Robert Pattinson is Ready to be Reborn in Official “Mickey 17” From Bong Joon Ho
The official trailer for Oscar-winner Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 has landed, revealing the Parasite auteur’s sci-fi mind-bender with Robert Pattinson playing a young man so desperate for a change he’s willing to die—again and again—for a chance at a new kind of life. Ain’t that a kick in the head? The trailer is set to Sinatra’s version of the iconic tune, and the match makes perfect sense as we watch Mickey get, metaphorically speaking, kicked in the head over and over again.
Mickey 17, adapted by Bong from Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey 7,” finds Pattinson’s Mickey signing a very unusual contract with a very demanding employer to get himself off Earth. He applies to be expendable, someone who works a horrifically dangerous space colonization job in which he will most certainly die, at which point a new version of his body will be printed—retaining most of the memories from the previous Mickey—and science will gain invaluable insight into the limits of what a human body, and its clone, can withstand and recall, while the dangerous work that killed him in the first place can continue apace.
The trailer reveals several iterations of Pattinson’s Mickey meeting his ultimate fate. In one charmingly dark sequence, they’re disposing of a Mickey, trundled in a body bag, in the furnace only to discover he’s not completely dead. “It’s fine,” Mickey says from inside the body bag, and they shrug and shove him into the fire. Dark. Funny. Decidedly perfect material for the man who gave the world Parasite.
Problems arise when two Mickeys find themselves alive simultaneously, something that’s a big no-no to the corporation that runs this entire employee replacement scheme. “In the case of multiples, we exterminate every individual,” says Mark Ruffalo’s Hieronymous Marshall, and we see our two Mickeys at war with one another and with the powers that be that want to snuff them both out.
The cast is wonderful; Toni Collette, Naomi Ackie, and Steven Yeun join Pattinson and Ruffalo in an irreverent romp that takes a gimlet-eyed look at human cloning, space colonization, and the nature of identity.
Warner Bros. will release Mickey 17 in South Korea on January 28, 2025, during the Lunar New Year Holiday. This is three days earlier than its global release on January 31. Bong is one of South Korea’s most beloved filmmakers, making South Korea a fitting choice for its world premiere location.
Check out the official trailer here.
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Featured image: Robert Pattinson stars in Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
