Between Sinners and Mickey 17, 2025 has already offered a hopeful look at what blockbusters could look like beyond the era of Marvel-style franchise filmmaking. Instead of relying on nostalgia or brand recognition, both of these films are big, idiosyncratic projects that speak to the interests and values of their directors. Like Sinners, Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi comedy Mickey 17 makes the most of a talented supporting cast (Toni Colette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo), embodying memorably original characters. Also like Sinners, it allows those characters to get horny; a rare quality these days.
Unfortunately though, Mickey 17 did not achieve a Sinners level of box office success when it came out this spring.
How Was Mickey 17 Received?
Mickey 17’s flop status may partly be down to Hollywood’s perennial struggle to market cross-genre movies. In this case that meant juggling the prestige of Bong Joon Ho’s recent Oscar win with a follow-up that does not, on the surface, have much in common with the tense real-world drama of Parasite.
Featuring a protagonist who is basically the opposite of an action hero, Mickey 17’s tone lands somewhere between Starship Troopers and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, starring Robert Pattinson in full gremlin mode. In other words, it’s an acquired taste. And with the film’s arrival on 4K this week, now is an obvious time to acquire it.
Why is Mickey 17 Important to See Now?
Some might call Mickey 17 overstuffed, but it just has a lot to say.
Warner Bros.
As Bong’s third English-language project after Snowpiercer and Okja, Mickey 17 returns to some of the director’s favorite recurring themes: anti-capitalist satire, dystopian settings, quirky creatures, and offbeat humor. Based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, it introduces a grim near-future setting where humans have developed a type of cloning technology known as reprinting. Banned on Earth due to ethical concerns, it lets people 3D print a cloned body and program it with the original person’s memories, so they can effectively die and be reborn again and again.
In theory this means that humankind has discovered immortality, but in practice it results in a grotesque new form of indentured servitude. Our hapless protagonist Mickey becomes one such “expendable” worker, volunteering for a long-distance space voyage where he gets all the dirtiest jobs, repeatedly dying and being reprinted for another day of toil. The film’s title, as you may already know, refers to the 17th reprinting of Mickey, a man who lacks the gumption or self-awareness to fight back against his punishing circumstances. (Mickey 18 shows up later on, gifting us with two Robert Pattinsons playing rival doppelgangers with satisfyingly different personalities.)
Despite the difference in tone, this scenario has a lot in common with the pitch-black class satire of Parasite. Conceived after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mickey 17 adds a new dimension to Bong’s longtime interest in anti-capitalist commentary, positioning Mickey as an essential worker who is rendered literally disposable by his callous employers.
With characteristically rich and thoughtful visual worldbuilding, Bong casts Mickey 17’s space voyage as a dystopia within a dystopia. Mickey is only here out of desperation, signing a nightmarish contract to escape a loan shark back on Earth. Adding insult to injury, he winds up on a ship that’s clearly controlled by a cult.
Led by failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his unpleasantly smug wife Ylfa (Toni Colette), Mickey finds himself onboard a colony mission staffed by true believers. With zero subtlety whatsoever, their shipboard culture is a microcosm of toxic capitalism, with the Marshalls living in luxury while the riffraff survive on disgusting rations and are forced to forego sex until they arrive at their destination. (Mickey and his girlfriend Nasha, played by a hilarious Naomi Ackie, flout this rule at every turn.)
The social satire of Mickey 17 may be over-the-top, but it’s potent.
Warner Bros.
There’s an obvious fascist undertone to Marshall’s leadership, beginning with his plan to repopulate their future settlement with “pure” human babies, and continuing as we dig further into the story’s secondary conceit: An alien invasion narrative where humans are the invaders, disrupting a race of giant sentient bugs living on their destination planet.
Tapping into Bong’s longtime passion for monster movies (The Host, Okja), Mickey 17’s alien “Creepers” are at once alarming and adorable. As a careless and unsympathetic colonizer, Marshall predictably wants to wipe them out. However Mickey has reason to believe that the Creepers are friendly, introducing a moral conflict that evolves alongside the film’s central storyline about cloning.
After a run-in with some Creepers where Mickey 17 is left for dead, the ship’s scientists reprint a new body without confirming the death of its predecessor. Soon Mickey 17 is caught in an unwanted feud with his more confident and cynical doppelganger Mickey 18 — a relationship that sparks some deeper commentary about Mickey’s identity as a legally disposable human being.
Leaning into the goofier side of political satire, it isn’t necessarily a surprise that Mickey 17 struggled at the box office. Its combination of blockbuster tropes, wacky performances, bleak political themes and gruesome alien gore is undeniably a lot to digest. But if you’ve enjoyed Bong Joon Ho’s previous work — or indeed Robert Pattinson’s ever-increasing roster of freakazoid roles — then it’s a must-watch.
What New Features And Upgrades Does the Mickey 17 4K Blu-ray Release Have?
The Blu-ray cover for Mickey 17.
Warner Bros.
Mickey 17 comes out on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on May 13, including three featurettes:
- “Behind the Lens: Bong Joon Jo’s Mickey 17,” which covers the film’s creative process with interviews from Bong Joon Ho, Edward Ashton and members of the cast.
- “Mickey 17: A World Reimagined,” exploring the practical side of building Mickey 17’s sci-fi setting.
- “The Faces of Niflheim,” which showcases the main characters, including more interviews with the cast and director.
