Yeah, I adored Mickey 17, but we have to talk about the one thing that I just needed more of from this film.
Mickey 17 has honestly felt like it was never going to happen, as announcement after announcement has been made about it for years. But finally, it’s released as part of the 2025 movie schedule, and I got to see it a few days early (in IMAX, to boot), and it was just so much fun.
I mean, any time Robert Pattinson does a funny, little voice, I think the movie is set up for success, but there are a lot of other factors that make this movie a great time. However, there is one thing it was missing that I needed so much more from—and we’ll get into that now.
The Film Itself Is Creative, And Robert Pattinson Was Great In The Lead Role
If you’re here, I’m assuming you’ve seen Mickey 17, and if not, the main plot is that it follows a man named Mickey Barnes who signs up to be expendable on a spaceship – i.e., someone who can be killed over and over because he’s cloned again and again. However, one time, he is believed to be dead, and they have already cloned a new version of him – Mickey 18- leading to him and Mickey 18 living at the same time.
Mickey 17 is a fun time. Sure, it has its moments of strangeness and scientific instances that don’t quite make sense, but the story is creative. I mean, you never expect something terrible from Boog Joon Ho. His movies have always been enjoyable.
Robert Pattinson is great for the role. I have to give him so many props that he feels like one of the few actors who leads a huge franchise (the Twilight movies) and has successfully reintegrated himself back into the Hollywood scene as a talented actor who isn’t typecasted at all. Every single one of his roles is super diverse, and honestly, I could see this becoming one of the best Robert Pattinson movies out there. He’s great.
Playing different versions of yourself is hard, but he pulls it off with ease, and you truly believe he is portraying two different personalities. They feel like opposites, and that’s hard to do when it’s the same actor. I have no notes on that. But there is one character I really wished I saw more of.
But I Needed A Lot More Unhinged Steven Yeun
I’m sorry, I needed to see Steven Yeun so much more in this film.
He plays Timo, a friend from Mickey’s childhood who is the reason Mickey gets into trouble on Earth in the first place. Mickey decides to head off to space with Timo to run from loan sharks. Timo is…kind of a jerk, for lack of a better, appropriate word.
He uses Mickey’s name for the loan sharks, which gets him in deep trouble. But even then, he treats Mickey terribly. At one point, he completely loses it and shows just how unhinged he really is when trapping Mickey and his loved ones in cages for the loan shark and everything else. Like, he’s just horrible.
And man, I wanted so much more.
You have to understand—I grew up loving Steven Yeun. I feel like such a proud supporter as someone who watched him on The Walking Dead (and his character Glenn and all those heartbreaking TWD deaths) and then saw him take on so many different roles. Minari, Beef (one of the best shows to binge on Netflix), Invincible—he’s just been all over the map.
But to see him in Mickey 17 felt like a jumpscare to my perception of him because he plays the entire opposite of practically every character he has ever played. Heck, even in Beef, where he played kind of a jerk, it wasn’t nearly as horrible as this, and I wanted to see it so much more because he played it so well.
I Would Have Loved To See Him More By The End Of The Film
There is one point where Timo (Yeun) is knocked out thanks to Mickey 18, but after that, we…really don’t see him that much. Honestly, from what I can recall, we don’t see him at all after that, only in the epilogue. I could be misremembering, but we certainly don’t see him much.
That annoys me. I know he wasn’t the main character, obviously, but he was marketed as a big name for the film (third in billing), and to see him get sidelined for the final act felt like a disservice to the character. You can have at least given him a sort of redemption, have him help the Mickeys in their quest to bring peace with the Creepers as a way of showing his thanks for not getting killed. But he’s just…left in the air until the end.
Don’t get me wrong. I am happy that we saw him as much as we did, but I just wish we could have seen more unhinged Yeun. Hopefully, because of this, we might get to see him take on another acting role like this in the future. That would be awesome.
If you haven’t seen Mickey 17, I’d suggest heading to the theater to enjoy it. And now I’m just going to wait impatiently for the next Bong Joon Ho movie – suppose I can watch some other great sci-fi in the meantime.