Naomi Ackie gets to be weird in
Mickey 17. Onscreen, that’s rare for a Black woman. And Ackie knows that the ability to star in a sci-fi blockbuster, directed by acclaimed auteur
Bong Joon Ho (
Parasite), opposite
Robert Pattinson, as an “unhinged in the best of ways” character is an opportunity that, while deserved, doesn’t come often in Hollywood – especially for actors who look like her. As Nasha, the love interest to Pattinson’s aloof Mickey, she plays a security agent who is as protective as she is unfiltered and, as she put it, “unhinged.” Nasha is wild, extremely weird, and an enforcer in a futuristic universe where civilian space travel to another planet sets it apart from our current reality, but a psychotic tyrannical politician with a god complex (
Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall) makes it feel eerily familiar. Adapted from Ashton Edward’s 2022 science-fiction novel, Bong’s quirky and ferociously entertaining
Mickey 17 tells the story of an out-of-luck underachiever, Mickey Barnes (Pattinson), who accidentally volunteers to travel to a new planet to act as a guinea pig on a spaceship, meaning that he dies repeatedly, and each time he does, his body is regenerated (when the movie opens, he’s gone through the process, you guessed it, 17 times) through a 3D printer — memories and all — to do it all over again.