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Mickey 17 (2025)
Bong Joon Ho is one of those filmmakers that has earned the right to make any movie he wants. Hollywood might not feel the same, but the filmmaker behind Snowpiercer, The Host, and the triumphant Oscar-winning Parasite, the first time an international movie won Best Picture, is an amazingly versatile storyteller who seamlessly blends different genres and tones into unique and mesmerizing film experiences. If he’s interested in telling a story, then that guarantees I’m interested in watching it. This is especially true if he steps into the realm of science fiction. After the worldwide success of Parasite, Bong Joon Ho was given $100 million dollars and final cut from a big studio to make whatever he wanted, and he chose an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel, Mickey 7, telling the story of the world’s most/least fortunate expendable in a fledgling space colony. I read the book last year and it was quite good, so my anticipation was even higher for the feature film Mickey 17, especially after Warner Brothers delayed the movie an entire year. Now, after the long wait, we can all finally enjoy Bong Joon Ho with peak artistic freedom, a position that will likely not be repeated. It’s a grand movie with big ideas, vision, satire, and also enough underutilized ideas and distracting characters and performances to quibble over “what if’s.”
In the distant future, Earth is overrun in population and low on natural resources, so the next space race is to find habitable colony worlds. Mickey (Robert Pattinson) gets in over his head to shady loan sharks and looks for any possible way off of the planet. The only position he can sign up for is that of an expendable, a person who can be cloned from a biological printing machine. These expendables are put in dangerous jobs and different science tests because, well, if they die, you can start over. It’s a terrible job, one that involves dying repeatedly, and Mickey agrees to be the human crash test dummy. He’s on a multiyear colony ship traveling across space to find a habitable world. The planet they land on is bitterly cold, impossible to farm, and crawling with its own crawly wildlife. Mickey 17 is left for dead after falling down a chasm but he survives, trudges back home, only to discover another Mickey in his bed. They’ve assumed Mickey 17 died and already printed out his replacement. There’s a rule about there not being multiples and, if discovered, both expendables would be killed. They have to hide their secret and work together while still vying for dominance over one another and staying out of the crosshairs of buffoonish yet powerful political leaders Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife, Yifa (Toni Collette).
Mickey 17 is a smart, weird, and consistently fun and thoughtful movie. It doesn’t waste any time getting started, literally with Mickey 17 on the cusp of dying with his looming interaction with the aliens. Bong Joon Ho adapted the screenplay and has a nimble way of dealing with the conflicts and setting. I appreciated that he doesn’t prolong different storylines beyond their point of interest. He’s always got another development or joke or set piece to provide. There’s a fun sense of discovery with the movie as well as satisfaction to watch how he slides all the pieces into place. I appreciated how he imbues character notes so easily with supporting characters, giving this universe a larger personality that resonates. I love the setting and the reality it presents of a long-voyage space colony fighting for resources and struggling to keep the lights on. The sets and photography are gorgeous to behold but also filled with details to help make the world feel lived-in. I loved that even in the far-flung future, technology can still work in fits and starts, like watching Mickey slide out of the printer conveyor belt only to lurch backwards before going forward again, like the printers of the 1980s. I love the alien creature design that resembles an armadillo crossed with the subterranean worms from Tremors. I loved how they were able to defend their queen/mamma in Act Three. I love the goofy comic flourishes too, like the fact that there’s a guy just walking around in like a pigeon mascot costume that is never really explained. This is also the same movie where characters constantly ask Mickey what it’s like to die and you realize that every version of Mickey doesn’t know because he’s never experienced it personally, only born from the aftermath. The way this movie is capable of marrying big ideas with silly visual jokes and slapstick and explosions is impressive and a reminder that certain artists will prosper on big stages when given ultimate freedom. Come for the star power and slapstick, stay for the existential dread.
Pattinson presents another wildly weird performance that reminds me how exciting he is as an actor. He’s got these movie star good looks but he really wants to play all the weirdos he can with the most eclectic filmmakers, and I love it. His Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 may be constructed from the same DNA but they come across as vastly different iterations of our hero. This provides a more assertive version of Mickey to try and shape up our more passive Mickey into standing up for himself, taking chances, and taking charge when the situation calls for it. He’s like a mentor. Mickey 18 isn’t featured that often in the story, and truthfully he wasn’t featured that often in the book as well. It’s mostly the story of the hapless and whiny-voiced Mickey 17 and his journey of self. It’s a familiar yet enticing formula to watch a character gain agency and go from pushover to defender of the vulnerable. Pattinson finds little sparks to grab onto with the character, little pieces of weirdness that really help crystalize our understanding of Mickey. Of course the human lab rat would have the fight bred out of him through resignation, and it’s still gratifying to see him stay who he is while also rising to the challenge of the moment. In interviews, Pattinson has said that he modeled his two Mickey performances after the cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy. This actor is perfect for the wacky, tone-blending worlds of Bong Joon Ho. He’s game for everything.
It’s not hard to see the entire enterprise as a crafty critique of capitalism, not exactly a new point in the Bong Joon Ho movie universe. Mickey’s value to his mission is the literal exploitation of his body. He’s callously tested upon for vaccines and weapons and whatever the scientists may cook up. Because they know they can download another Mickey, it changes how they view the current iteration: he’s not a person, he’s only whatever they want him to be at whatever moment. His value is what he can offer to them as a test subject, as a pile of flesh to be experimented upon. Therefore, the casual cruelty in the name of science and “progress” is yet another example of how we can easily dehumanize our fellow man in a system that profits from their labor and exploitation. Bong Joon Ho also provides a more compassionate view of the downtrodden Other, in particular the indigenous alien species on the colony world (to be fair, as is pointed out by another character, the humans are the actual aliens in this scenario). The creatures are viewed as unworthy of co-existence, in the way of man’s intergalactic manifest destiny, and so they must be wiped out for greater conquest. It’s not a huge surprise that the aliens might not be the stupid and scary creatures that they’ve been projected to be, and this is revealed very early when a collective herd saves the wounded Mickey 17. He views this as an insult, that he’s not even seen as worth eating, but the reading should be obvious to everyone in the audience. Thus we spend the rest of the movie for the other characters to realize the reality of these strange creatures. I did appreciate that the end of the movie coincides with a battle for primacy versus cooperation and compassion, which centers some of the major themes and ties the movie’s character arcs and significant messages together. Plus there’s also explosions.
And yet, there are ideas that could have been explored for even more depth and contemplation. There’s a very intriguing question concerning the different personalities of Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, which begs the follow-up question whether or not they are indeed one hundred percent replicas. Their personalities are such wild swings away from one another, with one being much more the laconic pushover and the other being the aggressive and assertive ideal Mickey. The next Mickey is built upon the recorded memories of the previous memories, so in theory there wouldn’t be many significant differences. However, the big personality differences are not explored or even questioned. This is a missed opportunity that could have gotten to something deeper philosophically and with the revelations of its world-building tech. Perhaps the cloning device doesn’t actually work as advertised and each new Mickey is a close proximity but there are minute yet distinct differences, meaning each new Mickey is his own person deserving of identity. This could then also further connect with the religious objection to cloning that one body should only have one soul. This could lead to Mickey 17, and even 18, debating whether or not they have souls of their own and their conception of life and sacrifice, being more than just the living equivalent of a punching bag. It could also bring into a spiritual element about possibly having a celestial reward after their extra-solar toils, at least the hopeful belief. There were real thematic qualities to explore and provide meaningful texture to the whole movie, and yet they’re disappointingly ignored.
The Trump buffoonery avatar stuff is a little harder to take in early 2025 with the fallout of a second Trump presidency still having its far-reaching, chaotic, despotic consequences. The character and his wife are invented entirely for the movie by Bong Joon Ho, and clearly he had some things he wanted to say about the former and now-current president (there are even followers wearing those signature red caps). I just don’t know if there’s anything of real substance to this portrayal. He’s a cartoonish idiot villain overcome with vanity, ego, overconfidence, and craven manipulation, but there’s not much that is gained from his multiple appearances. Ruffalo is doing fine work jutting out his jaw and making sure to show those upper teeth as often as possible. It’s just that the character is an exaggerated all-purpose blowhard villain, and it makes for a character you desperately want to see brought lower, to be exposed as a fraud, to get their cosmic comeuppance. The problem is that the appearances are all hammering away at the exact same point that I began to tune Marshall out. In our current political landscape, with the intended target taking up every iota of oxygen in the public sphere, it just becomes another reflection point of the exhaustion felt from the Trump administration. One character verbally lambastes the political bully as a world-class idiot and says, “That’s why you lost the elections.” Plural. It’s then I recalled Mickey 17 was delayed a year, and this would have played differently for me in early 2024 than 2025.
There’s also a very late sequence I would like to analyze why it doesn’t quite work as conceived, but this will enter into some spoilers, so skip to the next question if you’d like to remain pure, dear reader. During the epilogue or coda, Mickey is seemingly remembering something from his past until it’s revealed to be a nightmare and thus having little consequence beyond insight into Mickey’s subconscious anxiety. In this nightmare, Mickey stumbles upon Yifa in the midst of her printing out a new version of her husband through the cloning machine. We’d been previously told that after her husband’s death that Yifa had been locked away and supposedly slit her own wrists. This raises the question whether the Yifa that we see at the machine is her or a clone, and that tantalizing possibility unlocks a new world of story for the movie that seems completely natural and essential. It’s the kind of twist hiding in plain sight that could have worked, that there were two Yifas at the same time there had been two Mickeys or long predating. This is because once you start thinking of this possibility it’s too obvious that it would happen. Of course the rich and famous blowhards who regard themselves as more important than others would see the expendable process as a means of living forever, or at least having a back-up plan. Of course the Marshalls would be hypocrites about their moral righteousness against cloning being an affront to God and creation. Of course these people would use whatever means they could to extend their power and their lives. Just like that, the very end of the movie has an extra layer to it that also provides more purpose for Yifa as a character. Then, just like that, it’s revealed as a nightmare, and all that intriguing possibility is wiped out, and I was left wondering why even produce this moment after the duplicating machine has been destroyed?
Mickey 17 is an engaging, funny, enraging, and silly example of what science fiction can do. It can explore existential and essential questions about what it means to be human while also employing cartoonish slapstick, as well as cartoonish political satire. Not everything comes together smoothly; it’s a true jumble of tones and ideas, a Bong Joon Ho staple, but he’s typically so skilled at hiding the transitions and seams so you don’t even notice the genre movement until it’s already happened. There are intriguing directions and ideas I wish the movie had explored more, and the climax is a little conveniently tidy but suitably fitting as an invention for a showdown. As a reader of the novel, I can say that it’s an entertaining and fitting adaptation but also one that works on its own while I can still encourage people to read the novel. Mickey 17 is ambitious and messy and also very human, finding grace inside the darkness and absurdity. It’s not perfect but it is worth celebrating, just like each of the put-upon Mickeys.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Nope (2022)
Within two movies, and most likely just with his first in 2017, Jordan Peele catapulted himself as a brand name in the world of horror. At this point, you’ll see a Peele horror movie sight unseen because you know what you’re getting is going to be a unique experience. There are plenty of modern horror directors that have built a rabid fandom, like Ari Aster or James Wan, but nobody seems to be given the same platform as Peele has earned at this juncture. The writer/director has become what M. Night Shyamalan used to exhibit, the director whose creative visions were each highly anticipated event movies. Nope is Peele’s first foray into science fiction territory and the results are messy, disturbing, and, at points, astounding.
The Haywood family ranch has been involved in the motion picture industry since its very beginning. One of the first film images, a black man astride a horse, was the great-great-great grandfather of Emerald (Keke Palmer) and Otis Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya). The brother and sister are trying to save the family ranch after the untimely and strange passing of their father (Keith David) who was felled by debris falling from the sky. Their neighbor, Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), is spinning his notoriety as a child actor into a Western theme park attraction. Ricky’s claim to fame was being one of two survivors of a 1990s sitcom where the trained chimpanzee, who in the context of the show was his adopted sibling, snapped and went on a killing spree. Emerald and Otis Jr. begin to suspect that there is a real unidentified flying object hanging over their land, so they set out to capture living proof and become rich and famous. The alien, hiding in an unmoving cloud over the course of six months, has other plans and intends to assert its claim on the Haywood territory.
Peele is proving himself more and more as a major director of genre spectacle and vision. Each of his three directorial efforts will hit people differently; I think they’ve incrementally gotten a little sloppier in the writing department, but Peele is only growing stronger as a visual stylist and orchestrator of big screen spookery. There is a grandeur to the visual arrangements, owing as much to the expansive language of Westerns and the awe of early Steven Spielberg. I wish I had seen the movie in IMAX as Peele intended, since he went to all the trouble of planning specific sequences for the grand IMAX cameras. There are several moments that are jaw-dropping and stirring in horror and wonder. A literal rain of blood and viscera and expelled non-organic items is a striking image. Even the unnatural way that helpless people are thrown off the ground can be jolting and primal. There’s a claustrophobic interior sequence of desperate people that really conveys the terror of the doomed. A big addition to the eerie atmosphere is the brilliant sound design. The otherworldly-ness of the alien encounters is heightened by a really in-depth sound design that can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. Even the sound of rain, and its distance, can be an indicator of the proximity of danger. There are also the distant sounds of horrible screams circling through the clouds high above, and it’s a deeply unsettling design trick that works every time. Even when the movie wasn’t quite as engaging from a narrative or thematic standpoint, Nope is always engaging on a simple delivery system of spectacle. The way Peele distributes his visual clues and keys, sometimes literally, always provides something for an audience to anticipate.
I was also starting to grow impatient from Peele’s coy narrative games. The plot moves in frustrating starts and stops, teasing an intriguing development or proffering a question and then skipping backwards, denying the viewer a sense of gathering momentum. There’s a toying sense of teasing out how far he can go before an audience gets too impatient and quits. Much of the first half also takes place during night or sequences of sustained darkness, which can definitely play into the the fear of what could be in those shadows, but it makes for a fitfully frustrating experience when you’re trying to unravel a science fiction mystery. I kept wondering how all these pieces were going to come together, especially the ongoing subplot about this killer chimpanzee, but I had faith in Peele (mostly). That faith was rewarded but I’ll admit for the first hour I was wondering if Peele was too evasive for his own good.
Nope begins as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and then transitions into Jaws and stays there, and it was during the second half that my interest magnified exponentially. It’s around the hour mark that the movie finally puts all its cards on the table and declares what it is and what the remaining movie is going to be about. All the stutter steps and vagaries are cast aside, and the movie finally shifts into its grand entertainment of a group of humans learning about an overwhelming and unusual threat and plotting their unorthodox plan of attack. I’ll still try and play around spoilers without getting too deep into specifics. It’s a great relief when Peele no longer has to tease his threads and mysteries and can at last be open and let the conflicting components come together. The annoyances I felt in the first half melted away, and I was satisfied as the movie picked up a genuine momentum and smartly tied in many prior plot elements for the bigger picture, like the inflatable tube men, old timey picture-taking souvenir machines, and even the very vague almost carwash-esque imagery from the opening credits. The second half of the movie is more fun because it’s a big hunt and it allows our characters to make use of what they have learned to form conclusions and strategic moves and adjustments. It’s characters making smart decisions. It’s a scenario that finally allows Peele to finally play with all the setups he’s spent an hour cheekily hiding around.
While the climax is great, and the movie gets consistently better, I don’t feel like all of its many thematic ties come together. Being a Jordan Peele horror movie, we’re now expecting there to be extra layers of social-political commentary and allegories. The back-story for Ricky as a child actor is given a lot of attention and screen time for a two-hour movie, and I don’t know if what it adds up to is equal to the time it was given. Thematically, you can make some speculative reaching about the exploitation of animals for spectacle, about underestimating and not respecting nature, and even setting up for later tragedy, but it all seems less meaningfully integrated than any other Peele movies’ elevated subplots. With the Ricky back-story, there is even a literal anticipation of a literal shoe to drop, which seems so obvious as a visual metaphor but I cannot link it directly with what follows. I can keep digging and find connections but it requires far more effort than Peele’s other works of horror. The family history of working for Hollywood as horse wranglers feels underdeveloped. There are also rules that it establishes that Peele isn’t fully consistent (just don’t look?) that left me questioning. I figured that colonialism would be an obvious parallel with invading aliens (H.G. Welles even made use of the analogy 120 years ago), but maybe that was too obvious territory for someone like Peele. My friend Ben had a crazy early theory that the aliens themselves would resemble horses and thus they were returning to free their equine brothers and sisters from human exploitation. I guess I’ll go ahead and spoil you, dear reader, that this does not happen in any shape with Nope.
I’d rank Nope the third best Jordan Peele horror venture, and while it clearly makes use of science fiction concepts and its rich iconography, it’s still very firmly a movie rooted in horror, the horror of the unknown, the horror of being small and helpless, the horror of being left behind. Not all of Nope’s many ambitions quite land, and the themes feel a bit more jumbled or underdeveloped, but I want Jordan Peele to continue making the movies he wants on his terms. Not every one is going to hit exactly the same for me, or for any viewer, but we’re all better when unique artists like Peele are given the latitude and support to bring their personal visions to the big screen. As long as he’s still achieving a baseline of quality, something that befell the middle Shyamalan period, then I say swing away and let’s see where you’ll take us all next, Jordan Peele.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Humans (2021)
I was left cold and confused by The Humans. It’s an adaptation of a Tony-award-winning play, by the playwright himself, and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s a sparse movie set during a tense Thanksgiving dinner while a dysfunctional family moves one of their own into her New York City apartment. The conversation style is very natural and the characters behave like recognizable people; however, that doesn’t make them particularly interesting. This was the same issue I had with last year’s Shit House movie, a movie that confused realistic conversations with interesting conversations. Just eavesdropping on people and getting the occasional spark of conflict is not enough. I was relatively bored throughout and then when the movie tries to lurch into paranoia horror I had no idea what was happening. It feels like a dull drama that had no real ending and then someone said, “What if we spent the last ten minutes of this chamber piece conversation walking down dark corridors and inspecting noise?” The acting talent here is tremendous, including Amy Schumer in a rare dramatic role, and it just feels like a waste of their time. I don’t know what proved so appealing to critics here.
Nate’s Grade: C
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