HUMAN "RE-PRINTING" --- Mickey17 is about a person who’s in the predicament of constantly dying

This story is from MovieMaker’s Winter 2025 issue, on newsstands now with additional images.

Death, Rebirth, Repeat: Bong Joon Ho and Robert Pattinson Start Fresh with Mickey 17

By Joshua Encinias

Updated: February 6, 2025

 

 "Mickey 17, director Bong Joon Ho’s follow-up to the triumph of his 2019 film Parasite, is the story of a man named Mickey Barnes — played by Pattinson — selected to perform unpleasant tasks on the alien planet of Niflheim. He dies in a series of mishaps, and is brought back again and again through a process called “reprinting.” 

Pattinson says constant accidents came naturally. 

“I was quite comfortable with stunts in Mickey 17 because I could look bad while falling over,” he explains. “For some reason, that’s the one benefit of being quite mal-coordinated. Somehow I don’t really hurt myself that much from just falling. … I think falling down is my safe space.”

 ...So take Pattinson’s claim of clumsiness with a grain of salt, and appreciation for his dry wit. But it’s also true that making movies almost always involves things going wrong, then getting better.

And when Bong Joon Ho is involved, they often turn out great.

The South Korean director immediately related to Mickey7, the bestselling Edward Ashton novel upon which Mickey 17 is based.

(L-R) Anamaria Vartolomei, Robert Pattinson and director Bong Joon Ho on the set of Mickey 17, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Warner Bros.

Parasite arrived in 2019, a year when the film industry was thriving, and suggested limitless possibilities for Bong and cinema in general: 

• A thriller with elements of comedy, sci-fi, and horror, it also offered a provocative, complex commentary on class. 
• It not only earned more than $260 million worldwide, but earned about a fifth of that take in the United States, known for audiences averse to subtitles. 
• And it earned Oscars for Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. 
• It was a movie that could do it all.

In some ways, one might expect Mickey 17 to be even more successful. Though Bong urged audiences in one of his Parasite acceptance speeches to “overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” he has made Mickey 17 more accessible to American moviegoers by making it in English, and has cast one of the world’s biggest movie stars in the lead role.

 > The industry is ready for a rebirth. Or maybe several. 

But however Mickey 17 fares, Pattinson loved the process of making it. Even the falls.

“Bong made it seem really simple and fun,” he says. “It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever gone on because I was literally just doing stuff to make him laugh most of the time. I just acted like a jester, trusting that Bong’s steering the ship in the right direction.”

Robert Pattinson on the Expendability of Mickey

Robert Pattinsons in Mickey 17. Warner Bros.

Nothing in Mickey 17 is blatant — Bong’s films thrill in part because they so skillfully comingle genre, philosophy and charm. But you could read the film as a protest against the cheapening of life, work and art.

Human Printing

Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17. Warner Bros.

. . .But Mickey 17 isn’t just about respect for human life.

In Ashton’s novel, Niflheim is inhabited by grotesque insects called Creepers that look something like centipedes. And some characters in Mickey 17 also see them as repulsive.