Mickey 17 is a Fun Concept that Loses Its Footing

Mickey 17

★ ★

Mickey 17 is a futuristic sci-fi film where Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) signs up for the Expendables Program, because his friend and business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) has gotten them both in trouble with the city mafia. A really big spaceship is about to take a large group of people to colonize an ice planet. The journey through space will take four years.

Mickey’s not even a moderate member of society, so it’s not likely he’ll get on the ship with the regular populus. But he’s in luck because no one signed up for the Expendables Program. He’s asked if he’s read the program’s fine print. He says he has.

Robert Pattinson on a death mission
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

Mickey hasn’t read the fine print. If he did, he’d know that he’s going to be purposefully put in certain death situations. Each time he dies, his memories are uploaded to a hard drive, literally encased in a masonry brick. His body will be printed out again using the bio-waste and other unsavory materials from space travel that can be repurposed to make a human body. As he’s printed, his memories are downloaded to his new brain.

Mickey has died several times.

On the space journey, between deaths, Mickey falls in love with Nasha (Naomi Ackie). She’s been with him through most of his iterations, up to his current one, which is 17.

Robert Pattinson as Mickey 17 and 18
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

Mickey is believed to have died on the ice planet so the ship scientists print out #18. When Mickey 17 returns to the ship, Mickey 18 decides he’s supposed to kill him.

And from here, the film breaks down and stops being fun. What starts to unfold is a satirical political commentary with over-the-top acting with a blatant, in-your-face, anti-capitalist message. The politician on the ship, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) is perhaps the dumbest, drollest person on the mission. He’s supposed to be leading the crew but lacks their respect. His wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette) seems to control his puppet strings and is just as insufferable as he is.

Steven Yuen as Timo
© 2025 Warner Bros. Pictures

This is the point, I realize. But it’s boring and it takes us away from the fun storyline of Mickey trying to figure out what to do with the newly printed version of himself who wants to kill him. There’s also a dynamic with Nasha that could have played out much better than it did. As presented, it’s a middle school drama.

The last quarter of the film pulls the story back in, and it sort of becomes interesting again. But the middle is kind of hard to overlook. I liked the beginning and end and could have done without most of the middle. Some might like where the film goes off the rails. It just didn’t quite work for me.