Mickey 17 (2025)

Bong Joon-ho Between Two Worlds

Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, Mickey 17, is bound to be received differently by critics and audiences depending on what they expect from the director and the film itself. In this sense, the film has already divided its viewers.

Some directors enjoy surprising their audiences with their choices—like Yorgos Lanthimos, whom we recently sent off to Hollywood, and before him, Iñárritu, Verhoeven, and, among the earliest examples, Hitchcock. While their motivations may vary, from commercial concerns to studio pressure and the desire to reach a larger audience, this transition often results in films that struggle to maintain their artistic integrity, becoming less layered and more “easily digestible.” The inevitable shift is from original, experimental, challenging, and thematically bold independent films to big-budget, box office-driven productions with narratives that appeal to the mainstream. (Of course, that’s a topic for another discussion, so let’s leave the details for later.)

With Bong Joon-ho, however, the surprise is of a different nature—because he hasn’t exactly transferred anywhere; rather, he moves back and forth between South Korea and the United States.

His recurring themes—class disparity, critiques of capitalism, and human nature—continue to appear in all his films, though sometimes with diminished intensity. His visual language, use of the camera, scene composition, framing, and color palettes remain strong, even as they vary from film to film. However, there are some clear distinctions:

His Korean films feature more layered and detailed characters. The distinction between hero and villain is often blurred, with most characters occupying a moral gray area—each one potentially right or wrong in their own way. In contrast, his English-language films lean towards more archetypal characters (e.g., Kenneth Marshall – Mark Ruffalo). Similarly, while his Korean films address issues specific to South Korea—corrupt police, family bonds, class divisions—his English films offer a broader critique of capitalism and dystopia. Korean films tend to feature natural locations and everyday life (basements, old neighborhoods in South Korea, realistic family dynamics, as seen in Parasite and others), whereas his English films have bigger productions with extensive CGI use, as seen in the train of Snowpiercer, the creatures in Okja, and now Mickey 17.

Speaking of creatures, Bong Joon-ho has a recurring and significant motif in his films: the exploitation of animals (or similar beings) by powerful and wealthy figures who uphold the capitalist order. In Mickey 17, this theme remains prominent. Exploitation is no longer limited to the lower class—it now extends to nature and animals as well. While Okja depicted pigs bred and slaughtered for meat, Mickey 17 features space creatures hunted for their tails. These creatures, however, are not just passive victims of exploitation; their interactions with humans highlight the fragile balance between nature and humanity.

Is Mickey 17 a film deep enough for extensive analysis? That depends. Looking at the film itself, it is adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey 7 and is set in the year 2054, following humanity’s attempt to colonize a new planet. The protagonist, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), is an “Expendable,” a worker assigned to dangerous tasks who is cloned upon death. The film explores the ethical and existential dilemmas that arise when Mickey survives a mission, leading to the simultaneous existence of two clones—Mickey 17 and Mickey 18.

The film encapsulates all the characteristics we summarized earlier about Bong Joon-ho’s English-language films. It ultimately restricts the space it allows for the audience, skims the surface of contemporary issues with its nods to AI, Trump, and Musk, prioritizes audience catharsis, and, in doing so, takes the easy route—making itself an applause-worthy film. From this perspective, its decision to premiere in commercial cinemas in the UK rather than competing at Berlinale makes perfect sense.

In summary, Parasite remains our personal favorite as a deep class allegory. But as Bong Joon-ho’s stance on South Korea’s Westernization—something he critiques in his own films—becomes increasingly ambiguous, he leaves cinephile audiences facing the uncomfortable realization that such a talented director may be transforming into exactly what he once criticized.

Nil Birinci