MICKEY 17 movie poster | ©2025 Warner Bros

Rating: R
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Anamaria Vartolomei, Holliday Grainger, Anna Mouglalis (voice)
Writer: Bong Joon-ho, based on the novel MICKEY 7 by Edward Ashton
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: March 7, 2025

MICKEY 17, based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel MICKEY 7 (Mickey gets ten more lives in the movie), is an agreeable enough science-fiction adventure, even though it seems to be unaware that it is reinventing parts of the wheel and its stabs at dark comedy are frequently heavy-handed.

The year is 2056. We meet Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson) after he’s fallen into an ice cave on the icy world Niflheim. As he awaits what he thinks is certain death, Mickey fills us in via flashback.

On Earth, conditions have gotten grim. Many people want to escape to colonies on other planets in the hopes of a better life. Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) don’t care about that, but they do care about a chainsaw-happy loan shark who’s threatening to take their debt out of their hides, literally.

The mission to Niflheim is headed up by two-time political loser and current cult leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), whose followers love his promises of bringing purity to the galaxy. Timo talks his way into being a pilot, but Mickey has few skills and no gift of gab to get him aboard the overcrowded ship.

In desperation – and without reading what it entails – Mickey signs up for a job as the mission’s “expendable.” Due to ethical considerations, expendables have been banned on Earth, but they’re still used off-world, with one allowed per spaceship.

An expendable is used for lethal work and fatal medical experiments. They are printed out, i.e., cloned, within a specified time with their memories intact. By the time Mickey is on his seventeenth body, it’s a toss-up as to what’s worse: dying or constantly being asked what that’s like.

Let’s just say things don’t go as expected in the ice cave, which leads to ever-multiplying complications. One of these (hey, it’s in the trailer) is that Mickey winds up with a “multiple,” Mickey 18 (Pattinson again), which is a capital offense.

Unlike the Tom Cruise character in EDGE OF TOMORROW (aka LIVE DIE REPEAT), another movie in which the hero dies frequently and comes back, Mickey doesn’t appear to learn a whole lot from one incarnation to another.

It’s therefore surprising that Mickey 18 has a distinctly different personality than Mickey 17. Mickey 17 even remarks on this, but we don’t appear to get an explanation.

This schism does give Pattinson the opportunity to show considerable range, with Mickey 17’s hangdog amiability in stark contrast to Mickey 18’s confidence and rage.

Yeun has fun as Timo and Naomi Ackie is charismatic as Mickey’s highly capable girlfriend. Anna Mouglalis has an impressively authoritative voice as a significant character.

Ruffalo is sending up a political figure (three guesses as to which one, and the first two don’t count) with his performance as the fatuous Marshall. It’s not a bad imitation, but it feels like overkill. Toni Collette as Marshall’s adoring wife has likewise been encouraged to go large.

Bong demonstrates enormous visual flair, especially when it comes to the Escher-like sets. He also keeps us relatively engaged in the action, even though we can see the contours of the plot from early on.

Some jokes land, but the political satire is often too broad and familiar to hit the targets. Likewise, gags that are meant to generate grossout laughs don’t have the kind of physical timing to make them work.

Additionally, it feels like there are missed opportunities to do something new in terms of both Mickey’s mortality and his multiple identities crisis. He muses on both, but because there are so many moving parts here, they don’t get in-depth exploration.

Even with these issues, MICKEY 17 is handsome, it has cool creature creations, it’s eventful, and its heart is in the right place.

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