Earlier in March, director Bong Joon-Ho released his latest film, Mickey 17, his first film following his ceiling-shattering success with Parasite back in 2019. This new film, based on the 2022 book Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, tells us the story of Mickey, an “Expendable” aboard a spaceship headed to colonize an uncharted planet.  

Being an expendable, Mickey is tasked with being the first responder to test or explore new things the space colony comes across, with most of these endeavors leading to the death of Mickey. This is manageable for Mickey however as one of the perks of his job is his physical and mental state being backed up and his body being able to be reprinted in the outcome of his death. Problems arise when Mickey is presumed dead but surprisingly arrives back to the ship, he sees that there is another him already printed out back on the ship. 

The biggest strength that this movie had would have to be the acting. All of the actors in this film do an incredible job in portraying fluid and funny characters that make the already silly situations in the film go to new heights. Extra praise has to be given to Robert Pattinson for his dual performance in this movie as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. It is always a hard balancing act when you have to manage the mindsets and motivations of two characters and an actor can easily get swept up in it all, but we see Pattinson do the opposite and thrive in it all. The only actor who fails to earn this praise on the film is Mark Ruffalo who plays a stand-in for Donald Trump and makes his character feel more in line with a SNL sketch rather than a feature film.  

The biggest problem with the movie is that there really was no major conflict in it. There are a few conflicts that you can point out, but a lot of them seem half-baked and never take full control of the narrative. Throughout the film we are sent from caring about the problem to the two Mickeys and their love lives, to worrying about the corrupt politician who is at the helm of the ship causing chaos. There just isn’t enough time to juggle all of these aspects to make it a completely satisfying watch for the viewer, which makes it unfortunately fall flat in this regard.   

Overall, this movie was serviceable. It was pleasantly entertaining to watch, but there is very little to consider groundbreaking in this film. Unfortunately, the film’s timing is what drags it down the most in the eyes of those that went to go and watch due to the fact that this film was Bong Joon-Ho’s first release since his magnum opus in Parasite 

Parasite won best picture at the Oscars in 2019 and was the first ever foreign film to do so. It did great work in bridging the gap between America and the world of foreign filmmaking as it is a South Korean film. From the visuals and cinematography to the script, this film was in a league of its own and nothing could come close to touching it. Even six years after the fact there is very little  

Now, is this Mickey 17’s problem? No, not at all, but certain people are currently hounding on this movie simply because another movie exists in the same microcosm as being from the same director and the problem lies in one of them just being a better movie. It feels unfair to compare the film equivalent of apples to oranges, which only bogs down the experience for people who look up the general feelings of the critics and other movie goers before they go and see it for themselves.  

This kind of mindset not just hurts the moviegoers trying to enjoy the film but can have a negative effect toward the director and all other people involved in the film’s production. If the viewers look at the movie with a closed mindset and say that the director should keep doing work that is the same as their prior work, the director will not feel the need to want to evolve their craft. Playing it safe is the death of creativity, but doing something risky and it not paying off gets you chastised in the eye of the public. That is something that we as a population have to stop doing if we want to make the films of tomorrow more groundbreaking then those of yesterday.  

Mickey 17’s is sadly becoming a victim of circumstance. If you went out and watched this movie, I am sure that you would have a fun time. It won’t be one to stick in your mind for days, but you don’t get off a rollercoaster and think about the emotional complexity of its twists and loops. You are just happy that you got the experience in the first place.