Director Bong Joon Ho follows up his 2019 Oscar triumph Parasite with an often-delayed weirdo of a movie in Mickey 17, a sometimes-funny sci-fi mess that feels like a bunch of ideas that never quite came together.
The movie is basically Duncan Jones’ Moon meets Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, with a pinch of MAGA hate thrown in. The futuristic yarn stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey, a failed businessman who chooses to leave Earth as an “expendable,” meaning he will be a worker who will continuously die in the name of science and be reprinted as a clone.
He winds up on some sort of colony ship lead by Marshall, a Trump-like politician, and his wife, played by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette. This allows the film to be both a clone comedy and political satire. That winds up being not such a great thing.
When one of Pattinson’s clones survives elimination, and another is printed, that leads to two Pattinsons onscreen. The two Mickeys are a little different, making them easy to tell them apart and allowing Pattinson to attempt to spread his acting wings. The complexities of having two slightly different versions of a person is glossed over due to the movie’s overstuffed plot.
The Starship Troopers vibe is due to the ship encountering a hive of bug-like creatures at its destination. The MAGA angle has a bit of fascist lean to it, also like Starship Troopers. OK, so Mickey 17 might be a misguided remake of Starship Troopers more than anything else.
The scenes Pattinson does with himself range from ingenious down to catastrophically bad. Ruffalo, a well-documented Trump hater, clearly has the man in his sights when concocting the maniacal, insecure Marshall, with Collette being a less obvious (but definite) nod to Melania. It’s alternately amusing and confusing.
Steven Yeun offers a slightly amusing performance as Mickey’s unreliable friend. The two share the first scene of the movie—which proves to be the best in the movie. The rest of the film does not deliver on the promise.
All of these vibes, nods to other films and directors, and the crazy performances get pushed into the editing room, and what comes out is something that has no center. It’s as if an editing contraption was fed a bunch of wild ideas; its stomach got upset; and it puked this movie all over the screen.
At times, the film plays like Kubrick sci fi, and at others, it feels like Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Yes, that’s a semi obscure reference, but I assure you: If you took the time to watch Mickey 17 and then chased it with The Bonfire of the Vanities, you’d know what I’m talking about. This film has ton of talent and has everything going in its direction, yet the result is totally whacked.
To say this is a disappointment would be an understatement, as Mickey 17 was one of 2025’s most anticipated films. Bong Joon Ho, and most everyone else involved, will recover from this, but you can bet studios will take a look at the results and tighten their purse strings when Oscar-winning directors come to the table with wild ideas. Get ready for more Pretty Woman remakes and that 15th Disney reboot of The Lion King.
The movie was delayed nearly a year before it finally hit screens. Producers cited the various strikes as the reason, but whatever it was, Mickey 17 has all the markings of a troubled production lacking unity between writing and execution.