Expendable" seemed like the only job that fit Mickey's skills: none - especially since on Earth he's being menaced by hideous loan sharks., as is his equally dicey business partner business partner Timo (Steven Yeun), who is also threaded through the tale. Pattinson gets to have all kinds of fun with this role, which are woven into the film in editor Yang Jin-mo's way.

Pattinson plays Mickey as a goofy American fall guy, and he's adopted a funny high-pitched American voice. But Mickey is also extremely durable, so much so he doesn't always die when he's expected to. Pattinson gets to enact excruciating pain over and over. He also gets to play with, or against, himself when a glitch causes a new Mickey printout​ to be made, Mickey 18, when Mickey 17 is still alive and wants to stay that way. two Mickeys on screen. But whatever happens, he's going to die. And not be reprinted forever, presumably.

Part of the enjoyment of this impressive-looking film comes from all its expensive production values, or its CGI. That field full of "creepers" lingers in the mind. So does Mark Ruffalo's sleek, odious unctuousness. Pattinson almost vanishes into his durable fall guy role, except there still is that face, which is why he needs to have a girlfriend, whom he gets in the comely Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who for some reason falls for him. People keep asking Mickey what it feels like to die, but all he can say is he really hates it. We get that.

Mickey is nobable for his humility, and Pattinson was humble to take on such an abject victim role. But this isn't first rate sci-fi (or horror, which it glances at, but never achieves), nor is it Bong Joon-ho at his best. Bradshw of the Guardian reviewed the movie at Berlin and noted a scene of a creeper biting the face of a crew member reminded him of Ridley Scott's Alien and of "something leaner, meaner and darker." Among other flaws, Mickey 17 is just too long.

Mickey 17, 137 mins., debuted in London Feb. 13, 2025, showing at the Berlinale Feb. 15. It opened theatrically in many countries including the US Mar. 7, 2025. Screened for this review at Kabuki Cinemas, San Francisco, Mar. 9, 2025. Metacritic rating: 73%.