Mickey 17
Entry updated 24 August 2026. Tagged: Film.
Film (2025). Warner Bros Pictures, Plan B Entertainment, Off Screen, Kate Street Picture Company. Written and directed by Bong Joon-ho, based on the novel Mickey7 (2022) by Edward Ashton. Cast includes Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo and Steven Yeun. 137 minutes. Colour.
In 2050, Technology has developed which allows printing of human beings from small samples of their matter (see Matter Duplication), though this is outlawed on Earth and allowed only in space. The existence of simultaneous duplicates is strictly forbidden. Naïve dropout Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) and his small-time con artist friend Timo (Yeun) sign up to join a space programme to escape loan sharks on Earth. Failing to read the application properly, Mickey becomes an Expendable, someone placed in dangerous situations or used to test experimental Drugs, as he can be replaced by a new copy. The mission is run by failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Ruffalo), who is controlled in everything he does by his scheming wife Ylfa (Collette), as they aim to set up a new society on the barren, cold planet Niflheim.
The Alien fauna of Niflheim seems to consist entirely of Creepers (no attempt is made to explain the ecosystem which they inhabit), ugly creatures who turn out to be intelligent. When it is assumed that one has eaten Mickey 17, Mickey 18 is created, but Mickey 17 returns to base, creating a duplicate situation which needs to be hidden from the authorities. Mickey 17 is meek and weak, Mickey 18 cold-hearted and ready to use violence. With their girlfriend Nasha (Ackie), a security agent on the ship, they work to prevent Marshall and his subordinates from committing genocide on the Creepers, as they wish to take over the planet, and Ylfa wants to use them as a lucrative food source. Learning to communicate with the Creepers, who threaten to wipe out the humans, they sacrifice Mickey 18 to kill Marshall. Mickey, Nasha and their allies begin to live harmoniously alongside the Creepers as spring thaws the planet, while Earth authorities outlaw the Expendables programme, and Mickey destroys the machinery.
Sprightly and inventive enough to overcome its obvious flaws, Mickey 17 happily breaks Bong's record of making great films in Korea – Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006), the Oscar- and Palme d'Or-winning Parasite (2019) – and mediocre ones in English: Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017). The plot is a familiar one: the little guy battling corporate greed, environmental destruction and indifference to the plight of underprivileged citizens, and there is no attempt at subtlety in the depiction of corrupt and rapacious politicians and billionaires (and their lackeys) laying waste to all around them for personal gain, as well as their constant strivings for a "pure" strain of humanity. Critics immediately made comparisons between Marshall and real-life contemporaries in politics and the tech sphere, though the cartoonish characterizations and enjoyable over-acting of Ruffalo and Collette work against real bite to the satire. The gleeful exuberance of the film is its real strength, as well as allowing Pattinson room to display his talents at both Jim Carrey-style goofiness and brooding menace, in a role that continues his trajectory of interesting roles in offbeat sf films such as Cosmopolis and High Life. Bong's talent for bringing to life disgusting-yet-adorable creatures is well to the fore, and there are many pleasures in the supporting cast of well-known British actors and comedians in small roles. [CWa]
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