Writer/director Bong Joon-Ho makes his triumphant return to cinema after his 2019 film Parasite enjoyed many historic wins at the Academy Awards. Mickey 17 is based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, and comes to theaters after a bunch of delays, some claim due to studio interference in Joon-Ho’s creative process, or due to editing and possible reshoots. But it was hard for me to go into Mickey 17 this afternoon thinking this was truly a troubled production. This is Bong Joon-Ho we’re dealing with, how could this all go wrong? And while there’s plenty I enjoyed here, something significant was definitely lost along the way. 

Set some time in the future, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) are broke after a failed business venture and are on the run from loan sharks. They sign up to be crew on a space ship intending to colonize the planet Nilfheim, Timo as a pilot and Mickey as an ‘expendable’, who is given deadly assignments and is ‘reprinted’ every time he dies. Everyone asks him ‘what does it feel like to die?’ And he never quite knows how to answer that question. A situation unfolds in which the 17th incarnation of Mickey had been mistakenly reported as dead, after the 18th had already been printed. And one person having ‘multiples’ is a problem. Chaos ensues.

There’s a lot going on in Mickey 17, and yet not enough. It shows Bong Joon-Ho returning to the sci-fi nuttiness of films like Snowpiercer and Okja, while largely leaving the biting tension of Parasite behind. Mickey 17 is a satirical social commentary that lacks sharpness. I’m not sure if this is a film that has a lot to say, or if it’s just saying those same two or three things over and over again. It feels like the filmmaker is revisiting his own favorite beats, while failing to really express any new ideas. There’s a lot of apparent originality at the jump, and some of the world-building and character detail here is fascinating, but a lot of it feels like we’ve been here before. 

I’ve very much enjoyed witnessing the career trajectory of Robert Pattinson. Even when he was contractually obligated to the Twilight series, Pattinson was always making interesting choices as an actor in his spare time. He’s the kind of rare actor with leading-man looks and charm who can do films like The Batman and The Lighthouse and make it all work. And Mickey 17 is perhaps most effective as an acting exercise for Pattinson. Playing these two distinct versions of this character, the viewer never doesn’t know which one they’re looking at, and Pattinson’s performance is so skilled and so specific, and I always enjoy him doing a wacky accent. He brings a certain humanity to this character that I question whether it was evident on the page. His chemistry with the terrific Naomi Ackie (a standout in last year’s Blink Twice) is electric. Ackie just about walks away with this entire movie.

Mark Ruffalo co-stars as Kenneth Marshall, a failed onetime politician who has sinister plans for the planet of Nilfheim, alongside Toni Collette as his maniac wife Ylfa. Ruffalo and Collette are usually great, but they’re doing this kind of severely over-the-top, cartoonish caricature villain performances that struck me as a bit too on the nose. Considering the buffoonery and soul-crushing toxicity of modern American politics, if a film is making me think about the things I go to the movies to avoid thinking about, it better damn well have something interesting to say about them. And I found the social commentary here to be rather underwhelming. Maybe if Ruffalo and Collette were doing something more grounded and menacing and less over-the-top and campy, the political messaging here would hit harder. But it feels like Joon-Ho is using them to make the same points over and over again.

And that leads me to another problem with Mickey 17. I feel like I would have been checking my watch a lot less if the film didn’t feel so repetitive. I never want to be checking my watch during a Bong Joon-Ho movie. He’s established himself over the years to have a tremendous understanding of pacing, and can even make his longer movies feel gripping and compelling from beginning to end. But in this one, especially toward the third act, what started out as enjoyable go-for-broke nuttiness becomes muddled and dull. And we’re unfortunately building towards a third-act CGI-heavy action sequence where we can barely make out what’s going on half the time. 

So overall, I’m unfortunately very mixed on Mickey 17. I was really looking forward to this movie, and for a while – I would say for the first third or so – I was really enjoying what Joon-Ho was doing here. It felt innovative and compelling, but then it became clear over and over again how much of this is Joon-Ho playing the greatest hits of his career. I really enjoyed the work Robert Pattinson and Naomi Ackie were doing here as well. But the longer Mickey 17 drags on and repeats itself, the more this unfortunately became a bit of a bummer for me. I’m on board with all the messaging in this film – there’s nothing it has to say that I disagree with – however, after being beat over the head repeatedly with the same message for almost two and a half hours, the oomph of that message becomes less impactful. If you go into this film and you had a better experience than I did, I’m thrilled for you and I’m glad you had that experience. But I left the theater with a bit of a shoulder shrug. Mickey 17 is bizarre and compelling for awhile, but as a follow-up to one of the greatest films of the last decade, it can’t help but feel like quite the letdown.