Mickey 17

And now we know the answer to the question of how many Robert Pattinsons is too many. Turns out, it’s eighteen.

Following the seventeenth iteration of the original Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) as he continues his work as an “Expendable” on the faraway snow planet of Niflheim, Mickey 17 explores what it means to quite literally put your life on the line for the greater good, and how that duty affects the man, or rather men, doing it. Signing on as a willing test subject for experiments and trials that will help colonize and make Niflheim safe for settlers, each Mickey clone’s role is to quite literally die on the job, only for our protagonist, Mickey 17, to survive a mission that should have killed him. Returning home to find that a new clone, Mickey 18, has replaced him, Mickey 17 is soon swept up in a conflict that goes beyond his doppelgänger conundrum and involves the leaders of the Niflheim expedition, the egomaniacal ex-politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), and his conniving wife, Ylfa Marshall. Needing to figure out how to balance living a double life with his aggressive clone brother while avoiding the wrath of the immoral Kenneth and Ylfa, Mickey 17 has his work cut out for him in more ways than one, a situation he’s far more prepared for than he might think.

The follow-up to 2019’s Oscar-winning Parasite, Bong Joon Ho is back with Mickey 17, a sci-fi tale full of inventive world-building, fun characters, and a great premise that had me at the word “clone.” Directed with a quirky confidence that perfectly captures the mish-mash of vibes oozing from Mickey 17’s script, it’s Robert Pattinson’s continued efforts as Hollywood’s greatest chameleon that makes this film a pleasure to watch, with Pattinson being a major driving force in creating Mickey 17’s convincing sci-fi reality. A triumph on various filmmaking levels, from the nifty cinematography to the spot-on acting to the surprisingly great special effects, Mickey 17’s first half does a great job exploring its compelling hook, with most of my issues with this one starting midway through.

Switching from a first half that felt more like a carefully crafted existential tale to something far bigger than what I was expecting or hoping for, Mickey 17 slowly became a different movie from where it started, effectively killing a lot of my enthusiasm for what had come before and lessening my enjoyment of what came after. To be fair, this may all come down to what I wanted to happen in this film versus what I got, but with the additional focus on Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette’s Kenneth and Ylfa Marshall during the back part of the film not helping matters, the pivot from Mickey’s personal journey to the plight of an indigenous species called the Creepers became far more noticeable, and in my opinion, affected the narrative in a less than positive way.

Mickey 17 is still a pretty great film for most of its runtime, but once my favored plotline fell by the wayside in favor of a more Okja-esque commentary about rich people’s greed and animal abuse, I started to check out. Not to say there’s anything wrong with Mickey 17’s message or the overall subject matter it’s addressing, it’s just that for me, it felt more like a rehash of Bong Joon Ho’s previous work rather than the wholly original film that the first half promised. Regardless of what my thoughts were on the eventual trajectory of the story, I enjoyed Mickey 17 and applaud the fact that films like this can still get made, but with a less-than-stellar second half and a third act that I simply didn’t care for, Mickey 17 stumbles way earlier than I would have liked, and unfortunately never recovers by the time it was over.