Movie Review: Mickey 17

Director Bong Joon Ho follows up his 2019 Oscar-winning sensation Parasite with Mickey 17, an entertaining and layered sci-fi epic that finds the director at his lightest and most optimistic.

Mickey 17 follows Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a meek man who got into some financial trouble on Earth when his “friend” Timo (Steven Yeun) convinced him to open a macaroon shop. Turns out Timo is a bad person and got him and Mickey mixed up with a violent mobster who they now owe money. To dodge their doomed fate on Earth, Mickey and Timo join a military mission to space to inhabit another planet called Nilfheim. Timo joins as a pilot and Mickey joins as an “expendable” where he is tasked with doing dangerous missions and test dangerous chemicals and medicines. If he dies, he is reincarnated the following day and put through more tests.

While on a mission, the seventeenth version of Mickey falls into a cave on Nilfheim and survives being bombarded by the planet’s creatures, though everyone on his ship thinks he has died. As Mickey returns to the ship, he discovers that they have made an eighteenth version of him (also played by Pattinson), who is much tougher, meaner, and more confident than 17. The Mickey’s get entangled in a political plot led by the ship’s idiotic and tyrannical leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) while Mickey 17 starts to realize he may have a purpose in life after all.

Throughout his career, Bong Joon Ho has kept his films within small proximity. Regardless of the genre, he’s kept everything on Earth and within a distinct area, like city confines of Seoul in The Host, the various cars of a train circling the globe in Snowpiercer, or a mansion of secrets in Parasite. But with Mickey 17, Bong goes to places he’s never been before by taking us to space. Mickey 17 is Bong’s biggest film to date in terms of scale and he easily transitions to a bigger scale, showing us the vastness of space and Nilfheim and creating a dense and fascinating world.

Most of the film takes place on the ship and this is where the film shines. The ship itself is unique in its look and incredibly detailed. Bong takes us around the ship and its many corridors, and the ship becomes a character itself. We also interact most with our characters on the ship, which allows us to bask in the marvelous performances by Pattinson who portrays both Mickey’s brilliantly. You can’t help but love Mickey 17 and be terrified of Mickey 18, and watching them learn to work together is a real treat.

Mickey 17 is a layered film about stupid politicians with too much power. Bong touches on issues of colonization, greed, the rich using the poor for their gain, racism, tyranny, and religion influence in politics. A lot is going on in Mickey 17, especially when thinking about what is going on in today’s global climate, but Bong has been balancing socially relevant themes in his film for years (particularly classism and how the rich take advantage of the poor), so he knows how to balance these themes, so they don’t overwhelm or overtake the movie.

And through all of this, Mickey 17 is about learning to be happy and finding your purpose. It features the most humor he’s ever had in a film, thanks mostly to Pattinson’s great physical acting and comedic timing, has a nice love story at its center between Mickey 17 and Nasha (a delightful Naomi Ackie), and has the most optimistic ending ever for a Bong Joon Ho film, one that symbolizes hope and happiness. Mickey 17 is another excellent film from Bong Joon Ho and an early contender for one of the best films of the year.

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