Bong sends in the clones: ‘Mickey 17’

Cinema | March 10th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

Bong Joon-ho’s highly anticipated follow-up to the game-changing Oscar-winner “Parasite” was set to arrive in theaters last year, but the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike pushed the date. Was the wait worth it? Longtime Bong fans and admirers — the sort who groove on “The Host,” “Snowpiercer” and “Okja,” in particular will find much to love in the imaginative filmmaker’s adaptation of Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel “Mickey7,” upgraded onscreen to “Mickey 17.” Those looking for another “Parasite,” however, will need to temper expectations, despite the presence of several Bong hallmarks, including some searing class commentary and plenty of pitch-black comedy.

Robert Pattinson is fantastic as the title character and his subsequent incarnation. In a science fiction future, Mickey Barnes signs up to be an “Expendable” (with a capital E) following a series of bad choices and worse luck involving partner and pal Timo (Steven Yeun). Foolishly failing to read his employment contract’s fine print (comic voiceover narration allows us to hear Mickey’s thoughts throughout the movie), our protagonist is placed in grave situations during the colonization of an ice planet called Niflheim. Each time he dies, the company “reprints” a new iteration, uploading Mickey’s consciousness into a fresh body.

The dopey Mickey is not, shall we say, the sharpest laser in the holster, and Pattinson plays him with a winning blend of gullibility, industriousness and fatalism. The character gets a real boost from the presence of the wonderful Naomie Ackie, whose security agent Nasha Barridge is so much more than merely a manic pixie dream girl-style love interest. Before she makes decisions pivotal to the mechanics of the entire plot, Nasha indulges in one of recent cinema’s most entertaining threesomes when she realizes Mickeys 17 and 18 exist simultaneously as illegal “Multiples” (with a capital M). Leave it to Bong to make some time for some space horniness.

Bong, unworried and unhurried when it comes to propelling the plot forward in the most conventional or expected manner, introduces Mickey’s magic when a bunch of Niflheim aliens called creepers spare his life. The creepers, which come in multiple sizes according to their age, look like tardigrades crossed with bison — or at least the senior-most one does. Mickey eventually communicates with the creeper leader through a translation gadget, allowing Bong to emphasize that the real enemy is very often not the skittering, unearthly monster but the rapacious capitalist hellbent on expanding his power.

If that description sounds familiar, you might laugh and cry at Mark Ruffalo’s unhinged politician Kenneth Marshall, whose phony piety and quick outbursts feel like a cross between a charlatan televangelist and a certain world leader (Marshall’s slavish followers even don red hats). Sharing DNA with Ruffalo’s rakish attorney Duncan Wedderburn from “Poor Things,” Marshall is abetted/controlled by his calculating wife Ylfa (Toni Collette, holding her own in the maelstrom). Some of the action involving the Marshalls threatens to leave the rails. And Bong always chooses the more-is-more path when a number of quiet character moments for several members of the supporting cast were sorely needed. Even so, “Mickey 17” deserves a look.

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