Mickey 17: I'm Disappointed

I'm Disappointed (And not in the fun, ranty way. Just… bummed.).

Let me start by saying: I wanted to like Mickey 17. I really did. Bong Joon Ho is a genius. Parasite blew me away—it was sharp, tightly paced, visually brilliant, and it delivered its social commentary with a scalpel, not a hammer. So when I heard he was adapting Mickey7 with Robert Pattinson playing clones in space? I was in. Fully onboard. Buckled up and ready for liftoff.

And then… the movie started.

Look, I don’t mind weird. I like weird. I’ll happily watch a movie where a guy keeps dying and coming back and slowly losing his sense of self. That’s not the problem. The problem is Mickey 17 doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be—sci-fi satire? existential drama? awkward buddy comedy? slapstick with clones? All of the above? None of them fully land.

There’s a kind of chaotic looseness to this film that feels like Bong just wanted to mess around after the pressure-cooker perfection of Parasite. And hey, fair. Let the man play. But as an audience member? I felt like I was watching a brilliant filmmaker toss a bunch of cool ideas into a blender and hit “pulse.” No real rhythm. No real payoff.

The pacing is all over the place. Some scenes drag on like they're leading to something profound, only to fizzle into half-hearted punchlines or overly earnest monologues. The tone swings so wildly I got emotional whiplash. One minute we’re laughing at clone hijinks, the next we’re supposed to reflect on the meaning of sacrifice and ecological collapse. Pick a lane, dude.

And the big themes? Yeah, they’re there—class divides, exploitation, environmental ruin, the horror of disposability—but none of them hit with the sharpness I expected. Instead of slicing deep, the film kind of just… nudges at them. Like, “Hey, remember capitalism? That sucks, right?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but can we show that instead of saying it every twenty minutes?”

Robert Pattinson gives it his all, as always. The man fully commits. Whether he’s being Clone #1 or Clone #17, he’s got that twitchy, slightly unhinged energy that makes him weirdly perfect for sci-fi. But even he can’t hold it together when the script feels like it’s being rewritten mid-scene. His performance feels stranded—like he knows the movie could be smarter, funnier, or sadder, but isn’t allowed to go there.

Visually, it’s fine. Not Snowpiercer-cool, not Okja-wild. Just… fine. Some shots are gorgeous, sure, but overall, it doesn’t have the punchy style or cohesive worldbuilding I expect from Bong. It’s like he built a stage, got halfway through the set pieces, and then just said, “Eh, good enough.”

And I hate saying this. I hate being disappointed by directors I love！But Mickey 17 feels like a rough draft that somehow made it to theaters. It lacks the elegance of Parasite, the emotional weirdness of Okja, and the brutal clarity of Snowpiercer. Instead, we get a muddled, intermittently clever space fable that thinks it’s being profound when it’s mostly just being vague.

I wanted to walk out of the theater buzzing with ideas and existential dread. Instead, I walked out thinking, “That’s it?”

Now, I’m not saying Bong Joon-ho is losing his touch. Not at all. Every director gets a weird one. This just feels like his. A misfire. An overreach. A case of ambition outrunning execution. If you told me Mickey 17 was actually Mickey 3 and we had to wait for a better sequel, I’d honestly believe you.

So yeah—Mickey’s not the only one who feels like a disposable copy. This movie kinda does too. And that’s the real disappointment.

Verdict: 6/10, and that’s me being generous because I still believe in Bong.