Mickey 17 (2025) review

Having no family and in debt to a loan shark on Earth, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) volunteers to go on an expedition to the planet Niflheim pioneered by (typically corrupt) politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and be an "expendable" where he's repeatedly killed off (in the name of science!) and then has his body "reprinted" (and memories restored) - while there, he falls in love with Nasha (Naomi Ackie), finds out there's a suave replica of himself (also played by Pattinson) and then has to save some peaceful armadillo-like creatures referred to as "Creepers" from Marshall.  The point about how it is both unethical and immoral to create clones of human beings and then send them to die is established early on, so the rest of this sci-fi movie is Bong back in Okja-style "broad comedy" mode, which is unfortunate because that's not an area he's proven to be remotely strong at.  To make matters worse, Pattinson's #17 is a dimwit with low self-esteem and not exactly the ideal lead character, and Ruffalo and his spouse Ylfa (Toni Collette) are so cartoonishly evil they could have been lifted out of an anime series.  I was personally rooting for the Creepers to infiltrate the base and consume the humans, but unfortunately that doesn't happen.