The arrival of a new film by Bong Joon Ho is no longer merely a cinematic event; it is a cultural seismograph, registering the tremors of our contemporary anxieties, societal fractures, and collective exhaustion. Six years after the historic, boundary-shattering triumph of Parasite – a film that dissected class warfare with surgical precision and went on to sweep the Academy Awards – the South Korean auteur has returned with Mickey 17. Released to eager global audiences in early 2025, the film swaps the claustrophobic basements of Seoul for the hostile, frozen expanses of an alien ice world. Yet, beneath the veneer of its high-concept science fiction, Mickey 17 remains an unmistakably Bong-esque exploration of late-stage capitalism, charting the horrific and hilarious consequences of a society that treats human life as the ultimate disposable commodity.
Starring Robert Pattinson in a remarkably complex, multi-layered performance, Mickey 17 follows Mickey Barnes, an “expendable” employee sent to colonise the inhospitable planet Niflheim. His job description is as blunt as it is fatal: whenever a task is too dangerous – be it navigating lethal radiation, testing compromised life-support systems, or facing aggressive local fauna – Mickey is dispatched to do it. When he inevitably dies, a new iteration is biologically “printed” with most of his memories intact, ready to resume the misery. The narrative engine ignites when Mickey 17 miraculously survives a seemingly lethal plunge, only to return to base and find that Mickey 18 has already been printed. In a universe where redundancy is punishable by recycling, the two Mickeys must navigate a hostile bureaucracy, an unforgiving landscape, and their own profound self-loathing to survive.
From Mickey7 to Mickey 17: The Adaptation of Expendability
The film is adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, a snappy, satirical piece of science fiction that explored the philosophical paradoxes of cloning and consciousness. However, Bong Joon Ho is not a director who simply translates prose to screen; he aggressively interrogates his source material, warping it to fit his distinct thematic obsessions.
The most immediate change is evident in the title itself. Bong consciously increased the protagonist’s iteration number. “I honestly just wanted to print out Robert Pattinson again and again. He has such a printable look,” Bong remarked during the film’s promotional tour. This wasn’t merely an aesthetic choice; killing Mickey ten additional times amplifies the sheer indignity of his existence, transforming him from a philosophical anomaly into a battered veteran of his own repeated demise.
Furthermore, Bong significantly altered Mickey’s background. In Ashton’s novel, Mickey is an academic, a historian whose intellectual detachment distances him from the visceral horror of his situation. In Mickey 17, Bong reimagines Mickey as an everyman – a “powerless-underdog character type that I always love,” as the director described him. He is a working-class drone crushed under the weight of astronomical debt, a burden shared with his friend Timo (played with nervous energy by Steven Yeun). By grounding Mickey in financial desperation, Bong aligns the character with the Kim family of Parasite or the tail-section passengers of Snowpiercer. Mickey is not dying for the noble pursuit of science; he is literally dying, over and over, to pay off his creditors. “You sense that this technology has zero respect for human beings,” Bong noted. “And so I thought that this concept really encompassed a lot of comedy and also tragedy at the same time.”
The Robert Pattinson Printing Press
The success of Mickey 17 rests entirely on the shoulders of Robert Pattinson, who delivers one of the most physically demanding and tonally ambitious performances of his career. Pattinson is required to play multiple iterations of the same man, primarily focusing on the dynamic between the weary, broken-down Mickey 17 and the slightly more aggressive, deeply confused Mickey 18. The actor delineates these clones not with sweeping theatrical gestures, but through subtle shifts in posture, vocal cadence, and a profound sense of bone-deep exhaustion.
Pattinson has spoken candidly about the surreal experience of anchoring such a bizarre production. “He’s an unusual guy,” Pattinson said of Bong’s directing style. “Everyone on set was like, ‘What is happening?'” The actor revealed that Bong frequently employed unorthodox methods, such as shooting the last line of a scene first, or rewriting dialogue on the fly to capture a specific cadence of despair. Yet, it was precisely this risk that drew Pattinson to the project. “The movies you like most are the ones that feel so impossible at the beginning,” he reflected. “It’s such a leap of faith – just sticking the landing is cool.”
To capture the internal absurdity of Mickey’s repeated deaths, Pattinson reportedly drew inspiration from the physical comedy and masochism of Jackass star Steve-O, a surprising but brilliant touchstone that underscores the sheer physical trauma the character endures. This translates into a performance that is profoundly funny but deeply tragic – a man who has been killed so many times he has developed a bureaucratic apathy toward his own murder.
The Absurdity of Corporate Colonisation
If Parasite was a vertical dissection of class structure, Mickey 17 is a lateral examination of corporate exploitation pushed to its absolute limits. The colony on Niflheim is not a grand, utopian endeavour representing the best of humanity; it is a cheap, failing corporate outpost where budgets are slashed and human lives are factored into spreadsheets as acceptable losses. The film’s production design reflects this grim reality. There are no sleek, Apple-esque corridors or pristine starships. Instead, the environments are grimy, claustrophobic, and relentlessly utilitarian. It “feels like a story that takes place in a back alleyway, filled with pathetic human beings,” as Bong aptly described it.
The existential dread of the film is constantly undercut by Bong’s signature black humour. The bureaucracy of the colony, overseen by the ruthless Commander Marshall (Naomi Ackie), is absurd in its cruelty. The mandate that multiple “multiples” must be thrown into the recycler to reclaim their biomass is treated with the same banal administrative annoyance as a malfunctioning photocopier. “I think humor really strengthens sadness, and especially with those bitter laughs, you get a huge mixture of different emotions,” Bong explained. The laughter that Mickey 17 elicits is uncomfortable, a defensive reaction to the horrific realisation that the corporate logic on display is only a slight extrapolation of our current economic realities.
For further explorations of how contemporary cinema tackles these socio-economic anxieties, you can browse through our film coverage, which regularly dissects the intersection of art and modern capitalism.
A Divisive Masterpiece
The critical reception to Mickey 17 has been uniquely polarised, a departure from the near-universal acclaim that greeted Parasite. While critics have uniformly praised Pattinson’s tour-de-force performance and the film’s astonishing visual world-building, some have argued that the narrative structure occasionally falters under the weight of its own ambition. The film’s pacing, particularly in its labyrinthine middle act, has been described by some as meandering, lacking the Swiss-watch precision that defined Bong’s previous masterpiece.
These criticisms are not entirely without merit. Mickey 17 is a messy, sprawling film, one that occasionally prioritises philosophical digressions over narrative momentum. It lacks the tight, locked-box thriller mechanics of Parasite. However, to judge Mickey 17 solely against its predecessor is to miss the point entirely. This is a film that operates on a completely different frequency – it is a chaotic, sprawling space opera that is deliberately rough around the edges, reflecting the fragmented, disposable nature of its protagonist.
Bong Joon Ho, characteristic of his deeply personal approach to filmmaking, has refused to shy away from the film’s divisive nature. In an industry where directors frequently blame studio interference or marketing for mixed reviews, Bong took radical ownership of the final cut. “All the good parts of that film and all the bad parts of that film came from me. I take full responsibility,” he declared with refreshing bluntness. “So shit on me if you didn’t like it!” This fierce independence is precisely what makes him one of the most vital voices in contemporary cinema reviews today. He is a filmmaker willing to fail on his own terms rather than succeed on someone else’s.
Re-evaluating the Expendable
In its final act, Mickey 17 diverges significantly from the cynical bite of Ashton’s novel, pivoting towards an unexpected wellspring of empathy. As the fragile colony faces collapse and the native “creepers” of Niflheim threaten to overrun the human outpost, the two surviving Mickeys are forced to reckon with their shared identity. The film discards the nihilism that threatens to engulf its premise, opting instead to champion the indomitable, irrational will to live. Even a life that has been printed, used, and discarded seventeen times retains an intrinsic, undeniable value.
Mickey 17 may not be the flawless, universally beloved triumph that Parasite was, but it is arguably a more ambitious and challenging work. It forces the audience to confront the grotesque logical extremes of a society that values capital over consciousness, and productivity over personhood. In the frozen wastes of Niflheim, Bong Joon Ho has crafted a brilliant, bruising satire of our own disposable culture – a film that, much like its resilient protagonist, refuses to be quietly recycled.
