Summary

Bong Joon Ho’s film Mickey 17 brings back his unique vision and humor to worldwide theaters.

The movie follows a clone worker played by Robert Pattinson on an icy planet with an S-tier cast.

Bong incorporates improvisation into his films, emphasizing the importance of collaborating with actors to overcome language barriers.

Audiences have been champing at the bit to see how Bong Joon Ho would follow up his Oscar-sweeping masterpiece Parasite. After all these years, the time has finally come, and they won’t be disappointed. Playing with genre and tone much like his previous films Snowpiercer and Okja, Bong’s Mickey 17 returns his singular vision and sense of humor back to theaters worldwide. Along for the ride is an S-tier cast to share in this unique tale of clones, fascism, ice planets, and friendship.
The film follows Mickey, a disposable clone worker known as an “expendable,” played in yet another career-defining role by Robert Pattinson. Mickey performs ultra-dangerous tasks in a human colony on a far-off ice planet with the expectation of death. Every time he dies, a new body regenerates, and Mickey goes on to the next Sisyphean task. Soon, a mix-up exposes the natural order of things, forcing Mickey on an existential adventure with his friends through a brutal, unforgiving government. The film co-stars Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things) and Toni Collette (Juror #2).
Collider’s own Steve Weintraub was lucky enough to sit down with director Bong and his translator to talk about all things Mickey 17. In this interview, they discuss his famous, fastidious use of storyboards, overcoming the language barrier with an enormous cast of ultra-talented performers, and some details about his much anticipated animated deep-sea epic.
Bong Joon-ho Explains ‘Mickey 17’s Year-Long Delays

“It was tricky trying to edit.”

COLLIDER: I want to start with congratulations. I loved the movie. I thought Robert was so fantastic in it. One of the things about the film is that it’s taken a while for it to come out, and I know that there was a lot of work in the edit on this one. I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit about the challenge of editing this.
BONG: My usual process is storyboarding the film, shooting pretty much according to the storyboard, locking picture, and having a final output that’s not that different from what I had storyboarded. With Mickey 17, it was kind of the same process. The only difference is just how much VFX was involved, particularly towards the end of the film with all the creepers. There were a lot of sequences that were pretty much full VFX shots with animation, so it was tricky trying to edit the film with those VFX shots not complete and getting the nuance of the tempo all spot on. It involved a lot of work.
Did you end up actually differing from your storyboards on this? I know you work very specifically where you’re just shooting a specific shot in a sequence. I’m just curious if it ended up being exactly what you storyboarded or if it was different.
BONG: With Parasite and my other films, I obsessively prepare the storyboards. But at the same time, I want to break it and escape from what I had planned. So there’s always that contradiction. It was the same with Mickey 17. Of course, the final output is not mechanically exactly the same, but I would say more than 90% of the film is pretty much like what I had storyboarded.
Robert Pattinson Helped Bridge the Language Barrier

“He has such a unique and amazing linguistic sensibility.”

Image via Warner Bros.

What did you learn from this process that maybe you wish you knew at the beginning? What did you learn that you’re going to take with you if you make another English language film?
BONG: I had a co-writer or dialogue-polishing writer for those projects. Mostly I relied heavily on the actors in regards to the language of the film. With Mickey 17, it was Rob. I relied heavily on Rob. He has such a unique and amazing linguistic sensibility. Especially with Mickey 18, he improvised a lot of really fun dialogue, a lot of which was not really scripted.
It was another great lesson in realizing that you need to work with amazing actors to overcome, I guess, what you can call a “linguistic handicap” I have, where it’s not my native language. It’s working with very trusty actors and also a great translator like her. Actually, she was on the set of Mickey 17. She was always in between me and Rob Pattinson and me and Mark Ruffalo. She’s such a creative translator.
I agree. I want to emphasize how incredible Robert is in the movie.
Bong Joon-ho’s Animated Film Features “Very Unique CGI”

“It’s a really unique story about deep sea creatures that features very adorable creature protagonists.”

Image via Warner Bros.

I read that you are working on an animated movie. I don’t know if that’s true. Are you working on an animated movie? What can you tell people?
BONG: So I have been working on this animation film since 2019, and now we have more than 100 artists working on the film, and the pipeline is fully going. It’s a really unique story about deep sea creatures that features very adorable creature protagonists. We also have human characters. It’s a very unique CGI animated film, and it’s really going. It’s under works now. 2027, maybe.
You have a love of animals that are in your movies. What is it that you love? I love animals, and I love what you do in Mickey 17 and Okja. What is it about animals that you want to feature them so heavily?
BONG: I love animals. I have a puppy. But I think I’m really interested in how humans appear from the animals’ perspective—how pathetic and lacking and mean sometimes you must be from the animals’ perspective.
Mickey 17 is now playing in theaters.

Mickey 17

Release Date

March 25, 2025