Robert Pattinson’s New Sci-Fi Sounds A Lot Like This 6-Year-Old Netflix Series

The synopsis for Robert Pattinson’s highly anticipated sci-fi movie Mickey 17 bears resemblance to a certain Netflix series. Following the success of The Twilight Saga movies, Robert Pattinson decided to eschew mainstream film in favor of indie projects. This quest was a fruitful one too, yielding two collaborations with David Cronenberg and he earned praise for his performances in movies like Good Time and The Lost City of Z. Pattinson is now giving blockbusters another chance, and has been on a run of hits like Tenet and The Batman.

The next big Robert Pattinson movie is Mickey 17 from director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite). Based on the novel Mickey7, the story follows Pattinson’s titular Mickey, who is an “expendable” clone sent to colonize a distant planet. The movie’s central gimmick is that each time Pattinson’s Mickey dies, he gets cloned with his memories intact. The film sounds like an intriguing blend of sci-fi adventure and existential drama, and the pairing of Pattinson and Bong promises great things.

Mickey 17 Has Clear Similarities To Altered Carbon

Robert Pattinson’s sci-fi movie and Netflix’s cyberpunk show share a similar concept

In 2018, Netflix launched its cyberpunk series Altered Carbon to great fanfare. Based on the Richard K. Morgan novel of the same name, the show followed Joel Kinnaman’s investigator in the far future. The premise behind Altered Carbon involved people being able to transfer their memories into different bodies, via special devices. In theory, this made people immortal, since their consciousness could be transferred into a new “sleeve” at any time.

This became particularly evident in Altered Carbon season 2, when Anthony Mackie replaced Kinnaman as Kovacs. Sadly, the series was canceled by Netflix after the second season, so viewers didn’t get to see who would play Kovacs in season three and beyond. On a surface level at least, it’s easy to see the similarities between Mickey 17 and Altered Carbon.

Both involve characters whose consciousness and memories are transferred into new bodies, even though in Mickey 17’s case, it’s more or less an identical shell. The Robert Pattinson sci-fi movie and Netflix’s show both tackle questions that arise from becoming effectively immortal, and the resulting identity crisis that would follow when moving from one vessel to the next.

Mickey 17 Will Be Very Different To Altered Carbon (Because Of The Book)

Mickey7 and Altered Carbon take different approaches to the central premise

None of this should imply Mickey 17 is in any way a ripoff of Altered Carbon, or even took inspiration from it. After all, the idea of consciousness transfer has been seen in everything from the Mick Jagger action movie Freejack to the obscure Kyle MacLachlan sci-fi thriller X-Change. Indeed, Mickey 17 already looks to be tonally opposite to the anime-influenced Altered Carbon. The latter is more of an action show, but the Pattinson film will largely feature the actor on his own on a distant world.

Both projects are exploring the idea of body transfer from very different angles. It’s hard to say what tone Director Bong will take with Mickey 17, though given the rich streak of humor that runs through even his darker work like Snowpiercer, it will likely lack the austere edge of something like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie also won’t be a total one-man show (or at least multiple versions of the same-man show), with Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette also being part of the cast.