Mickey 17 Has No Sauce

How many forgettable things can you put in a movie? It felt like Bong Joon Ho was going for the record with Mickey 17. This movie is like a night club that Stefon from SNL would frequent, because it has everything: multiple Robert Pattinsons, adorably freaky creatures, Trump impressions, environmentalism, bad friends, space travel, sauce, social commentary; all that's missing is Dan Cortese. Despite its ambition and Oscar-winning director, Mickey 17 is as forgettable as its release date.

March is a wasteland for mediocre movies that aren't big enough for the summer blockbuster slate and not memorable enough for the winter Oscar season. So, I was shocked that Bong, whose last movie won the Oscar for Best Picture, would be relegated to such a dead zone. After watching Mickey 17, it makes sense. This self-indulgent sci-fi epic should have studied the Star Trek writing guide before it tried to do everything at once.

The hard part is that I wanted to like it. I wanted to leave the theatre with a rejuvenated belief in cinema, akin to how I felt when I walked out of Parasite. Yet, the only things I felt were a new appreciation for Pattinson's acting skills, and assurance that I've had enough of this dumb-politician caricature, which has plagued Hollywood since 2016. Frankly, that's not enough for a movie as hyped by the cinephile community as Mickey 17.

The movie starts strong enough. Pattinson plays Mickey like a dim-witted everyman—one who doesn't read the terms and conditions before he's shot into space. It's also filled with an anachronistic style that is sometimes endearing and sometimes puzzling. There is a special helmet used for experiments, which looks like Home Hardware-level tubing attached to a bicycle helmet. The prop that holds Mickey's memories as he transfers from one body to the next looks like a red brick. There's Toni Colette's character, Ylfa, who is obsessed with sauces, of all things. And let's not even discuss the translator device used by humans to speak with creepers.

Evidently, Bong has not lost his sense of humour. He also hasn't lost his knack for political commentary, even if it feels exhausted in 2025. Mark Ruffalo plays Kenneth Marshall, the ship's leader and a politician figure that, to me, played like a bad mix of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Although Ruffalo is not a stranger to comedic roles—he played one expertly in Poor Things—he feels misguided in Mickey 17, as if he brought ideas to the character and nobody told him that he was falling flat.

That's not to say that all of the movie's humour misses the mark. The on-Earth macaroon-store fiasco was pretty funny, and I liked Steven Yeun's comedic timing—even if his character arc as Timo was kind of superfluous. Mickey and his many deaths made me laugh pretty hard too. If Bong had focused more on the main trials and tribulations of Mickey, I think the movie would have benefited.

Because when we do focus on Mickey, the story is exciting. I liked the love-story angle, especially the great performance from Naomi Ackie as Nasha. Although the threesome scene was giving Challengers, I can't deny that Nasha's relationship with Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 had me emotionally invested. I was even interested to see where Mickey 17's moment of solace with Anamaria Vartolomei's Kai Katz would lead. However, Kai and other characters, like Timo and Dorothy (Patsy Ferran), end up getting lost in the shuffle of this silly and multifaceted story.

I think it was about halfway through when I started to get sci-fi fatigue. Mickey 17 is poisoned by a bad sauce. Mickey 18 tries to kill Marshall. Timo disappears from the story, only to resurface for a rather inconsequential purpose. Meanwhile, outside of the spacecraft, there is an army of creepers, animals big and small that reminded me of wood bugs (but were really inspired by croissants), circling the vessel. These creatures' motivation is stated, but also ambiguous.

As these creepers become more integral, the movie shifts from sci-fi comedy to sci-fi action, and my interest downgrades from peaked to polite. Mickey 17 is not a boring movie, but it does turn tedious. As Marshall ships off like George Washington crossing the Delaware to meet these creepers, and Mickey 17 straps a translator to his chest to try and talk some sense into the creatures before it's too late, I started to mentally check out. Turning off my brain and enjoying the ride was maybe the purpose of the final act, but considering the movie's social undertones and Bong's reputation, it's hard to believe that I was supposed to watch this like it was Jurassic Park or something.

It's also around this point that the political commentary goes from not-so-subtle to overly overt. Nasha delivers a speech to Ylfa and Marshall that is way too on the nose. It reminded me of the speech Simon Pegg gives to the aliens at the end of The World's End. Random comparison, I know, but Pegg's speech is my least favourite in movie history. Nasha's speech has the same energy. Including this scathing speech felt so forced—like the character is trying to convince us to despise these people. But that's not the way to do it! You make an audience despise characters by showing those characters doing despicable things. If you tell me to hate someone, chances are, I'm going to root for them; it's the contrarian in me. And, in this instance, it wasn't even necessary. The audience already doesn't like Ylfa and Marshall. We don't need Nasha to rant about their deplorability because we've already seen it in action. But Bong wanted to make sure he included every little thing.

"Beware getting too wrapped up in The Wonder Of It All. The quality of a [science fiction] tale is usually inversely proportional to the pretensions a writer brings to it." This quote comes from the writer's guide for Star Trek. Bong would do well to study it. It felt like he was very wrapped up in the wonder of Mickey 17—maybe more so than even his most loyal fans. Bong put everything that he wanted into this movie, it seems. That's not necessarily a good thing. A filmmaker without limitation almost always causes anarchy. One from the Heart, New York New York, and Tenet are just some examples. Meanwhile, his pretensions of what he expected from this movie hurt the final product because the film felt so self-gratifying. It felt like nobody told Bong no.

Another nugget of wisdom I pulled from the Star Trek writing guide is this: "Would the basic story, stripped of science fiction aspects, make an entertaining episode?" The same question can be applied to Mickey 17. If we took away everything that was science fiction about the movie, would I still want to watch this movie? It's a challenging question. Stripped of science fiction, it becomes a story about a man who runs away from his bad debt, falls in love, and then needs to save the creatures of the world from being blown up by an egotistical leader. You can see the disconnect, right? To me, it's clear how point A and B do not lead to point C.

This, I think, is the major problem with Mickey 17. Although its parts are good, with fun humour, an endearing protagonist, and cute creatures, when it all gets put together, it's like a sauce with tons of ingredients but a rather bland flavour. Had Bong focused more on harmonizing a few integral flavours, perhaps the sauce would be more memorable for its poignancy in a certain area, rather than giving you a hint of all the best flavours at once without committing to anything.

The movie could also be a result of the Oscar hangover. Winning Best Picture for Parasite was monumental—the first non-English film to win the award. Yet, rather than trying to duplicate his success, Bong seems to have chosen to make a movie entirely for himself. As such, Mickey 17 is interesting and well filmed, but it fails to live up to the hype. It felt more like a near-three-hour-long victory lap for Bong, by Bong. I get that he made a great movie in 2019, but what has he done for me lately? With a little editing, a little more focus on the key elements, I think Mickey 17 could have been great. As it is, it's a forgettable sci-fi piece that fits perfectly in the wasteland of March theatrical releases.