If Parasite was Bong Joon-ho at his most razor-sharp, Mickey 17 is him at his most unwieldy. The film opens with a spectacularly realized cold open, a nearly 30-minute prologue that teases a high-concept sci-fi film built on existential horror and bleak humor. Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is stranded in a crevasse, pleading for help as his supposed friend Timo (Steven Yeun) tells him—almost apologetically—that it's too dangerous to attempt a rescue. As Timo pulls away, leaving Mickey for dead, a massive, waterbear-like creature bursts through the ice. It's a thrilling opening that feels like it's setting the stage for an ambitious sci-fi adventure.

Mickey is an expendable worker in an interstellar colonization program. Back on Earth, Mickey and Timo were best friends who attempted to start a macaron business, only to see it fail spectacularly. Their failure wasn't just a financial setback—it put them in the crosshairs of a ruthless loan shark known for hunting down debtors no matter where they fled. With no other way out, Timo convinces Mickey that their best escape is to leave Earth altogether. Timo secures a position in a pilot program. Still, for Mickey, the only available option is to become an expendable—human laborers that have agreed to allow their bodies to be reprinted in the event of their death--their memories uploaded into their new bodies. At first glance, it would seem like a form of immortality. Yet, their existence consists almost exclusively of being sent on the most dangerous assignments and/or subjected to brutal medical experiments. The film is adapted from Edward Ashton's novel Mickey7, likely changed to Mickey 17 specifically to allow Bong Joon-ho to kill Robert Pattinson about ten more times on screen. Mickey miraculously survives a mission and returns to base, only to find Mickey 18 already "reprinted" in his place. Confronted with his own redundancy, he spirals into an identity crisis, teasing a sci-fi meditation on mortality and identity. But when the title drops, Mickey 17 pivots into something else entirely—part slapstick satire, part corporate dystopia, and part absurdist political allegory.

Coming off Parasite, a film that seamlessly balances social commentary and narrative ingenuity, Bong has reached the point where every project is an event. His past works have blended genre with allegory to sharp effect—Snowpiercer tackled class struggle through dystopian spectacle, Okja explored corporate greed through an animal-rights fable, and The Host critiqued government incompetence via monster movie thrills. Mickey 17 feels like an amalgamation of all of them, juggling identity, corporate greed, colonialism, nationalism, dehumanization of labor, medical experimentation, social hierarchies, classism, and political parody—all compelling themes, but the film never focuses on any one of them. Hell, even vaccinations get a moment in the limelight.

The film's most overt satire comes in the form of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician turned off-world colonization leader who treats Niflheim as his personal empire. With blindingly white veneers and exaggerated hand gestures, he's an unmistakable Trump caricature, exalting discipline, order, and sacrifice while using the expendables as nothing more than disposable labor. His rhetoric is laced with promises of future freedoms—assurances that the colonists must endure restrictions for the sake of survival, with the reward of indulgence always just out of reach. Nowhere is this clearer than in the colony-wide sex ban, framed as a necessary sacrifice to conserve resources, with the implicit promise that pleasure will be reinstated once the colony is thriving. It's a familiar authoritarian maneuver, echoing real-world justifications for the erosion of freedoms under the guise of security and progress. Mickey 17 wrapped production long before the election, yet some of its political jabs feel eerily prescient—Marshall is shot and grazed in the face, an image that now carries unintended weight—while others, like his two-time election loss, feel less impactful given how real-world events have unfolded.

Marshall's wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), is obsessed with sauces, a fixation that serves as a grotesque metaphor for colonial entitlement. While the lower-class colonists survive on flavorless rations, Ylfa views condiments as the key to a refined existence, elevating even the most meager meals into status symbols. Her golden discovery? Creeper tails make for the perfect sauce. As tensions rise and the native "Creepers" begin surrounding the colony, Marshall sees an existential threat, preparing for war. Ylfa, on the other hand, sees an opportunity—harvesting Creeper tails to create a new delicacy for the elite, reframing indigenous resources as luxuries for the ruling class. The Creepers are treated as little more than pests, their presence a mere obstacle to expansion, even though they are the planet's original inhabitants. The colonists extract what they want—whether it's land, resources, or, in this case, literal body parts—without any concern for the creatures themselves, mirroring the historical pattern of Indigenous displacement and exploitation under the guise of progress. Mickey, having been saved by the Creepers earlier, recognizes their intelligence and attempts to bridge the divide, but his efforts are at odds with the colony's relentless mission of dominance. The film presents this conflict in starkly exaggerated terms, blending dark humor with absurdity. Still, at its core, it's an uncomfortable reflection of real-world colonial histories and the dehumanization that often enables them.

The colony operates under a strict hierarchical structure where both colonists and expendables are treated as less than human, their worth determined by how much they contribute to Marshall's vision of progress. Punishments are doled out as ration reductions, a system that underscores how every inhabitant is merely a fraction of a person in Marshall's eyes. Nowhere is this clearer than with the expendables, who exist purely as a renewable workforce, subjected to grueling tasks and cruel medical experiments in service of a colony that sees them as nothing more than tools. Marshall, who presents himself as the architect of a utopian future, is, in reality, building his new world on the backs of workers he deems expendable, a direct evocation of slavery dressed in the language of efficiency and survival.

It's hard to evaluate performances when so many are deliberately exaggerated. Robert Pattinson spends the entire film using an odd voice, which extends into his voice-over narration, adding to the film's already surreal atmosphere. He shines in scenes where he performs double duty as both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, making the differences between them distinct—though given that their memories should be nearly identical, this contrast feels like a strange inconsistency. Mark Ruffalo's Marshall is such an obvious Trump caricature that it becomes a question of whether the humor and satire work for you rather than a performance that can be measured in traditional terms. Toni Collette as Ylfa is similarly dialed up, playing into the film's absurdist sensibilities with a more exaggerated than nuanced performance. The standout, however, is Naomi Ackie as Nasha, whose warmth provides one of the film's few emotional anchors. She is the only character who treats Mickey as human, and in a film that leans heavily into broad satire, her grounded performance is a welcome contrast.

Structurally, the film never drags, but it does feel quite bloated. By the time it reaches an epilogue that includes an unnecessary dream sequence, it becomes clear that Mickey 17 might have benefitted from tighter editing. It doesn't fully commit to any single idea, leaving the audience with a film that is entertaining but ultimately scattershot. Undoubtedly, Bong Joon-ho remains one of the most interesting filmmakers working today, and Mickey 17 is undeniably ambitious. It boasts inventive visuals, far-reaching themes, and moments of brilliance, particularly in its first act. But its thematic overreach and tonal inconsistency will keep it from being considered one of his greatest. It's funny, it's weird, and it's loaded with ideas—but it's also a bit much.

— 3 / 5 ⭐