“What’s it feel like to die?”
That’s the question Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is asked more than anything else. Not out of concern, but curiosity—people don’t actually care what dying feels like, only that Mickey does it so they don’t have to. He is an Expendable, a worker assigned to the most dangerous tasks on an interstellar colonization mission, with the catch that every time he dies, he’s “reprinted” in a new body. It’s not immortality, just a corporate loophole that eliminates the need for safety protocols.
Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 takes this existential premise and spins it into something that is at once darkly comic, politically biting, and a little unruly. It’s a film that owes as much to Kafka as it does to underrated sci-fi and psychological thriller films like Richard Ayoade‘s The Double, Duncan Jones‘ Moon, or Denis Villeneuve‘s Enemy—a portrait of a man dissolving into a system that barely acknowledges his personhood. Pattinson is perfect for the role, his jittery, self-effacing performance capturing both Mickey’s resigned fatalism and his growing refusal to play along. He’s tragic and hilarious, embodying the film’s blend of gallows humor and existential dread.
‘Mickey 17’: Science Fiction with Bong’s Signature Satire
Bong, of course, is no stranger to using genre as a vehicle for class critique. Parasite exposed the quiet humiliations of economic disparity, Snowpiercer turned revolution into a literal train ride to nowhere, and Okja was a sledgehammer satire on corporate greed and animal rights.
Mickey 17 falls right in line with these films, tackling themes of capitalism, colonialism, and the dehumanization of labor. It operates in that same territory, imagining a future featuring a devalued working class, so much so that dying on the job becomes essentially a contractual obligation. The reprinting process—a technology banned on Earth for ethical reasons—is repurposed in space as a cost-effective way to avoid safety regulations, like an interstellar version of a canary in a coal mine. Mickey describes the Expendables as “uninsurable, without workers’ comp,” their entire existence reduced to a cruel economic loophole.
At its core, Mickey 17 is about people (or at least, one person) trapped in a machine that sees them as disposable. But unlike Parasite, where the social commentary unfolded with unsettling precision, or Snowpiercer, which drove its metaphor home with brute force, Mickey 17 is looser and more unwieldy. It juggles ideas about power, identity, and survival, but doesn’t always balance them neatly.
Robert Pattinson in a One-Man Double Act
Mickey didn’t set out to become an Expendable—he just ran out of options. After a failed business venture leaves him and Timo (Steven Yeun) in debt and on the run from a loan shark, they sign up for a one-way ticket off Earth. Timo finds work as a shuttle pilot, while Mickey receives the above-mentioned role. His job is simple—take on the most dangerous tasks, die when necessary, and be “reprinted” with his memories intact. Mickey is, quite literally, a renewable resource.
If Mickey 17 works, it’s largely because of Pattinson. Bong has a history of making his protagonists just pathetic enough to be sympathetic—think of Song Kang-ho’s hapless father in Parasite or Tilda Swinton’s grotesque bureaucrats in Snowpiercer—and Pattinson fits right into that mold. He’s funny in a low-status, hangdog way, selling both the comedy and the deeper existential horror of his situation.
Pattinson has consistently reinvented himself over the years, and here, he fully commits to the film’s absurdist streak. Whether he’s nervously bantering with his shipmates, staggering naked out of a cloning pod, or arguing with his own duplicate (Mickey 18, a more aggressive version of himself), he plays it all with just the right mix of bewilderment and reluctant determination.
A Villain Right Out of the Trump-Musk Playbook
Whereas Mickey is an unwilling cog in the machine, Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall is the one cranking the gears. As the smarmy leader of the colony, he’s a mix of televangelist, business mogul, and aspiring dictator, treating the mission less like an act of survival and more like his personal legacy project. He envisions the snowy planet Niflheim as a pure, self-sustaining colony—a not-so-subtle metaphor for xenophobic migration policies.
Marshall also rants about the purity of the colony, cherry-picks women for reproductive purposes, and casually proposes nerve-gassing the local wildlife while still referring to them as “aliens.” It’s as if Elon Musk, a megachurch preacher, and a Fox News pundit merged into one person.
Toni Collette, playing his equally cold-blooded wife, adds to the grotesque spectacle, though her character is somewhat underwritten. Her primary trait is an obsession with rare condiments, a running joke that doesn’t fully land, though it serves as a nod to the insulated luxury of the ruling class.
A Love Story in the Midst of Existential Dread
During the voyage to Niflheim, Mickey finds solace in Nasha (Naomi Ackie), a security agent who becomes his closest connection. Their relationship gives him a rare sense of dignity, but even that small comfort is threatened once they land on the icy planet, where native creatures known as “creepers” resist human colonization efforts. When Mickey 17—the seventeenth iteration of himself—receives the mission to capture a creeper for research, he falls into an ice fissure. And while Timo reports back to base that Mickey died on duty, what no one expects is for the creepers to do something extraordinary: they rescue him.
For all the film’s satire and sci-fi world-building, one of its most unexpected strengths is Mickey’s relationship with Nasha, his reason to keep going. Their romance isn’t grand or melodramatic, but rather an oasis of genuine human connection in an otherwise dehumanizing system. Through voiceover, Mickey muses that Nasha’s love makes the mission—and his own expendability—more bearable.
In a world where everyone views him to be disposable, she sees him as a person. It’s a small but crucial detail that elevates Mickey 17 beyond just a bleak social critique; it gives the story a heartbeat. Ackie plays Nasha with quiet strength, grounding the film’s wilder elements with a warmth that makes Mickey’s struggle feel even more personal.
Colonialism in Space
Bong’s critique of colonial arrogance is as sharp as ever. The mission to Niflheim is framed as both a desperate escape from Earth and an opportunity to build a “pure” new civilization—one that just so happens to be predominantly white, carefully controlled, and free of undesirables. Marshall’s vision for the colony is eerily familiar: he selects the “right” people to reproduce, dismisses native lifeforms as an inconvenience, and assumes that any land untouched by humans is his to claim.
The most striking irony is that the creepers—the supposedly hostile creatures of Niflheim—are neither monstrous nor violent. They resemble oversized larvae, more Star Wars than Starship Troopers, and their behavior suggests intelligence rather than aggression. Yet, humans immediately resort to extermination. That the colonists still insist on calling them “aliens” while attempting to wipe them out with lethal gas is peak human arrogance.
The Trouble with Pacing
For all its strengths, Mickey 17 has one undeniable flaw: it drags. Bong has never considered himself a tightly structured filmmaker—his best films have a controlled chaos to them—but at 137 minutes, this one stretches the patience of even his ardent supporters a little thin. Scenes meander, subplots get more attention than they need, and the pacing wobbles between energetic and sluggish.
Some of this is due to Bong’s tendency to pack his films with tonal shifts. Like Okja, Mickey 17 bounces between dark comedy, thriller, and existential horror, sometimes within the same scene. When it works, it’s brilliant. When it doesn’t, it makes the film feel uneven.
The expository voiceover also doesn’t help. Pattinson’s narration at times overstays its welcome, delivering exposition that would have worked better when told visually. It’s the kind of relentless explaining that even Explainer-in-Chief Christopher Nolan might tell Bong to dial back.
For all its excesses, Mickey 17 remains the kind of film that sticks with you. It’s never boring, Bong’s satirical instincts remain razor-sharp, and its best moments—Mickey’s existential dilemmas, the bleak humor of his disposability, the way Pattinson plays multiple versions of himself with distinct, tragicomic differences—are genuinely striking.
If Bong had tightened the script and reined in some of the film’s excesses, it might have been a true sci-fi classic. Instead, it’s a fascinating, slightly unwieldy piece of work: thought-provoking, darkly funny, occasionally frustrating, but always alive with ideas. Is it perfect? No. But like Mickey himself, it keeps coming back, lingering in the mind long after it’s over.
A self-described cinephile who can’t stop talking—and writing—about films. Paul also moonlights as ghostwriter and editor for a few memoirs. He currently resides in the Philippines.
