Dying for a living

Express Tribune

05-04-2025

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) wakes up as a "meat popsicle". Frozen stiff, vacuum-sealed, and utterly disposable, he's not even the first version of himself to see this bleak fate. This opening image of Mickey 17 sets the tone for Bong Joon-ho's latest: part grim existential crisis, part sadistic comedy, all wrapped in sleek sci-fi packaging. Corporate exploitation, class struggle, and the insanity of unfettered capitalism: the film takes Bong's favourite themes and runs them through a cloning machine, just to see how many times it can kill its protagonist before he finally snaps.
And oh, does Mickey die. He dies a lot.
To add to the already twisted reality of the film, the narrative isn't unfolding in real time. Most of what we see is already past tense, narrated by Mickey himself in a dry, reflective voiceover. It's a clever way to keep us locked in his head, which is a battlefield in which the pursuit of identity is a bigger problem than plain, old survival. If you get replaced every time you die, are you still you? Or just a slightly worse photocopy of the original?
Bong Joon-ho's lab frog
Early on, Mickey refers to himself as a "lab frog," a nod to the countless creatures sacrificed in the name of human progress. If you've seen Okja, you know Bong isn't subtle about corporate cruelty, and Mickey 17 takes that to new heights. Here, the "lab frogs" are people; to be specific, they are "Expendables" like Mickey, whose entire job is to die so others don't have to. Poisonous gas? Send Mickey. Unstable terrain? Send Mickey. Experimental vaccine? You get the idea.
"Get used to dying," he's told. Mickey, ever the unlucky optimist, tries.
Carrying their earthly nastiness to a whole other planet, the colony's bureaucrats treat Expendables like cheap, reusable batteries; inanimate things with no unions, no benefits, no real protection. Mickey, weighed down by threats from gangsters on earth, signs up for this horrific, experimental program without reading the fine print. In one of the film's sharpest exchanges, Mickey is asked to "prove he has faith in the system" right before being accepted as an Expendable. The system, of course, only works for those who never have to die for it.
Meanwhile, the colony's leadership, led by coloniser Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) in full smarmy-overlord mode, preaches efficiency and sacrifice while living comfortably at the top. His wife, played by Toni Collette, is even more ruthless, manipulating everyone around her while barely lifting a finger. In typical Bong style, their vision for the new-world colony is eerily similar to a coloniser's imagination of a land and its people here on earth: a "planet of purity" where everything is neatly controlled, including the people.
Sex, control, and revolution
Speaking of control, one of the colony's strangest (and most telling) rules is the ban on sex. Framed as an energy-saving measure, the tactic runs much deeper than just conserving calories. When you sever intimacy, you sever rebellion because connection, in any form, is dangerous. It breeds loyalty outside the system, makes people care about each other, and caring is the first step toward resistance.
Naturally, Mickey and his girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie, fierce and funny) don't care much for the rules. Their relationship is built upon the matters of the heart instead of the body, grounding Mickey in a way his countless resurrections can't. But when another worker, Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), starts showing interest in him too, things get complicated. Even more so when Mickey well, multiplies.
The real chaos kicks in when Mickey 17 is presumed dead, only for Mickey 18 to be printed in his place. Suddenly, there are two of him; one slightly more reckless, one slightly more paranoid. Pattinson, who has spent the last decade gleefully shedding his Twilight past with weirder, riskier roles, plays both Mickeys with a perfect mix of existential dread and smarmy charm. Mickey 17 is a people-pleaser, eager to keep the peace. Mickey 18? Not so much. Their interactions are both hilarious and eerie, as if the film itself is asking the age-old philosophical question: If all of a ship's paraphernalia is changed along its voyage, then, by the end of its journey, is it the same ship? Is it the same Mickey?
Flawed but brutal
Visually, Mickey 17 is stunning in a cold, calculated way. The icy planet of Niflheim is more mood than setting where everything is stark, industrial, and unforgiving. Fiona Crombie's production design makes the colony feel like a steel trap, while Darius Khondji's cinematography uses the 16:9 frame masterfully, pulling us in close for moments of tension and zooming out for jaw-dropping wide shots of the frozen wasteland. The blood and gore, when it comes, is artful and minimal because as always Bong does not have to rely on shock to build intrigue so he never wastes a drop.
Even the insanely otherworldly "creepers" seem like they could climb out from under our beds if the weather was cold enough, that's how unflinchingly real Bong's suspension of disbelief is. No unnecessary violence fills the screen space, not even from abominable creatures from icy planets.
In a film like this, the humour can only be dark and sadistic. Anyone who thinks otherwise requires serious help. Mickey's deaths are played for laughs as often as they are for horror. A brutal accident, followed by an unceremonious body dump. A gruesome malfunction, shrugged off by his superiors. Each death becomes an absurd corporate expense, just another number in the budget.
Mickey 17 isn't as tightly constructed as Parasite or Snowpiercer. It's messier, more chaotic, sometimes losing focus under the weight of its own ideas. But it's also ambitious, weird, and thoroughly entertaining. Pattinson carries it with ease, and Bong's signature mix of sharp satire and high-concept sci-fi mostly works, even when it stumbles.
Perhaps the film's greatest contention is its ending. Without spoiling anything, let's just say it leans hard into ambiguity. Some will call it brilliant. Others will leave the theatre muttering, "Wait, what?"
Either way, Bong has done it again: taken a wild, high-concept premise and turned it into a biting critique of power, identity, and the disposable nature of labour. It's not his best work. But like Mickey himself, it gets back up, dusts itself off, and keeps you watching.
Would I recommend it? Sure. Just don't get too attached to the first version of it you see.