Mickey 17 Review: Bong Joon-ho Hits The Mark, Between Farce and Science Fiction

The director and screenwriter of the Oscar-winning Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, presents a new revolutionary cinematic experience, Mickey 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), finds himself serving a holder who demands definitive commitment to work … or dying, to live. Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, and candidates for ’Oscar Toni Collette (“Hereditary”) and Mark Ruffalo. The skill of a great director is demonstrated precisely when the physiological decline of a film arrives. The moment the script leaves the tracks, it is disconnected from the supporting film structure. In this sense, the author’s ability does not live in bringing the script back to the chosen border but in following it without forcing it: the best direction is that which adapts to writing and not the other way around. Bong Joon-ho is not wrong, in theory, or at least he does not risk enough to be able to make a mistake on the delicate return to the post Parasite scenes, an epochal film that has also changed the history of the Oscars, opening them overwhelmingly to international cinema.

The film that imposed it internationally as the most famous Korean director, the most loved and famous. Which, reflecting on it with a cold mind, is quite bizarre, because Bong Joon-ho was a fairly successful Hollywood director – but without a big exploit – well before returning to his homeland and pulling out of his hat what is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Mickey 17 looks (and much) like his previous Hollywood period. In its strengths and, above all, in its defects, starting from the science fiction genre. When the film seems to be losing its knowledge – making weird and tender crawling beings enter the stage – the director chooses to move the fulcrum, making the hero on duty (indeed, the heroes) perform the best of the catharsis, between epic, irony and tenderness. Clearing doubts: yes, that of the Korean author is an excellent film, compressed in a reading full of elements and meanings, but also lucid and splendidly positive in the characterization of the characters and the story. An answer that emancipates itself from the dazzling ruthlessness of Parasites, taking up the themes of Okja, is Snowpiercer (the film, not the terrible Netflix series). And therefore, showing himself more human and courageously more hopeful.

Mickey 17 Review: The Story Plot

In the not-too-distant future, Mickey Barnes is a man who finds himself in trouble up to his neck. To escape these troubles, he decides to seize the opportunity proposed by a visionary entrepreneur with boundless ambition and with the cue ball of colonization of an ice planet. To carry on this undertaking – veined, as is appropriate, also of messianic nuances – the great cialtrone launches a call in which he invites anyone who wants and can make his skills available to join him. But it also serves those who, of particular skills, do not have one like Mickey who, for this reason, is enrolled in the very particular role of “expendable”. Once you arrive at your destination, your job will be to die in different ways, most of which are painful, and then “rise”, or rather have your body reprinted and your memories restored indefinitely. At the beginning of the film, Mickey is already dead, and the beauty of 17 times has been reprinted. Just with Mickey number 17, however, the unpredictable happens. Given up for a mission, the Sacrificable is saved unexpectedly and, therefore, returns to the base, where, however, the efficiency of the organization is such that a new copy has already been reprinted: Mickey number 18. Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, the same on the outside, are different in personality (which suggests that even the reprint process is not exactly perfect); they find themselves sharing the uncomfortable position of Multipli, which provides for the immediate elimination of the subjects.

Meanwhile, colonization continues, but a big problem is about to break out against invading humans, given that the peaceful local population decides to react to real acts of aggression. The project stems from the right intuition of someone in Warner Bros, who has well thought of sending a copy of Edward Ashton’s novel of the same name to the director of Snowpiercer and Okja. In retrospect, an adaptation of Bong Joon-ho is the natural landing of a novel that dilutes the violence of its situations with a bizarre irony and a good dose of romance. The one presented by history is a dystopia to Snowpiercer that creates a clear division between scientists, wealthy politicians who make decisions on behalf of humanity, and a futuristic proletariat that falls into the same mistakes as in the past. The Korean director swears and perjuries that he was inspired by dictators and politicians from the distant and near past, but there is a distinct difference between the desperate protagonists of Snowpiercer and those who travel to a human colony on another planet for four and a half years in Mickey 17.

Much of the labor force idolizes the politician who leads the expedition and voluntarily decides to face the journey, to follow it, complete with slogans, embroidered hats, and late nights that see it as the protagonist. Para-government expedition financed by a big tech whose borders are indistinguishable from a religious sect. When he doesn’t remember Trump, Mark Ruffalo’s character goes frighteningly close to Elon Musk’s parody in the Oval Office. Will it be just because, as the Korean director asked, “does the story tend to repeat itself”? It will be, but it is a point in favor of a film that intercepts, in addition to a generic and universal social criticism, a specific and very current one. It is not part of the exalted Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), but rather of the unwary and desperate. He decided to leave Earth to escape a debt and the dangerous loan shark to whom he owes money. Running out of solutions, he applies to the role of expandable (sacrificable) without even reading the specifications of the trap in which he is sticking to escape death. On the spaceship, he waits for an eternal contractual death: it will be printed and reprinted in the body, reloaded in memory, and used as a guinea pig to face any possible dangerous situation in conquering the alien planet to which you are traveling.

Mickey 17 Review and Analysis

Mickey 17 is a fun and visionary movie, it takes us into a future that resounds sinisterly familiar to us, where there is a leader without brakes adored by crowds without a critical spirit, who would follow him even in the most absurd companies having in return the liberating opportunity to delegate all responsibility to him, and with the convenience to blindly rely on him, without having the demanding task of reasoning, confronting each other and then making the best decision, as it happens in that tiring form of coexistence which is democracy. The humanity that stages Bong is made up of thousands of people who enthusiastically line up to participate in a colonial expedition on an ice planet, an opportunity to escape from the chaos in which they have reduced the earth and their lives. Our Mickey is a specimen of this humanity without direction and without marrow, which agrees to die, die, and die again and again (and always badly) to escape its reality. The figure of the Sacrificable also speaks to us of the value (almost null) given to the individual in a society such as that created by Marshall in which the only thing that matters are the corporate objectives, which are then his objectives.

The figure of the leader, entrepreneur, politician, barker, scoundrel, with crazy and dangerous dreams cannot, even here, not sound familiar to us. The possibility of reprinting a human being questions us about how we are living together and how we will live with the invasion of the most advanced technology in every aspect of our lives, even when we have to make ethical choices, which are already expected. Bong uses science fiction to open our eyes to the world we live in and does it in a fun, unsettling, intelligent way. Mickey 17 is a great movie, really worth seeing. Mickey is a double, amazing Robert Pattinson, capable of creating two perfectly distinct characters and exploring the issue of identity with panache and energy. For the umpteenth time, the English actor shows that he wants to get involved, exploiting the artistic freedom that has given him the commercial success of the five Twilight movies, and in the context of Bong Joon-ho’s interplanetary satire, has found the ideal part to go even further.

As in the previous one, Okja, is a world torn, loaded, excessive, as evidenced by the antagonistic Marshall who has the face of a histrionic, amused and fun Mark Ruffalo, flanked by Collette tones which is no different. More measured but capable of adjusting the shot according to the needs of the individual scenes, the British actress Naomi Ackie, who plays Mickey’s partner and is the voice of reason in the ocean of madness that crosses the entire film. After the most measured Parasite, this is Bong’s return to the most overflowing atmospheres of his previous works in English, an approach perhaps even more necessary today than in 2017 because satire, to adhere to the real on which it is modeled, can no longer afford to go for the subtle. And so remains the criticism of capitalism which is not a foreign element in the director’s cinema, but reworked with the joy and irreverence of an author who knows he has the means provided by a major to put a system at the sedan of which that same major is one of the greatest exponents (and it is not surprising that Warner, currently under the aegis of David Zaslav who is a well-known supporter of Donald Trump, he has repeatedly postponed the release of a film whose villain is the perfect cross between Trump and his ally Elon Musk).

And what better way to reiterate your artistic sensitivity – despite the rumors circulating about it, this is a film that has not been reassembled by the producers – if not by injecting it heavily into a story whose protagonist comes made with the stencil? Arriving in version 17 and left to die in the ice, Mickey returns to find that the next printout of himself already exists. The technique of human printing is so controversial that it was banned on earth and allowed only in space exploration, but multiples are prohibited in any context. The two Micky’s know that if discovered, both will be destroyed. Despite having different characters, the two make an alliance to try to survive, or at least not die too badly, and remain alongside Nasha, the only one on board who seems to consider Mickey a real human being. In the role of Mickey there is a Robert Pattinson who manages with admirable naturalness both the challenge of the double character that must be distinguishable at one glance, you know that of interacting with a very peculiar type of comedy, daughter of the Korean taste of Bon Joon-ho, although tempered by the Hollywood production of the project. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Colette move just as well, almost always managing not to end their roles as narcissistic and comically cruel leaders and first ladies in the purely speckling.

The task is not easy because Mickey 17 brings with it some of the defects of previous American films. Americans of the director who always ends up looking like simply or, worse, simplistic versions of the narrative complexity of his Korean cinema. Specifically, Mickey 17 is very artificial in the construction of his story, with many moments of voiceover and flashback that must interrupt the action to go back and explain additional details. The rhythm suffers a lot, and the film seems to last much longer than its 137 minutes, even though so much action and great humor certainly do not make it a heavy or boring film. More than anything else, it never goes beyond a presentation of the problems it would like it to face. Lor human printing, for example, is described to us as controversial and dehumanizing, but it is more a fact than a theme addressed by the film. Bong Joon-ho takes the shortcut and decides to make us feel sorry for Mickey, showing how everyone treats him as a human sub (especially scientists) and makes him suffer terribly, often not necessarily. The icy detachment with which people take coffee while parts of their dismembered body float in space, however, never has an explanation, a contextualization. It is so because the good guys are good and a little weird, and the bad guys are bad and even more weird, until they become grotesque.

The third act of the film reveals all the limitations of this film, which, unlike Parasite and Memoirs of a murderer, is never really well calibrated. For example, there is an event that is left in states for almost half an hour, in an unrealistic way, because the film must go elsewhere, to develop a narrative line that remembers a lot. Okja for the presence of an adorable alien creature and for the banal solution of the superior intelligence aliens who are good because, yes. In the meantime, Nasha stands there clenching her teeth (literally), waiting for the film to take care of her again. Only Bong Joon-ho at this point must bring home an ending that gives an appropriate ending to everyone, and that does not give a quick answer for anyone. In the end, for example, an intermediate political apparatus emerges concerning the dictatorial and military regime that the film seemed to have introduced and that conveniently pops up at the right time to give a little hope in the film’s lock.

We lengthened the story of the plot, being preparatory to better explain Bong Joon-ho’s thought: we are all guinea pigs. We are the guinea pigs of populist politicians, we are the guinea pigs of the market, we are the guinea pigs of propaganda, and we are also the guinea pigs of ourselves. The result of a standard that does not accept digressions, which aims to annihilate (as Mickey version 17 annihilated) instead of enhancing the individual at the center of the community. A copy, the passive iteration, the emotional indolence that fits together with physical indolence, transcending pain and even fear of death (which even becomes boring for the Korean director). Joon-ho’s film is a decidedly charged and deliberately caricatured film (and we mention Mark Ruffalo’s silhouette, which recalls the most classic of dictators, also winking at Big-Tech managers with obvious references), but also well connected to the idea of great cinematic experience, of which the director is an absolute advocate (and among the few to combine reason and feeling).

For once, Mickey 17 is also a work of answers and not just questions: in the intertwining between version 17 and version 18 (after a divertissement involving Nasha, teased to have a split boy), there is the best suggestion to be grasped. Only by raising our heads and choosing to act can we aspire to a new humanism, which can somehow stand between the hegemony of authority and the fall of civilizations, thus proving decisive – also in narrative terms – concerning the evolution of the species (and of the cinema itself). Nevertheless, Mickey 17 is not a film with political diameters in the narrowest term, instead showing itself closer to the fable veined by satire, and echoing the conflict of the double (17 and 18, underlined by the work on the voice by Robert Pattinson) as a philosophical symbolism of a riotous and noble vision towards power. A power to fight, always and in any case.

The visual effects reach a level of realism and detail that challenges the imagination, while photography creates landscapes that are both alien and intimately familiar. Each scenographic element seems to have been designed to stimulate a deeper reflection on the human condition. Beyond its sci-fi surface, the film is configured as a powerful social allegory. Mickey’s story becomes a metaphor for the commodification of human existence, for its reducibility as a mere productive tool in an increasingly inhuman economic system. The film raises crucial philosophical questions: What defines identity? To what extent can a human being be replicated? What is the boundary between individual uniqueness and standardization? “Mickey 17” is not simply a science fiction film but a work of art that combines narrative intelligence, sociological reflection, extraordinary actor performances, and a directorial vision of the highest level.

Mickey 17 Review: The Last Words

Bong Joon-ho returns to science fiction with an ambitious, overflowing, fun satire with a magnificent Robert Pattinson at its center. Bong Joon-ho takes Okja and Snowpiercer back to talk about civilization (decade?), Humanism, rebellion, heroism, and participation. He does this inspired by Edward Ashton’s novel, structuring with Mickey 17 a sort of fairytale satire in which he blends hope and revolution. A practical and theoretical revolution, driven by the individual as the absolute good of a society that should be founded on equality and never on abuse. Big cast: a double Robert Pattinson, of course, but also pay attention to Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette. Never so despicable. Mickey 17, therefore, is a cinematographic experience that surprises, amuses, moves, and, above all, leaves the viewer with profound questions about humanity and our possible future. A work destined to remain in the history of cinema, which goes beyond the boundaries of genres and proposes itself as a unique intellectual and emotional experience in the contemporary panorama.

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Anamaria Vartolomei, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four stars)

Mickey 17 Review: Bong Joon-ho Hits The Mark, Between Farce and Science Fiction | Filmyhype

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Date Created: 2025-03-12 13:58

Pros

• Robert Pattinson split is a great test of actor (indeed, actors)
• Bong John-ho's satirical approach is hilarious
• The science fiction component is explored with consistency, ambition and panache
• The cinematic effectiveness of Bong Joon-ho.
• The skill of the cast: watch out for Mark Ruffalo.
• The ending.
• Philosophical echoes.

Cons

• The ramshackle atmosphere of the film will not bring everyone together
• Sometimes too simplistic, but it is a cardinal feature of the fairy tale.