How do you explain a movie like “Mickey 17” in a couple of simple words? I don’t think you can. It’s weird, disorienting and oddly profound. What starts off as a confusing sci-fi setup—a guy clones himself to escape a debt—unfolds into something stranger and much more ambitious: a slow-burning, existential parable about labor, memory and what makes a life worth anything at all.
Robert Pattinson, best known for the role he’d probably rather forget, pulls off something impressive here. He plays both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18—duplicates of the same man with the same memories—but somehow makes them feel like two entirely different people. There’s no flashy CGI to help sell the dual role; it’s all in the performance. And it works. You believe these clones are starting to think independently, and you believe that could be a problem.
The plot is dense and a little messy, especially at first. We’re thrown into a future where humanity is colonizing planets, and Mickey signs up to be an “Expendable”—a worker who dies during dangerous missions and is then reprinted with most of his memories. It sounds like a logistical nightmare, and, at first, it kind of is. I was confused, but the confusion feels intentional. Bong Joon Ho, the director, wants you to be off balance. The rules don’t all make sense, because they’re not meant to; this is a system that values efficiency over ethics, and Mickey is caught in the middle of it.
The real tension kicks in when Mickey 17 survives a mission but is presumed dead. His backup, Mickey 18, is printed. Now there are two of them, and neither is willing to step aside. What starts as a sci-fi cloning problem turns into a full-on identity crisis.
The film gradually expands its focus, especially when the crew lands on a new planet that, surprise, already has life. Alien life. These roly-poly-like creatures seem harmful at first, until one of them saves Mickey 17. That act of kindness sets everything in motion. Mickey 18 is born because the team thinks 17 is dead. But now there are two Mickeys and the discovery of intelligent alien life. The mission is officially off script.
This is where “Mickey 17” starts to get thematically rich. The aliens become central to the film’s moral question: who gets to be treated as alive? The humans dismiss the creatures as primitive, expendable— just like Mickey. But as the film goes on, it becomes clear that the aliens feel. They’re intelligent, they remember and they mourn. One of the best lines in the film—“We’re both afraid (of death)… that means you’re human”—hits hard when you realize humans aren’t the only creatures that die. The aliens fear death. So do the clones. So how can either be dismissed as disposable?
Mark Ruffalo plays the expedition leader, a man with too much authority and too little wisdom. He’s both a religious zealot and bureaucratic coward, blindly committed to the mission even as it starts to crumble. Toni Collette is great as his wife— obnoxious and completely lacking in self-awareness. Together, they represent a kind of ideological madness: the kind that thinks building a new world means repeating the worst of the old one.
Mickey 17 isn’t perfect. It stumbles with pacing in the middle and it doesn’t always care if you’re keeping up. But its core message is clear: just because something can be replaced doesn’t mean it should be. The film rolls in your mind not because of the plot twists or the sci-fi tech, but because if fear, memory and love make someone real, then what do we lose when we treat people, and other beings, as tools?
