‘Mickey 17’ plot explained: why are there multiple Robert Pattinsons?
Six years after the Oscar-winning Parasite, director Bong Joon-ho has returned with a science-fiction comedy starring Robert Pattinson.
Based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the film follows Mickey Barnes who joins a space mission as an ‘expendable’. In this job, he’s given lethal assignments but everytime he dies, he’s ‘reprinted’ through cloning technology.
Other members of the film’s cast include Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo and Holliday Grainger.
This is Bong Joon-ho’s eighth film, following the likes of Okja, Snowpiercer, Mother, Parasite, and The Host.
What is Mickey 17 about?
After a failed business venture leaves them on the run, Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Yeun) sign up as crew on a space ship which is leaving Earth to colonise a planet called Nilfheim. While Timo signs up to be a pilot, Mickey joins as an expendable; a person who is given deadly assignments because, every time they die, they are ‘printed’ into a new body using cloning technology which is banned on Earth.
The colonisation of Nilfheim is made complicated by native lifeforms called ‘”creepers”. The seventeenth iteration of Mickey, aka Mickey 17, tries to capture a creeper for analysis but falls into a fissure in the ice. Timo sees Mickey 17 being swarmed by creepers from afar and reports him dead, but he’s actually still alive.
After the creepers push him out of the fissure, Mickey 17 returns to the ship only to find he has been replaced by Mickey 18. At Nilfheim, the existence of multiple clones at once is strictly forbidden, as politician Kenneth Marshall (Ruffalo), who runs the colony, is only able to use the cloning technology under the rule that if multiples occur, all clones will be killed immediately.
This tension becomes the driving force behind the film, as both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 fight for survival against each other and the rules at large.
Could a sequel happen?
There is source material for a potential sequel. Edward Ashton’s original book, Mickey 7, received a follow-up in 2023 titled Antimatter Blues, which picks up two years after the events of the original novel.
Any potential film adaptation of Antimatter Blues might be handled by another director though. Speaking to Gamesradar, director Bong Joon-ho said that while he was interested in doing a sequel, he has other ideas he wants to tackle first.
“When I was having a Zoom talk with Ed [Ashton], and he was telling me about it, and you know, he’s such a great, fascinating writer, I would love to take on the challenge but to be honest, I have a plethora of new, weird ideas that I want to tackle, so I would like to move on to those rather than a sequel,” Bong said.
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Adam Starkey
NME
