‘Mickey 17’ plot explained: why are there multiple Robert Pattinsons?

nme.com:

Parasite, director Bong Joon-ho has returned with a science-fiction comedy starring Robert Pattinson.Based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the film follows Mickey Barnes who joins a space mission as an ‘expendable’.

In this job, he’s given lethal assignments but everytime he dies, he’s ‘reprinted’ through cloning technology.Other members of the film’s cast include Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo and Holliday Grainger.This is Bong Joon-ho’s eighth film, following the likes of Okja, Snowpiercer, Mother, Parasite, and The Host.After a failed business venture leaves them on the run, Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) and his friend Timo (Yeun) sign up as crew on a space ship which is leaving Earth to colonise a planet called Nilfheim.

While Timo signs up to be a pilot, Mickey joins as an expendable; a person who is given deadly assignments because, every time they die, they are ‘printed’ into a new body using cloning technology which is banned on Earth.The colonisation of Nilfheim is made complicated by native lifeforms called ‘”creepers”.

The seventeenth iteration of Mickey, aka Mickey 17, tries to capture a creeper for analysis but falls into a fissure in the ice.