He's dying to save mankind.
Mickey 17 is a 2025 science fiction satire film directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Bong Joon-ho, produced by Plan B Entertainment, Offscreen, and Kate Street Picture, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is based on Edward Ashton's 2022 novel, Mickey 7. It stars Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo.
"What's it feel like to die?" - Timo
Plot
Colonial worker Mickey Barnes is trying to get off Earth...and he does so by signing up to be an expendable, a job where he goes out into space and dies over and over again. As Mickey continues to be re-printed, he becomes sick of the authority and being forced to die, so he decides to do something about it.
The Sweet
I will start off by saying that I was excited for Mickey 17. I, like basically everyone else, loved Parasite, and Bong Joon-ho making a new movie with a fully American cast got me very excited. A sci-fi movie starring our current Batman would always get me hyped, but Bong's name brought my excitement to another level. Despite this, I really was not a fan of the trailers, so I went in with that in the back of my mind.
The best thing about this movie is probably the comedy. This movie is a black comedy, which we don't see very much of anymore, so it was nice to get one of those. The movie also has its fair share of hilarious moments. It's super weird, and the weirdness is bound to get laughs at some point.
I will also give some credit to Robert Pattinson. His performance did not work for me personally, but I am going to shout him out for committing to whatever this was. He disappears into this role as Mickey. There is no traces of Edward Cullen, Cedric Diggory, or Batman in here. This is a completely unique performance from him, and, even if I didn't love it, I appreciate his commitment to doing something different.
The Sour
Unfortunately, basically everything that I disliked about the trailers bled through into the movie...and more. It is not often I walk out of a movie hating it, but I really was not a fan of Mickey 17.
The first thing I really didn't like was the use of voiceover. Voiceover is, in my opinion, one of the laziest ways to write a movie. If it's written well, however, it can be great: Mean Girls, Goodfellas, andThe Shawshank Redemption are three of my favorite movies of all time and they all use voiceover beautifully. Mickey 17 is one of the worst examples of voiceover I have ever seen. The movie lacks a ton of dialogue, so we are just constantly delivered exposition by Pattinson's thoughts. It's not interesting. It's not funny. The voice he chose to go with is like nails on a chalkboard. It is terrible...and then it stops, like, halfway through the movie, because Mickey's screen time is cut down significantly in the back half.
The movie definitely has its fair share of funny moments, but most of the jokes actually don't land. Dark comedy is really hard to pull off, and Mickey 17 too often veers into uncomfortably dark territory. Either that or the jokes are just not funny. Where the movie wanted me to laugh I usually found myself just sitting there, uncomfortable and disturbed. It felt like Parasite really nailed the black comedy, but Mickey 17 just has no idea how to balance the unsettling with the hilarious.
I also found the social commentary to be absolutely atrocious. Movies are interesting when they find a unique way to deliver a compelling message without preaching at the audience and telling them what to think. Mickey 17 fails all of the above. This movie has the Avatar message of humans coming in and ruining a natural environment, and it does it in the most preachy, over-the-top way possible. Mark Ruffalo plays the most ridiculous Donald Trump parody I have ever seen and it is awful. Bong and Ruffalo said that his character was not based on Trump, but I just don't believe that in the slightest. The movie both felt like it was picking the most generic message possible and preaching at the audience with over-the-top stereotypes while also saying nothing at all. It was very, very frustrating.
The structure of this film is also all over the place. The movie begins...and then we flashback for thirty minutes to explain how we got to the point where the movie begins. Then we see Mickey doing his thing for a bit. Then the plot actually kicks in about halfway through...but then completely changes in the third act. It is a complete mess and fails to meet any of the requirements for actual story structure. This was teased in the trailers, but eventually, two versions of Mickey get printed out. That seems like it's going to be the main plot...but they do basically nothing with it.
The side characters in this movie are also brutal. I already talked about how awful Mark Ruffalo was, but Steven Yeun's character was almost worse. He has this subplot going throughout the film that just goes nowhere. It is completely disconnected from the main plot and amounts to one minor moment in the third act. He wasn't likable. He wasn't compelling. He was difficult to watch. The same can be said for Toni Collette. She and Ruffalo are both meant to be cartoonish, but it just all felt wrong. There's a running gag with her character about sauce that was honestly one of the least funny and most disturbing jokes I've ever seen in a movie...and it kept getting brought up. Over. And over. And over again.
Finally...Mickey himself. The most important aspect of any story, in my opinion, is the main character. My favorite movies star my favorite characters. I love Harry Potter because Harry is my favorite fictional character of all time. And, on the flip side, I hated Mickey 17 primarily because I hated Mickey. There was nothing interesting or compelling about him throughout the story. He is a spineless, clumsy, dumb loser at the beginning...and a spineless, clumsy, dumb loser at the end. His character barely forgoes any change. He has an IQ of, like, six. As I said before, Pattinson's performance did not work for me. I thought his voice was super, super annoying. I found him to be basically unwatchable, so, by extension, I found the movie to be basically unwatchable.
Final Thoughts and Score
It's been a few years, but we've finally got a new movie that I hated. Mickey 17 is just downright awful.
I am going Moldy here. Age range is 16+.
SWEET N' SOUR SCALE
Sweet (Great) Savory (Good) Sour (Bad) Moldy (Terrible)
"Mickey 17"
Fun Factor: 2/10
Acting: 2/10
Story: 1/10
Characters: 1/10
Quality: 3/10
Directed by Bong Joon-ho
Rated R for moderate violence and action, language, sexual content, disturbing themes and images, thematic elements
Released on March 7, 2025
2 hours and 17 minutes
Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes
Mark Ruffalo as Kenneth Marshall
Naomi Ackie as Nasha Adjaya
Steven Yeun as Timo
Toni Collette as Gwendolyn
Anamaria Vartolomei as Kai Katz
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