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Following such a disappointing box office performance, Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson in the title role, has found success elsewhere, and it’s already been a week. Per Flix Patrol, the sci-fi adaptation is currently dominating the streaming charts, and it began just a day after debuting on Max last Friday. As of Friday, May 30, Mickey 17 remains the #1 film in over twenty countries, some of which include Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Indonesia, Norway, Portugal, and, of course, the United States.

From Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho, who wrote, produced, and directed the pic, Mickey 17 is based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7. It is set in the year 2054 and follows Pattinson as an "Expendable," a disposable worker who is cloned every time he dies as part of a mission to colonize the ice planet of Niflheim. On February 13, the film debuted at Leicester Square in London, United Kingdom,...

Stars: Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Holliday Grainger | Written and Directed by Bong Joon Ho

Writer-director Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer) returns to futuristic sci-fi for this space exploration thriller based on the 2022 novel by Edward Ashton (entitled Mickey7). As such, it’s not without its flaws, but it’s still a lot of fun, thanks to its gleefully bonkers premise and pair of committed central performances from Robert Pattinson.

Set in the distant future, the film centres on Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), a spaceship worker who has been designated an “expendable”, so-called because his body can be reprinted and his memories restored if he dies, which he does, a lot. While on a mission to colonise a remote ice planet, Mickey’s 17th iteration (known as Mickey 17) falls down a crevasse and is presumed dead, so when he miraculously survives and returns to base camp, he...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Black Sea (Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden)

For most of its runtime, Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden’s fish-out-of-water non-fiction hybrid The Black Sea teeters on the edge of being too cute. But Harden is the variable––the lead performer whose dynamic with both actors and non-actors skirts the right side of the line between intuition and invention. It’s a line that’s also been the driving cinematic force of Moselle’s insider approach to the stories of outsiders. And throughout her career, one of her greatest skills has been her eye for not only the right story, but the right storytellers. – Michael S. (full review)

Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home

Cidade Campo (Juliana Rojas)

Two tales...

Robert Pattinson fans will soon have another way to watch the actor's latest movie, Mickey 17. After arriving on digital platforms last month, the sci-fi comedy from Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho is set to debut on Max before the end of the month.

Beginning May 23, Max subscribers will be able to stream Mickey 17. The streaming premiere date was announced by Max (soon to be rebranded back to HBO Max) on its official X account with the caption, "Biggest opp is myself. [Mickey 17] begins streaming May 23 on Max." Its imminent arrival on Max comes just over a month after being dropped onto PVOD platforms at the start of April.The movie was released earlier this week on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD.

Biggest opp is myself. #Mickey17 begins streaming May 23 on Max. pic.twitter.com/O51d8IJm5Q— Max (@StreamOnMax) May 16, 2025

Despite earning mostly positive reviews — Rotten Tomatoes...

From the visionary mind behind the Academy Award-winning “Parasite,” director Bong Joon Ho returns with “Mickey 17,” a dark sci-fi comedy starring Robert Pattinson in a unique existential quandary. The film features Pattinson as an “Expendable,” a disposable colonist designed for dangerous missions, whose unexpected survival throws a wrench into the system. This latest work from the acclaimed South Korean filmmaker blends his signature genre-bending style with sharp social commentary, promising a cinematic experience that is both thought-provoking and intriguingly complex.

Mickey 17

A Star-Studded Cast Ventures into the Unknown

“Mickey 17” boasts a talented ensemble cast led by Robert Pattinson, tackling the challenging dual roles of Mickey Barnes and his subsequent clones, including Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Joining him are Naomi Ackie as Nasha Barridge, a security officer who forms a romantic connection with Mickey, and Steven Yeun as Timo, a pilot and friend to Mickey. Toni Collette portrays Ylfa Marshall,...

An underrated legal thriller starring Mark Ruffalo is making waves on Peacock. Dark Waters is now available to stream on Peacock after being added to the streaming service at the start of the month.

Directed by Todd Haynes, Dark Waters stars Ruffalo as real-life corporate defense lawyer Rob Bilott, dramatizing his case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan wrote the screenplay for the 2019 legal thriller, based on the 2016 New York Times Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich. Besides Ruffalo, Dark Waters features several recognizable actors, such as Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises), Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption), Victor Garber (Legends of Tomorrow), William Jackson Harper (The Good Place), and Bill Pullman (Independence Day).

Focus Features received a limited theatrical release from Focus Features on Nov. 22, 2019, before expanding on Dec.

Bong Joon-ho’s much-publicized and delayed “Mickey 17 (2025),” based on the 2022 novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton is finally out on digital after what feels like a very brief theatrical release. The box-office bomb stars Robert Pattinson as an “expendable” – a replaceable gig worker who works at a space colony and is printed out anew every time he dies. Mickey 17 has an ending that fades out on a triumphant note, unlike the book which follows up the story in a sequel titled “Antimatter Blues,” wrapping up Mickey’s journey of living and re-living death to snatch back the identity that was taken away from him.

In the following article, we will take a detailed look at all that Bong Joon-ho is trying to explore with his latest outing and how the universality of his subject matter cannot be dismissed as something that happens in a particular nation. Please be aware...

He was there in Tarantino’s top 20 list, he was there among Scorsese’s favorites, but the world and the Academy took many years to catch up. It was the world’s loss, and now that awards are finally being showered, it’s the privilege of the awards themselves. He’s done all sorts, and he has never taken a step wrong yet in building his carefully chosen but wonderfully constructed worlds. Film by film, he moves on to new, unbelievable heights, but his past always reassures us that something is always coming.

Now that Bong Joon-Ho is ever more widely known around the globe, how shall we rank his movies? Let us count the films, all seven of them.

8. Okja (2017)

Bong Joon-Ho’s sixth film, co-written with Jon Ronson and featuring an eclectic cast of actors including Paul Dano and Tilda Swinton, is potentially the most surprising element in his filmography.

Bong Joon Ho’s first film in space is a specific take on sci-fi, where, as you’d expect from the “Parasite” director, every detail is carefully thought out as he put his unique stamp on the genre. The film is based on Ashton Edward’s 2022 novel “Mickey 7,” but as the “Mickey 17” writer/director told IndieWire on the Toolkit podcast, there were certain things he was drawn to before even reading the book, having first received a 10-page summary of the novel.

“When I first read the treatment, I was just instantly captivated by the concept of human printing and also that they go on this colony expedition to another planet and encounter creatures there,” said Bong, via translator Sharon Choi, while on the podcast.

Those key ingredients sparked images, ideas, and concepts that sent Bong’s mind racing, supplying the visual metaphors he could build off.

Human Printing...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for “Mickey 17,” currently playing in theaters.

In the near-future space travels of the Bong Joon Ho film, “Mickey 17,” Robert Pattinson plays an Expendable – a person designated to be used for often-fatal scientific experiments and revived through a human printer that makes an exact copy of their body, memories intact, each time.

Production designer Fiona Crombie said that to come up with the printer’s visual look, she looked at medical equipment and “high-tech weaving machines.” Although the printer is the “most advanced” part of the spaceship, the goal with the overall “Mickey 17” aesthetic was to ensure that the futuristic nature of the setting was balanced by the use of existing references.

“It is based in a reality, like we’re looking around us and seeing, ‘What is a real-world version of this that we can extrapolate and push and take further?...

With a budget of more than $100 million, a $19 million opening might not be what Warner Bros. had hoped for with Mickey 17, but the film still performed well enough to push one of its stars past a colossal personal milestone. Mark Ruffalo, who stars as the villain Kenneth Marshall in Bong Joon Ho’s latest sci-fi epic, has now crossed $11.5 billion at the global box office, thanks to Mickey 17, which sits at a worldwide total of $53 million. $19 million of Mickey 17’s earnings come from domestic markets, and $34 million come from overseas, some of which from Bong Joon Ho’s home of South Korea, where the film premiered early. Mickey 17 finally took the top spot at the box office this weekend from Captain America: Brave New World, which hails from the MCU, a franchise Ruffalo has to thank for much of his career box office success.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the biggest and most successful franchises, consisting of movies, series, short films, digital series, and literature. Actors including Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and others played a significant role in setting up a solid foundation for the franchise, which started with Iron Man in 2008. The MCU’s Phase Six will begin with The Fantastic Four: First Steps and conclude with Avengers: Secret Wars.

Mark Ruffalo played Bruce Banner/ The Hulk in MCU | Credits: Marvel Studios

The MCU’s multiverse saga, which began with Avengers: Endgame in 2019, went on to inspire other studios to adopt a very similar shared universe. Ardent fans of Marvel Comics are always enthusiastic about new projects, and the actors who have worked in the Marvel movies since their inception have a dedicated and loyal fan base with their popularity unmatched. However,...

Pattinson plays a hapless space explorer replicated for further hazardous duties every time he dies in the South Korean director’s timely follow-up to Parasite

We can only speculate about the reasons behind Warner Bros’ decision to delay the release of Mickey 17 for a full year (it was originally scheduled to hit cinemas in March 2024). A science-fiction satire with the tantalising prospect of Robert Pattinson in a dual role, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his 2020 best picture Oscar winner, Parasite, has been at the top of most film fans’ need-to-see list since it was announced. The date shift sparked alarm and speculation that the director’s consistently high standards might have slipped. In fact, while Mickey 17 isn’t in the same elevated league as Parasite, it’s a lot of fun. What’s more, the delay has made the picture, with its themes of genetic...

There are a few success stories to be celebrated in Mickey 17, the new film from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. The first concerns Bong himself, who has managed to make an expensive, completely original sci-fi movie in an era where any film that costs over $100 must be part of some greater cinematic universe. It's beyond refreshing to watch a movie with this kind of story — one with clones, spaceships and alien slugs — have original characters, an original world, and an original style. You can compare Mickey 17 to other movies, but it's still something new. It wasn't setting itself up for a sequel, and I was never sure where the story was headed for the whole of its two hours and 17 minutes. It know I'm setting the bar for positivity low here, but movies like Mickey 17 are rare enough these days that they're worth checking out for the novelty alone.

Mickey 17, the new sci-fi alien invasion comedy starring The Batman’s Robert Pattinson, is off to a lackluster start in its first weekend in theaters. Per Variety, Oscar-winner Bong Joon Ho’s newest film, which was released in theaters on March 7, has earned just $7.7 million during Friday and preview screenings.

In the film, written and directed by Bong (Parasite), and based on the novel Mickey 7, by Edward Ashton, Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, an “expendable” who goes on a dangerous journey in order to colonize an ice planet. As Mickey is an “expendable,” he has to suffer countless deaths in a number of ways for science and in order to help safely colonize the planet.

Mickey 17 opened in 3,807 locations and is pacing toward an opening weekend of just over $18 million, a meager start for a film that had a $118 million budget. With marketing and distribution costs, the film, released by Warner Bros.,...

Mickey 17 is the eighth feature film by director Bong Joon-Ho, following his Best Picture and Palme d'Or-winning thriller Parasite in 2019. Needless to say, expectations for Mickey 17 have been high, only exacerbated by the film's star-studded cast, which includes the likes of Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, and more. If the movie's affiliates were not enough to generateinvariablecuriosity and hype, fans felt like they were seeing quadruple when the release date of Mickey 17 was changed four times before finally landing on March 7, 2025. While it was revealed in early promos that the sci-fi plot involved "human reprints" and roly-poly-type aliens, most of the details were kept under wraps.

Well, Mickey 17 has finally arrived after premiering to considerable praise at the International Berlin Film Festival last month. In typical Joon-Ho style, it isjam-packed with exciting twists and salient social commentary. There's a lot to unpack about Mickey 17,...

Filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is widely popular for his cinematic genius and out-of-the-box storylines. This was quite evident from his work on the critically acclaimed movie Parasite that also bagged him an Oscar for Best Director. But after this movie in 2019, he sort of disappeared from the big screens. Now, after a hiatus of 6 years, Joon-Ho made a comeback with the recently released Mickey 17.

Robert Pattinson in a still from Mickey 17 | Credits: Warner Bros. Pictures

In this, he worked with the likes of Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo. But while the movie is getting good reviews, one element of it is looking eerily similar to Donald Trump’s real-life assassination attempt in 2024. And the sheer timing of everything has left the fans wondering, but the filmmaker made sure to deny all of it.

Did Mickey 17 already predict Donald Trump’s assassination attempt?

Mickey 17 brought forth Bong Joon-Ho back on...

Mickey 17is the weird and wacky sort of science fiction film that only two people could imagine and then actualize into something even remotely resembling a comedy; Edward Ashton, author of the Mickey 7 novels, and Bong Joon Ho, whose previous works include Parasite (20119) and Snowpiercer (2013).

Bong’s adaption of Ashton’s fantastic novel is a strange feel, a tragic comedy about a reprinted personwho simply cannot die. It’s a strange film set on the strange world called Niflheim with strange creatures called creepers. Though perhaps the creatures themselves aren’t actually as strange as how Bong brought them to life. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Bong spoke about how the creepers were designed in a manner that, star Toni Collette bluntly described as "croissants dipped in s—t."

The French Food That Inspired The Creeper Design

I created three different types of creepers: the mama, the juniors, and the babies,...

There are certain films that, when it comes to auteur directors, double as entry points for newcomers. In most cases, they tend to be the movies which acted as breakout films for their directors, the ones that announced to American popular culture at large that they're a force to be reckoned with. For South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, that film is unequivocally "Parasite," which took the United States by storm upon its release in May of 2019. The movie rode a wave of positive word-of-mouth all the way to the 92nd Academy Awards, whereupon it was nominated for six Oscars and won four, including Best Picture, making it the first ever non-English language movie to obtain that honor. Within the space of a year, Director Bong went from being someone known mostly within cinephile circles to a household name.

As a result of the runaway success of "Parasite," Bong Joon...

This article contains mild spoilers for "Mickey 17."

Five years after "Parasite" dominated the Oscars and became the first South Korean film to receive any Academy Award recognition, Bong Joon Ho is back with what I firmly believe is his best English-language film yet, "Mickey 17." But a lot has changed in our world since 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic essentially shut the world down for months. The American film industry went on pause as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA dual strikes were caused by the AMPTP dragging their heels on providing a fair deal, and in recent months, America swore in a new presidential administration. Simply put, the world that existed when "Parasite" debuted is not the one we're living in now, and yet despite all of the massive changes that have taken place, "Mickey 17" proves that some things will always stay the same.

Films often experience a bit of an...

This post contains some spoilers for "Mickey 17."

In Bong Joon Ho's new sci-fi film "Mickey 17," Robert Pattinson played the titular Mickey, a low-paid grunt on a distant spaceship. As the previews have made explicit, Mickey is an "Expendable," that is: when he dies, he can easily be cloned — or "printed" — and replaced within a day. Needless to say, Mickey is selected for the ship's most dangerous missions. By the time audiences catch up with him, he's on his 17th printing.

Mickey lives on a ship of conservative cultists who worship a Trump-like televangelist named Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo). Marshall is so hated on Earth that he left on a long-distance spacecraft to find an interplanetary haven he plans on calling Niflheim. Throughout "Mickey 17," he and his horrid wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) talk about how they're seeking a genetically pure stock, making it abundantly clear that they're Evangelical eugenicists.

Quick ViewDirector clarifies a mosaic of influences from all the world leaders of all timeRuffalo’s interpretation of MarshallPerception of the audience

Celebrated director Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi movie Mickey 17 has stirred the conversation with the leading character’s similarity with Donald Trump. It is impossible not to make the connections with the current events going around the world.

The movie, starring Mark Ruffalo, features a flamboyant and flailing politician, leading a space expedition to colonize an ice planet. Does it sound familiar? Let’s see what the director and the actors have to say.

Mark Ruffallo and Toni Collette in Mickey 17 | Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film dives into the themes of technology, human cloning, and social hierarchy. It introduces the audience to a future where human cloning is a routine, featuring the character Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson.

He is an ‘Expendable’ who undergoes...

Bong Joon-ho is back, and this time he’s swapping class warfare for existential dread. The Oscar-winning director behind Parasite takes a bold leap into sci-fi territory with Mickey 17, a genre-bending, darkly comic meditation on identity, labour and what it means to be human — all wrapped up in a wildly entertaining package.

Adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, the film stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, a low-ranking worker on an unforgiving ice planet, where human life is cheap and clones are even cheaper. Whenever Mickey dies on the job — and it happens a lot — a fresh version is printed, memories intact, ready to pick up where the last one left off. But things get complicated when Mickey 17 is mistakenly presumed dead, only to return and find Mickey 18 already occupying his bunk, his relationships, and his sense of purpose. What follows is part existential crisis, part slapstick nightmare, with...

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho directs Robert Pattinson in a dark sci-fi satire filled with clones and creatures. Our review of Mickey 17:

As science fiction has so consistently pointed out, humanity’s flaws will follow us no matter how far into space we travel. Artificially-intelligent computers will glitch out and try to kill us because they’re the flawed products of a flawed species. We’ll go to other worlds and kill whatever creatures we might find there because, for some reason, we just can’t outrun our murderous, colonial past.

Mickey 17 is the latest film from writer-director Bong Joon-ho, a filmmaker who has long looked witheringly at our worst impulses. Coming almost six years after his Best Picture-winning thriller Parasite, this is a blackly comic sci-fi satire more of a piece with The Host, Snowpiercer or Okja – a more antic, scattershot genre piece, but no less pointed...

While watching “Mickey 17,” it’s impossible not to make connections to current events. Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall character, a flamboyant and flailing politician leading the sci-fi film’s space expedition toward colonizing an ice planet, has distinctly Trumpian qualities in the way his thin skin manifests itself.

Audiences will also naturally draw a direct connection to the billionaire space exploration of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, with the film’s central conceit that corporations are prepared to look to life beyond Earth as its environment deteriorates. While a guest on an upcoming episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, writer/director Bong Joon Ho admitted via translator that current events did seep their way into “Mickey 17,” just not in the way some are thinking.

“I think probably the pandemic was flowing into this adaptation process,” said Bong, who adapted the screenplay from Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel...

Robert Pattinson is dead. Robert Pattinson is reborn. He hath risen! Rinse, repeat.

Like a Looney Tunes cartoon penned by Philip K. Dick, Mickey 17 — filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2019 masterpiece Parasite — takes a technological breakthrough and runs its human lab rat of a hero through a gauntlet of future-shocked banality and brutality. In the early 2050s, mankind has figured out how to clone bodies and carry over a single consciousness. When we meet Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes, this copied-to-death Candide has already gone through a number...

‘Mickey 17’ director Bong Joon-ho has insisted Mark Ruffalo’s antagonist was not based on Donald Trump.The 55-year-old filmmaker addressed speculation that Ruffalo’s egomaniacal politician Kenneth Marshall was inspired by the US president, but Joon-ho has stressed the character was not based on Trump and was instead influenced by “a mix of many different politicians” and “dictators that we have seen throughout history.”Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the director said: “When we showed the film in Berlin and talked to people from many different countries, it seemed like people were projecting the most stressful political leader onto the character of Marshall.”Joon-ho added Marshall’s wife Gwen - portrayed by Toni Collette - played as much a role in the movie as the dictator.He explained: “They move as a couple. “To me, that was quite important. So think about the Ceausescu couple from Romania and the Marcos couple from the Philippines.

Bong Joon Ho is addressing chatter about Donald Trump being the inspiration behind Mark Ruffalo’s villainous character in Mickey 17.

In a new interview, the Oscar-winning director discussed who really inspired the egomaniacal politician Kenneth Marshall, portrayed by Ruffalo.

Bong told Entertainment Weekly that the character was inspired by “a mix of many different politicians” and “dictators that we have seen throughout history.”

The filmmaker noted that audiences seeing parallels between Trump and the fictional character are seemingly only projections.

“When we showed the film in Berlin and talked to people from many different countries, it seemed like people were projecting the most stressful political leader onto the character of Marshall,” Bong said.

The Parasite and Okja director also noted the role Tony Collette’s character Gwen (Marshall’s wife) plays into the mix.

“They move as a couple,” Bong said. “To me, that was quite important. So think...

Robert Pattinson as Mickey 18 and Robert Pattinson as Mickey 17 (Photo © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc)

South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho has fiddled around with dramatic thrillers like Memories of Murder and Mother as well as thoughtful science fiction such as Snowpiercer and The Host. After winning his handful of Oscars a few years back with his crossover drama Parasite, he’s now flipped the switch back to sci-fi with his newest film, the dystopian space opera Mickey 17.

Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, a loser who, after getting into trouble on Earth, volunteers to be an “expendable” on an outer space colonization mission. Expendables are part suicide soldiers and part lab rats, as they are basically used to do dangerous tasks and medical tests that might (and probably will) get them killed. The catch is, once they die, their body is just “reprinted” and their memories are implanted in the new shell.

When you go to see Mickey 17 in theaters this weekend, you'll be forgiven if you see a little of Donald Trump in Mark Ruffalo's character of Kenneth Marshall. However, director Bong Joon-ho says that's nothing more than your own projection, as he was inspired by a number of different historical dictators, and not any one politician in particular. Based on the 2022 novel by Edward Ashton, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson as an endlessly cloned crew member of a spaceship whose job it is to die over and over again for research purposes.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly ahead of the release of Mickey 17 on March 7, 2025, Joon-ho revealed that Ruffalo's antagonistic character was inspired by "a mix of many different politicians and dictators that we have seen throughout history," meaning that while he may seem a lot like the current U.S. president in both his speech and mannerisms,...

At the center of Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, an anti-capitalist satire that’s as timely as it is entertaining, is an “expendable” named Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson). He’s a disposable worker aboard a government spaceship lorded over by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician and religious wingnut seeking to escape the strictures of Earth and establish Niflheim, a genetically “pure” colony of devotees on a distant ice planet.

Tasked with doing the most dangerous jobs on the ship, Mickey expires frequently but is reprinted each time, assigned a new number, and re-uploaded with the old Mickey’s memories, after which it’s back to being subjected to nasty experiments. But when Mickey 17 is prematurely presumed dead after being sent on a mission to study creepers—the lifeforms causing trouble for the colonists of Niflheim—he comes face to face with his replacement: Mickey 18.

Affably gangly in structure, Bong...

Plot: In the future, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who’s in debt to loan sharks, takes the one job no one could ever possibly want. He signs up to be an “expendable” on an off-world colony where he’s given hazardous tasks to perform that no one is expected to survive. Every time he dies, they “print” another copy of him. However, when his seventeenth iteration, Mickey 17, unexpectedly survives a mission, he discovers another version, Mickey 18, has already been printed, and in this society, multiples are expressly outlawed.

Review: One has to give Warner Bros some degree of credit for green-lighting Mickey 17. Easily the most lavish movie of director Bong Joon-Ho’s career, it’s the kind of original, audacious sci-fi we rarely see on the big screen anymore. The fact that it doesn’t entirely work is almost beside the point, as stuff like this so rarely...

South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho returns to hilarious form in Mickey 17, a biting sci-fi satire of capitalism, class warfare, and demagogue worship (insert Donald Trump here). Based on the novel by Edward Ashton, the bonkers narrative follows a sweet and simple man who's stuck in a repeated loop of ghastly death while helping to colonize a frozen planet. Robert Pattinson and a sharp ensemble cast will have you laughing out loud with exaggerated performances meant to hammer in the film's themes. Not all of it works, and the pacing grinds to a halt in a labored finale, but Bong's message is loud and clear.

Set in the near future, Mickey 17 opens with our hapless protagonist stuck in a familiar situation at the bottom of an icy crevasse. The 17th iteration of Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) can't believe he's still alive. Mickey hopes for a quick rescue when Timo (Steven Yeun), his supposed best friend,...

Mickey 17 tackles social-political themes like most of Bong Joon-ho's filmography. The director says audiences will laugh out loud at the overt humor but might feel guilty immediately after, realizing the irony.

Mickey 17's absurd premise is perfect for black comedy. Director Bong Joon-Ho said audiences are supposed to find the Mickeys' predicament funny but tragic because it's an allegory. "There is a lot of humor in this film," he told IGN, "but it doesn't roll with the singular goal of making the audience laugh as many times as they can. I think humor really strengthens sadness, and especially with those bitter laughs, you get a huge mixture of different emotions." The same could be said about Bong's previous film Parasite, which left audiences reeling from its climactic finale.

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RelatedThe True Story That Inspired Bong Joon-ho's Parasite

Though a work of fiction, the Oscar-winning film Parasite -- and its...

The idea of Robert Pattinson playing a dual role sounds like a lot of fun. And what’s more, it’s the long-awaited new movie from Bong Joon-Ho, the acclaimed Korean auteur who hit double jackpots for Parasite after winning Palme d’Or and multiple Oscars including the historic Best Picture victory.

But before we get to the dual Robert Pattinson playing two Mickeys, the first act focuses on how it all happens from the beginning. Adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, Mickey Barnes has been down on his luck because of his bad investment with his so-called best friend and business partner, Timo (a sneaky Steven Yeun), leaving them heavily in debt. So, they decide to escape from the loan sharks by joining the space expedition to planet Niflheim. Led by former Trump-like politician, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), the primary aim of...

Although Mark Ruffalo‘s character in Mickey 17 might elicit some deja vu, he recently noted that any similarities to real political leaders are purely coincidental.

While discussing his role in writer-director Bong Joon-ho‘s upcoming sci-fi satire, now playing in South Korea and premiering March 7 in US theaters, the 4x Oscar nominee hinted at parallels between his Kenneth Marshall and President Donald Trump.

“I play a petty dictator,” he said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon before pausing for reaction. “At the time, we shot it three years ago, and I thought this is over the top. And now, I realize it’s totally underplayed. I mean, I made a documentary.”

Bong’s followup to his 2019 Oscar-winner Parasite stars Robert Pattinson as the titular Mickey Barnes, who signs up to be a disposable clone worker on the human colony of Nilfheim, going on deadly missions without expecting to...

Stars: Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Holliday Grainger | Written and Directed by Bong Joon Ho

Writer-director Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer) returns to futuristic sci-fi for this space exploration thriller based on the 2022 novel by Edward Ashton (entitled Mickey7). As such, it’s not without its flaws, but it’s still a lot of fun, thanks to its gleefully bonkers premise and pair of committed central performances from Robert Pattinson.

Set in the distant future, the film centres on Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), a spaceship worker who has been designated an “expendable”, so-called because his body can be re-printed and his memories restored if he dies, which he does, a lot. While on a mission to colonise a remote ice planet, Mickey’s 17th iteration (known as Mickey 17) falls down a crevasse and is presumed dead, so when he miraculously survives and returns to base camp, he...

In the year 2054, the film explores a world where humanity seeks sanctuary through an expedition to the icy planet Niflheim. Within this bleak setting, the concept of “Expendables” emerges—a term describing the disturbing process of archiving a human’s core and regenerating their physical form after death. Mickey’s life becomes a sequence of scans and copies, creating a cycle both mechanically precise and emotionally sterile (a powerful critique of industrial systems).

Mickey exists as an ordinary worker assigned to hazardous tasks, a replaceable element in a larger, oppressive structure. An unexpected event occurs when Mickey narrowly survives a deadly incident, discovering that his digital replica, Mickey 18, has been created. This duplication sparks complex ethical debates about personal identity and the sanctity of human existence—reflecting historical conversations about individual rights during critical periods.

The narrative structure echoes this repetitive pattern: segments of life, death, and rebirth are woven...

Bong Joon Ho has long been one of world cinema’s most original voices indicting the borderless scourge of late-stage capitalism, class polarization, climate disaster and the oppression of unchecked power. Using satirical allegory, broad farce, horror and violence, the visionary Korean master has made a string of standout genre films that double as subversive takes on sociopolitical rot, from Memories of Murder to The Host, Snowpiercer to Parasite, frequently making a virtue of tonal whiplash. Following his four-time Oscar-winning 2019 smash, the director returns in Mickey 17 to sci-fi, skewering autocracy and even attempted genocide in a pitch-dark comedy about colonization.

Or as Mark Ruffalo’s egomaniacal leader Kenneth Marshall puts it, an attempt to create “a pure, white planet full of superior people like us.” With much of the world swerving rightwards, the timing seems ideal for an anti-fascist comedy that uses recycled humans and uploaded intelligence as a...

Is Mark Ruffalo giving a Trump impression? It’s early into Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 when the actor struts into the frame in a velvety blazer, wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) in tow, gloating as a crowd stands and claps like he’s the second coming of Christ. Ruffalo is Kenneth Marshall, leader of some cult-adjacent Church and one-time presidential candidate behind a new space mission designed to yank humanity from a near-inhospitable Earth and drop it onto Niflheim, a planet in some remote corner of the galaxy. A hopeless narcissist surrounded by a cabal of yes-men armed with cameras immortalizing his every move, he speaks with impossibly white teeth forever bared in a self-congratulatory grimace, nostrils flared, vowels ever so slightly drawn out. In a film ostensibly following not one but two (!) Robert Pattinsons, it’s Ruffalo that takes center stage. And if his diction and mannerisms instantly...

What's it feel like to die?

Through curious eyes as wide as saucers and nervous smiles hiding from beneath pinched lips, just about everyone on the colonizer ship heading to Niflheim has asked this question to Mickey Barnes — or one of the many human printings of him — much to his chagrin. No matter how many times he dies, it never gets any easier, but Mickey finds solace in knowing that no matter what, he'll still wake up in the morning regardless of how brutal his demise was the day before.

After some risky financial dealings with loan sharks inspire Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) and his business partner Berto (Steven Yeun) to escape Earth to avoid being killed by the shark's heavies, Berto quickly finds a gig as a pilot, while Mickey volunteers to be an "expendable," or a person who will tackle suicide missions in the name of science for...

You may not have noticed this unless you’ve watched his films closely, but Bong Joon Ho has a few quibbles with capitalism. It’s true! I know it can be hard to focus on subtext when the former Captain America is lamenting the fact that “babies taste best,” but watch “Snowpiercer” for a second time and you might just be able to tease out a well-sheathed critique of the social order in its story about an economically segregated train where the people in the lower classes are forced to eat each other alive while their rich overlords in the front cars are free to enjoy the eternal rewards of the locomotive’s self-perpetuating engine.

Ditto “Okja,” which hides a damning rebuke of corporate greed behind a winsome fable about a girl and her pet superpig, “The Host,” whose monster feasts on the industrialized world’s collective disregard for its most vulnerable communities,...

Action sickos and Bong Joon-heads may now rejoice. After “Parasite” gave way to six long years of famine, the Oscar-winner has returned with a feast, serving up a sci-fi spectacle bursting with enough lofty ideas and buffoonish antics to keep even the hungriest fans sated — especially if the Korean auteur goes quiet for another half-decade.

Still, those looking for more of the sublime precision of “Parasite” – or “Mother” or “Memories of Murder,” for that matter – should hope that next project is back on home-turf, for “Mickey 17” only cements the clear divide between the filmmaker’s English- and Korean-language work. In ways both figurative and literal, “Mickey 17” finds Bong Joon-ho bugging out.

That the director adapted a novel originally titled “Mickey 7” should clue you in to the gusto and abundance at play here, while rumors of the studio’s apparent befuddlement become all the more ironic given the film...

While two Mickeys may be better than one, by the time you get to seven or eight (the idea of Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel “Mickey7”), or a number as unwieldy as 18 (the inflated figure in Bong Joon Ho’s big-screen adaptation), the prospect of an endless supply of gawping Robert Pattinson clones really starts to wear on us. The “Snowpiercer” director is back in familiar territory with “Mickey 17,” a bonkers sci-fi satire set in a grim future where Earth is no longer habitable, other planets must be colonized and the success of a four-year mission to the ice planet Niflheim depends on disposable human copies called Expendables.

Pattinson has traversed deep space before, doing so in Claire Denis’ relatively elegant arthouse feature “High Life.” Here, the star dumbs it down to suit Bong’s big-budget grunge-topian vision, playing a sucker so desperate to escape a ruthless loan shark...

Although it is science-fiction to its core, director Bong Joon Ho’s first film since his Oscar-winning Parasite six years ago is in many ways a not-that-absurd look at where we just might be headed as a society.

Mickey 17 on its surface is about a hapless, slightly less than average macaroon chef who no longer can take Earth and its ever-so-decaying condition that has led thousands daily to board a spaceship to a more promising planet life — or so they think. Nevertheless, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is just a guy whose life is seen as expendable (a word he uses on his application), and like a lab rat, his new day job is — wait for it — dying. Yes, Mickey is part of constant experiments to help researchers see what causes death and disease, and so he is put through the ringer and reprinted repeatedly, dying over and over again,...

No-one is better than director Bong Joon Ho at using the rules of genre filmmaking against his audience. In the extraordinary Parasite, he engineered a mid-film switch from social comedy to something much darker and more outrageous; in Snowpiercer, it emerged that the revolutionary struggle we’d been rooting for was only a fraction of the true battle for survival. Now, in Mickey 17, he tackles space travel and the colonisation of alien worlds. If it’s a more conventional film than his best work, he still finds ways to subvert our expectations and continually surprise us with a hero who’s just trying his inadequate best.

Robert Pattinson, wide-eyed and squeaky-voiced, is Mickey Barnes, who needs to get off-Earth sharpish. In the absence of any discernible skill set, he signs up as an “expendable”, and to be killed over and over again on a colony ship headed to the...

Audiences will recognize Mark Ruffalo’s character in “Mickey 17” — a megalomaniac dictator in a dystopian future who, along with his loopy wife played by Toni Collette, is hell-bent on colonizing an ice planet populated by sentient creatures — as any of the familiar autocrats currently in global power. Kenneth Marshall, as he’s known, oversees a 3D cloning process wherein Robert Pattinon’s Mickey dies over and over while undertaking dangerous tasks needed to understand how life can be lived on this new planet, only to be regenerated again. Ruffalo plays Marshall with beaming-white veneers and a slightly affected accent that will no doubt bring to mind President Trump.

But ahead of the film’s Berlinale premiere on February 15, director Bong Joon Ho didn’t spell out exactly that he was modeling the character after Trump; he’s more an amalgamation of the many current faces of power.

“Mark Ruffalo is...

In a wide-ranging conversation at the British Film Institute ahead of his new film “Mickey 17,” Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho revealed that Mark Ruffalo’s antagonist character bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain U.S. president who once criticized “Parasite’s” historic Academy Awards sweep.

“We shot this film in London in 2022 and there’s a particular thing that happened in 2024 that was quite similar in this film,” Bong said through an interpreter, referencing how Ruffalo’s character Kenneth Marshall manifests with “faintly orange-tinged skin.” The director added that after recent events, “Mark Ruffalo was also quite surprised to see it play out in reality and wondered, ‘Were we oracles predicting the future?'”

When asked if this was a response to Trump’s disparaging comments about “Parasite’s” Oscar win, Bong quipped that he is “Not that petty,” drawing laughs from the BFI audience.

The Warner Bros. film,...

Introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation's 24th century era, the Maquis were more complex than many Star Trek villains. Like many science fiction sagas, Star Trek often drew clear lines between good guys and bad guys. Captains like James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) had strong morals even outside of the rules and regulations of Starfleet. However, as the television landscape changed and storytelling styles shifted, morally gray characters and antiheroes became more commonplace.

With the premiere of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1993 and Star Trek: Voyager in 1995, the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation expanded and became more interconnected. The Maquis were introduced on DS9, for example, but the resistance group played a major role in storylines on both Tng and Voyager. Members of the Maquis came from all over the Alpha Quadrant, united by their common goal to oppose the Cardassian Union.

Warning: Spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Episode 6 - "Of Gods and Angles"

Star Trek: Voyager proved that one of Starfleet's enemies in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine could be reformed. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Maquis were a guerrilla resistance group started by civilians whose homes had been annexed by the Cardassians and disillusioned former Starfleet officers. The Federation considered the Maquis traitors, and vehemently pursued their capture. DS9's Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) had a particularly difficult time with Starfleet officer turned Maquis fighter Michael Eddington (Kenneth Marshall), and infamously resorted to poisoning the atmosphere of Eddington's safe haven in order to draw him out.

Captain Kathryn Janeway's (Kate Mulgrew) first mission as captain of the USS Voyager was to recover the Maquis raider ValJean from the Badlands after leaving DS9. When both Commander Chakotay's (Robert Beltran) ValJean and Voyager were swept to the Delta Quadrant,...