“Mickey 17” Strikes a Chord with the Weirdos
Beck Wells | September 16, 2025
One of the greatest sins ever committed against Robert Pattinson is the assumption made by moviegoers that he is a completely hinged and, if anything, rather milktoast actor, due to his early performances in movies like “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and the whole of “The Twilight Saga”. While I haven’t had the good fortune to see many of his more recent roles, I can earnestly say that the dark sci-fi comedy “Mickey 17” has blown that assumption out of the water.
The latest offering from Bong Joon Ho, director of critically acclaimed movies “The Host” (2006), “Snowpiercer” (2013) and “Parasite” (2019), follows the titular Mickey 17 (Pattinson), the latest in a line of genetic clones of a man named Mickey Barnes. Our unfortunate protagonist signed up for a cross-galaxy voyage as an ‘Expendable’ - hired cannon fodder, regularly scanned by the medical staff and able to be ‘reprinted’ each time he dies. This has led to a deeply unhappy, traumatized life for Mickey, who, even in his 17 life, still fears death. From this premise is born one of the finest fusions of near-slapstick dark comedy and political commentary that 21st-century audiences have ever seen.
From moment one, viewers are thrust into a freezing, barren tundra, populated only by landed colonizer spacecraft and almost pillbug-like mammals known as Creepers, native to the newly-christened planet of Niflheim, where the Expendable seems to be in an endless parade of some of the worst days of his various lives. In a dialect and timbre completely alien to those familiar with Robert Pattinson’s previous work, Mickey brings the audience on a tour through his miserable life like a pathetically clumsy puppy dragging a sympathetic, but amused owner through a gallery of half-eaten homework and ruined shoes.
It becomes increasingly evident that all of Mickey’s misfortune can be tied back to his own terrible decision making, but what started as a series of small personal blunders has snowballed into an out-of-control disaster from which he can never recover, being so at the mercy of ill-meaning capitalists and scientists who see him as nothing more than an expendable chunk of meat. Pattinson’s performance, bumbling and apologetic with an underlying bitterness about the more macabre aspects of his job, is incredibly endearing, and it’s impossible not to root for the poor fool.
The film presents clear, but not overbearing political commentary on the dangers of unchecked authority, especially when backed by a religious movement, with the cruelty and unchallenged power shown by the ship’s leader, Politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo). With his attempted extermination of the Creepers, a sentient, caring, and highly capable people native to the planet to be colonized, easy comparison can be drawn to any number of indigenous genocides across the world, and immense empathy is shown for not only the crimes committed against them, but for their personhood, and individual worth. They are not simply an unfamiliar, oppressed monolith, but a society, each one with a name, a story, a heart.
Now, by no means is this a perfect movie. The pacing tends on the slower side, with many larger plot elements not being introduced until almost halfway through the film. It occasionally prioritizes “the bit” over expediency, but I am a firm believer in the importance of strong characterization, so, truthfully, I can’t fault the movie too strongly for this. I checked the remaining time on the movie only once on my own, and a second time at the mention of one of my fellow viewers.
All in all, I would rate this movie a very solid 8/10. Despite its flaws, what I found at the heart of this movie was deep-rooted love for humanity and all living things, and an empathy for the victims of our society. Where other movies of such scale seem to try to answer to some great communal ill, often unsuccessfully, “Mickey 17” seems to offer this simple balm- everyone is worthy of love.
“Mickey 17” is streaming on HBO Max and available for purchase or rent on Prime Video and AppleTV.