With President Donald Trump again within the White Home, all types of media and artwork will really feel prefer it’s commenting on him and his supporters. A few of it is going to be delicate; Bong Joon Ho‘s Mickey 17 isn’t.
The celebrated director of the scathing satire Parasite returns with a parable set in a future the place Earth is a man-made international catastrophe. There, a failed politician, who has a penchant for pursing his lips when he makes proclamations, launches a spaceship, stocked with a lot of his devoted followers. They don purple baseball caps embroidered together with his motto and hope to create a “pure planet” within the stars.
It is blunt. And truthfully, the similarities to America beneath Trump would possibly damage any hope for escapism. However notably, Mickey 17 is not named for the narcissistic billionaire that’s its villain. This heart-wrenching and creative journey is known as for the common Joe who dumb-lucked himself onto a spaceship and into an enormous change of destiny.
Robert Pattinson brings Jackass enchantment to Mickey 17.

Robert Pattinson is a human printing in “Mickey 17.”
Credit score: Warner Bros.
The backdrop to Mickey 17 is one among international politics, financial inequality, and fearmongering as a recruiting software. However the core of the story is a good-hearted doofus named Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson). Fleeing a cruel mortgage shark, Mickey takes any job he can to get off-planet, signing as much as be an “expendable” with out studying the nice print on his contract. What he is consented to is to turn out to be the area colony’s one-man crash take a look at dummy. He’ll be killed again and again within the title of science, solely to be printed out once more, with all his recollections (of life and dying) intact.
Regardless of dying being a reasonably widespread a part of his routine, Mickey builds a life with the live-wire soldier Nasha (Blink Twice‘s Naomi Ackie). However after a mission gone bizarre, he returns to their mattress to seek out not simply his lover however one other him. Mickey 18 (additionally performed by Pattinson) was printed as a result of the crew assumed Mickey 17 was lifeless. Extra unhealthy information: “Multiples” have a nasty repute, which suggests their simultaneous existence might result in them each being killed for good, with no extra human printings.
Like Tom Cruise in Fringe of Tomorrow (aka Stay Die Repeat), Pattinson performs the clown in a daffy dying montage, softening the blow of his repeated demise with a mixture of bodily comedy and a playful rating of plinking piano and swooning strings. However the place Cruise’s military PR man was a cocky son-of-a-bitch, Pattinson’s Mickey 17 is an actual Jackass.
Mashable Prime Tales
In an interview with Empire, Pattison mentioned that he’d tried to imitate Jackass star Steve-O and Johnny Knoxville in his twin roles of Mickeys 17 and 18, however Bong shot the concept down. Nonetheless, followers of the stunts-and-shenanigans franchise would possibly effectively nonetheless hear Steve-O in Pattison’s raspy however open-hearted tone. And it is a good allusion, subtly calling Technology X and millennials to recollect the lovable goofball who’d danger his personal neck (or nutsack) to please others. It isn’t that Mickey thinks of himself as noble in his human guinea-pigging. He is simply completely happy to be of use, having little thought he is good for a lot else. In contrast, Mickey 18 is abrasive and unstable, much less inclined to bend a knee to the powers that be. To outlive, they need to both be a part of forces or activate one another. And their choices causes an electrifying upheaval of their area colony.
Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette give Trump with a touch of Okja.

Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette play Kenneth Marshall and his spouse Ylfa in “Mickey 17.”
Credit score: Warner Bros.
The 2 critically acclaimed performers are neatly paired because the braggadocious Kenneth Marshall and his right-hand spouse Ylfa. The place the spaceship’s inhabitants eat rationed grey sludge and put on uniforms to match, these two relish their lofty standing and obscene wealth, dressing in flashy fits bedecked with shiny rivets or attire so comfortable and violently coloured they seem to be a visible ambush. Like he did within the sci-fi thriller Snowpiercer and the fantasy caper Okja, Bong attracts a dramatic distinction between the haughty haves, who really feel their needs are precisely what they’re owed regardless of the human price, and the gruff however lovable have-nots, who’re anticipated to endure on sludge and scraps.
Ruffalo embraces the buffoonery of this political efficiency, sporting distractingly white veneers as he mimics Trump’s signature sneer and mercurial nature. Collette’s Ylfa is much less clearly tied to modern American politics. Nevertheless, her fixation on luxuries — like ornate furnishings and unique sauces — displays the consumeristic colonialism that Bong overtly condemns throughout his work. There is a willful lunacy in these heightened portrayals, the place the caustic couple urges one another to grisly acts of violence within the title of their planetary conquest. And but, for as far-flung sooner or later as Mickey 17 is about, it does not really feel that far-off.
Mickey 17 is not a playbook of resistance however a parable of hope.

Robert Pattinson and Naomi Ackie play lovers in “Mickey 17.”
Credit score: Warner Bros.
When cultures conflict in Bong’s films, they usually achieve this with darkish humor and a few juicy style spectacle, a type of candy-coating to make the drugs go down extra simply. Mickey 17 himself is a sugary-sweet hero, whose softness is outright derided by extra cynical members of the crew. But, this cavalcade of clashing crew mates — together with Ackie, Steven Yeun, and Patsy Ferran — deliver their very own tasty charms via scenes involving kinky intercourse, celebration medication, and animal noises. Then all that is folded into an alien world, the place the natives are a compelling cross between tablet bugs and elephants, tender and scurrying but probably highly effective. Unexpectedly, they turn out to be a intelligent mirror of Mickey 17, underestimated however in the end extraordinary. And in that’s the lesson.
Mickey 17 isn’t laborious or good and even significantly particular. He is a median dope who has been snookered by one unhealthy deal after one other. However in Mickey 17, he’s the hero, thrown into a unprecedented circumstance that challenges him to adapt or die. However adapting does not demand turning into laborious like 18. And in that Bong provides a ray of hope for these opposing a brutal authority.
The journey Mickey goes on is winding and wild, bucking the standard move of a sci-fi motion film, by being solely gently sci-fi and barely motion. As a substitute, Mickey 17 performs as a political comedy with cross-genre flare, in the end urging the viewers to see the similarities, and maybe discover our personal internal Mickey 17.
Mickey 17 premieres solely in theaters on March 7, 2025.