Mickey 17 plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho) rated R 137 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: We begin this tale in 2054 where intergalactic space travel has become a possibility with many Earthlings eager to leave the planet (apparently because the warnings we’re given now about Earth becoming uninhabitable have come true), none more so than Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his friend, Timo (Steve Yeun), who owe a huge sum they can’t pay (due to the failure of a “sure thing” project) to a vicious loan shark, Darius Bland (Ian Hanmore), who’s either going to get his money back or take their lives in "payment." Mickey and Timo hurriedly sign on for a voyage to a far-distant planet, Nifheim, the ship commandeered by megalomaniac politician/self-deluded prophet/proto-fascist Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his self-absorbed wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette). Despite scant experience Timo’s accepted as a pilot, although Mickey’s denied until he agrees to be an Expendable, a person facing sure death due to dangerous experiments during the space ship’s 4½-year voyage. The redeeming factor of this death-pact is cutting-edge technology (opposed on Earth, it’s banned) which stores all the details of Mickey’s body while an accompanying hard drive captures his memories so a new clone of him can be easily created, with most of the attributes of the previous Mickey versions, yet personalities vary each time. Once this large group of travelers reaches their destination 5 more Mickeys are required in order to develop an effective vaccine to allow these colonists protection from their new home’s alien atmosphere and pathogens.
Along the way security agent Nasha Barridge (Naomi Ackie) develops a liking for Mickey (it’s mutual; they sneak off for sex in violation of Marshall’s edict in his attempt to reduce burning of calories so food reserves can last longer). A feature of this planet is the presence of animals—named Creepers by Marshall—that look to me like huge pillbugs (with their mother even more massive); Mickey 17 is sent into the frozen landscape to bring one back, but falls through thin ice into a crevice where supposed-buddy Timo leaves him to die, assuming he’ll be resurrected again.
To Mickey’s surprise, the Creepers don’t eat him but carry him back to the surface, allowing him to return to the ship. When he gets there, though, he finds there’s a new Mickey 18 (also Pattinson) who’s taken up with Nasha. Given Marshall’s policy of killing any clone “Multiples,” aggressive Mickey 18 tries to kill his predecessor but is persuaded by 17 from them to secretly co-exist. Then they see Timo selling flamethrower fuel as drugs so 18 tries to kill him, relents at Nasha’s urging. 17 then wins a dinner with Marshall, Ylfa, and security agent Kai Katz (Anamaria Vartolomei), whom the commander sees as the prototype for all of the superior (White) beings he intends to populate the planet with. 17 has a horrible reaction to the synthetic meat he’s been fed; after some help with painkillers Kai takes him to her quarters, but he flees in response to her seduction, then she wants to report the Multiples. Before Kai can, though, 18 attends a ceremony where he tries to kill Marshall but is stopped by Nasha; chaos ensues anyway when 2 baby Creepers emerge from a large rock brought in by Marshall, with one, Luko, killed in the melee, the other, Zoco, taken captive, as 17, 18, and Nasha are arrested. ⇒Outside, thousands of Creepers surround the ship; inside, Nasha overpowers Timo when he comes to kill 17, but security forces take them to Marshall who wants the Mickeys to go cut off Creeper tails for Ylfa’s new dinner sauce (they’re both fitted with destructive devices and buttons to allow either of them to kill the other). Instead, 17 uses a translation device to talk with Mama Creeper who agrees to call off her troops if Zoco’s returned to her and a human is sacrificed. Back in the ship Nasha takes Ylfa hostage, allows the return of Zoco, while Marshall’s gone out to direct the killing of Creepers. 18 grabs him, blows them both up. Time passes, leading to peace between humans and Creepers, Nasha’s emergence as the colony’s leader, and 17—now just Mickey Barnes again—officially destroys the cloning device, ending the use of Expendables.⇐
SO WHAT? This is definitely one of the weirdest films I’ve seen in a long time (on the order of Zardoz [John Boorman, 1974], featuring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, which you can learn about at this site if you like; it also featured a drastic response to unhealthy living conditions on Earth and the cloning [organically, rather than in a 3-D printer] of humans), along with being a long-awaited follow-up to the director’s celebrated success with Parasite (2019), which won Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and International Feature Film, along with getting the top prize of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. I doubt seriously we’ll see that kind of response to Mickey 17. (2024’s Cannes event’s already come and gone, that Palme d’Or going [in a manner I still can’t comprehend] to Anora [Sean Baker, 2024] where it also triumphed at the Oscars, taking Best Picture, Director, Actress [Mikey Madison], Original Screenplay, and Film Editing; given the choice—which I never will have—I’d turn back time [and events] to give any of those awards to Mickey 17 rather than Anora, but that’s based on my [minority opinion, it seems] dismissal of the latter more so than full embrace of the former, nor do I see this tale of multiple Mickeys making any Oscar impact.) The concept here is quite fascinating, though, once again as with The Alto Knights (Barry Levinson) and Sinners (Ryan Coogler)—which I haven’t seen yet due to a resurgent COVID strain in my San Francisco area, but I look forward to its streaming debut—we get commendable performances from 1 actor in dual roles (Robert De Niro in The Alto Knights, Michael B. Jordan in Sinners) with Pattinson showing effective nuance with the more-restrained Mickey 17 as opposed to easily-hot-headed Mickey 18. Ruffalo and Collette are also, as we’d eagerly expect, very appropriately-commanding in their roles, with easy comparison in the Kenneth Marshall character to the “I’m always right about everything” personas of Donald Trump and Elon Musk (both of whom I’d love to see transported to a far-away world before they can make Earth into a planetary graveyard).
Another useful feature of Mickey 17 is that we don’t have to witness the various deaths Mr. Barnes must endure before he can reclaim his surname (even the demise of 18 is shown from a respectful distance), so for me the whole thing was a pleasure to watch even if I doubt it will claim an honored spot in cinematic history; yet, as a diversionary pleasure it's mostly was fun to see. Among those who join me in encouraging you to explore this quirky tale is Manohia Dargis of The New York Times: “Bong keeps things zipping along, and with such nimbleness that the movie’s heavier ideas never weigh it down. He jabs rather than pounds as he takes on targets — authoritarianism, comic-book heroics, the vanity of power — while playfully mixing moods and acting styles.” Nevertheless, there are also a good many critics who aren’t so impressed with Mickey 17, even those I normally agree with such as James Berardinelli of REEL VIEWS: “In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to argue this is the worst film Bong has made. A mostly failed attempt to merge sci-fi with satire, Mickey 17 suffers from a fragmented narrative and a scenery-chewing performance from Mark Ruffalo that belongs in a different movie […] Unfortunately, the fascinating aspects of Mickey 17’s DNA are shunted into the background to make way for the bombastic Marshall and a less-than-compelling story about a potential showdown between the humans and the creepers. By making Marshall such a cartoonish figure, Bong undercuts tension and renders the film’s climax inert. Overall, it’s hard to see Mickey 17 as anything but a disappointment.” Still, if you might find the Mickey 17 concept interesting enough to see that may entice you to drink 1 or 2 cocktails, then find Zardoz (see here).
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Mickey 17 opened in domestic (U,S,-Canada) theaters on March 7, 2025; since then has grossed $46 million ($132 million globally, with $21 million of that coming from the director’s home country of South Korea), but now you’ll likely need streaming to see it (could still be on a few big screens), free to Max subscribers ($9.99 monthly otherwise) or a $5.99 rental from Apple TV+. The CCAL’s reasonably in support with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 77%, the Metacritic average score at a surprisingly-close 72%. If you want to know more, you can browse through the 334 reactions at RT, but you could probably keep your sanity longer if you looked only at the 60 MC reviews. I did find it based on an intriguing premise (despite being a bit longer than I sensed was totally necessary) with its interesting mix of sci-fi elements and social satire, so I'll encourage your (hopefully successful) interest in Mickey 17.
Even if you don’t watch it, though, you might enjoy listening to my standard tactic of a review-ending Musical Metaphor. For a little while I toyed with the idea of using Toni Basil’s "Mickey" (on her 1981 Word of Mouth album) as I could imagine Nasha being enamored of whichever Mickey happened to be in her vicinity (“Oh Mickey, you’re so fine / You’re so fine, you blow my mind […] Every night you still leave me alone, Mickey”), but there’s really not much more to this song than a lot of repetition (although that could be relevant to this film, given the several Mickey clones),* so I finally turned to something more about the challenges one must face in surviving in a hostile environment, the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” (from the 1977 Saturday Night Fever [John Badham] soundtrack) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxvBPH4sArQ (a video with lots of scenes from the movie as we connect Mickey Barnes with Tony Manero [John Travolta] as they both “sing”: “And now it’s alright, it’s okay / I’ll live to see another day […] Life goin’ nowhere / Somebody help me, yeah / I’m stayin’ alive” as best either of them can thrive in such settings). And, if you’re really into this song, you might want to see the Brothers Gibb performing it live in 1989 (ironically, when Robin and Maurice Gibb were still alive); the energy just keeps growing, similar to Mickey’s dynamic evolution.
*Yet, if I’m going to pick something just because it focuses on someone named Mickey then I might as well consider the "Mickey Mouse Club Theme Song" from the mid-1950s days of my grammar-school youth, where I was far too young to understand why Annette Funicello was rumored to being forced to depart from the show just because her expanding chest was getting too noticeable under her T-shirt. I began to understand better what that was about as we both got a little older and she, in a bikini, starred along with Frankie Avalon in those silly Beach Party movies. But, truly, the Mouseketeers aren’t what Mickey 17’’s about either, so I had no option for my Metaphor choice here.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
An option for your consideration: (1) IMDb Staff Picks for June 2025.
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