Berlinale 2025 Review: MICKEY 17, Bong Joon Ho Takes Us to the Stars in Angry and Amusing Sci-fi Comedy

With his latest film, Bong Joon Ho reaches for the stars but what his characters discover in the far reaches of space is just another version of the messed-up world they left behind, a world Bong has laid bare for us time and time again.

A spunky sci-fi satire that feels at times like Brazil on an alien planet, Mickey 17 is a riot, with Bong's signature humour, usually relegated to the fringes, here elevated to the main event. It follows on very naturally from his other English-language pictures, yet this grungy ride, though never hard to follow, isn't always a smooth one.

Four years after blasting off from a society that has fallen prey to decay and depravity, a ship filled with human colonists touches down on the icy world of Niflheim. There's the occasional excursion outside, but for the most part, this intensely segregated colony remains inside its grey and cavernous ship, staring out at an infinite white void, like the train passengers in Snowpiercer, Bong's first English language sci-fi.

One of those colonists is the debt-saddled Mickey Barnes, who joined the expedition with the express intention of escaping his extremely violent creditors back on Earth. Also making a space run for it is friend and fellow debtor Timo (Steven Yeun). Thanks to a recently obtained licence, Timo gets to be a pilot. Mickey has no skills whatsoever, so he signs up for the one position that needs none, being an "expendable". In his rush to save his skin, he doesn't read the fine print -- there's a reason no one else has applied for the job.

Bong first dabbled with sci-fi in his third film The Host and now with Mickey 17 he has struck a perfect line down his filmography -- four sci-fi films featuring Hollywood actors and four non-sci-fi Korean works. To answer your first question, yes, there is a Hollywood actor in The Host. Character actor Paul Lazar from The Silence of the Lambs appears briefly as a military doctor probing Song Kang-ho's hapless protagonist. To answer your second, yes, I am stretching the truth to make a point.

The point is that Bong seems to enjoy engaging with his beloved Hollywood through the forgiving and malleable otherworldliness of science fiction. Western actors in his films occasionally play straight characters, like Chris Evans' square-jawed rebel leader in Snowpiercer, but by and large they portray scenery-chewing oddballs, think Tilda Swinton's buck-teethed Minister Mason in Snowpiercer or Jake Gyllenhaal's wacky and moustachioed celebrity vet from Okja. Mickey 17 goes one step further -- everyone's an oddball, including the titular protagonist.

After years of becoming famous but not being taken seriously thanks to the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson has notched up one fascinating role after another, working for a series of auteur directors. For Bong Joon Ho, he not only plays Mickey, he also plays the many different iterations of this Nilfheim-bound expendable. The job involves having his body scanned, taking on all the dirty jobs and printing into a new body each time he bites the dust.

Though he remains the same person, each Mickey is slightly different in character, affording Pattinson the chance to modify his mannerisms and accent, and helping us to distinguish between them when Mickey 17, who was supposed to have been eaten by aliens, returns to base and hops into a bed already occupied by Mickey 18.

It's not hard to see why Bong was attracted to Edward Ashton's book 'Mickey7' and its concept of expendables. Mickey is at the bottom of the social order and his very existence offers a droll and pointed encapsulation of the concept of the body politic. On the way to Niflheim, Mickey goes out to fix the ship while absorbing lethal doses of radiation. After touching down, he is sent out to breathe the local air and its deadly pathogens, experiencing several violent deaths in the process, until a vaccine is developed.

The expedition survives because of Mickey, but not once is he thanked for his continual sacrifices. People only approach him to ask the same single question -- "What's it like to die?" Even his girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) isn't above using him for his body. When she discovers there are two Mickeys, she is far more preoccupied with the potential of a threesome than the "multiples" violation that could lead to the permanent deletion of Mickey Barnes.

Mickey 17 is a closer adaptation of 'Mickey7' than many might have expected from Bong. He adds ten Mickeys to the count, rendering the deaths depressingly routine, but much of the narrative remains the same. Ashton's acerbic wit is preserved, though Bong tailors the humour to his own style and amps up the caricatures.

One thoroughly Bong-ian change is how Mickey got into debt. In the book it's gambling, here it's a failed macaron shop. Mickey and Timo's venture echoes all the people who try to hop onto a craze to make a buck, only to be saddled with debt when it quickly fizzles out. This is a particularly common predicament in Korea, Bong's trend-obsessed homeland, where the turnover for small businesses is absurdly high. Two of the characters in Parasite also went bust thanks to failed Taiwanese castella cake shops.

Yet the biggest difference lies in how some of the characters have been carried over. Timo is a reworked and somewhat less effective version of Mickey's untrustworthy friend Berto, while the natalist leader of the colony has turned into a fascist couple, gleefully played by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette.

Margaret Thatcher was an inspiration for Swinton's antagonist in Snowpiercer and here, as the pathetically vain politician Kenneth Marshall, Ruffalo is clearly channelling Trump -- albeit closer to Alec Baldwin's sneering SNL impersonations than Sebastien Stan's uncanny portrayal in The Apprentice. Collette plays his controlling wife Ylfa, a vividly vile creation perpetually obsessed with sauces.

Bong's work has always been political, but while his favoured themes of class-based tyranny and hope-starved humanity are alive and well, the politics feel more pointed. While Western viewers will recognise Trump, Korean viewers may very well liken the couple to embattled Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol -- currently facing impeachment -- and First Lady Kim Keon-hee, reviled figures roundly viewed as gross and corrupt caricatures who use everything and everyone around them to strengthen their grip on power and line their own pockets.

Speaking of Trump, the most newsworthy moment of his third presidential campaign is unintentionally alluded to in a show-stopping centrepiece, right smack in the middle of the film. Set in a cafeteria and featuring a million moving parts, this dazzling sequence is Bong at his finest. He deftly corrals chaos, sweeping us up into a symphony of movement and emotion.

Though there are many other high points in Mickey 17, it never quite reaches that degree of catharsis again. There are simply too many elements in play, each fighting for our attention and distracting us from Mickey's bizarre plight in a film that occasionally feels a touch overstuffed -- much like this review. While this may not be Bong's best film, it is a thoroughly welcome return and one whose myriad details surely warrant repeat viewings.