Two very different films are driving Polygon’s conversation around the decade’s best science-fiction movie quotes. The outlet’s latest roundup highlights Mickey 17 and 28 Years Later, pairing a cloning story set in the future with the return of a creative team more than two decades after its earlier film.
Mickey Barnes keeps coming back
Bong Joon Ho wrote and directed Mickey 17, released in 2025. The film presents a vision of the year 2050 in which workers known as expendables are cloned again after dying while completing jobs.
Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes as well as his various clones. That casting puts Pattinson across the different versions of the character at the centre of Bong’s science-fiction premise.
It is a direct, unsettling setup: death does not end an expendable’s employment. Instead, another copy is created.
Boyle and Garland revisit their saga
28 Years Later brought Danny Boyle and Alex Garland back to the series 23 years after the 2002 release of 28 Days Later.
That substantial gap separates the two projects while reconnecting the filmmakers behind the earlier movie. Alongside Bong’s clone-focused future, their return gives Polygon’s selection another distinct corner of modern science fiction.
Which belongs more firmly in the decade’s best sci-fi quote conversation: Mickey 17 or 28 Years Later?
