I am not usually a fan of movies that take place in a dystopian future, particularly one that’s only thirty years away. Our current political leadership may get us there much sooner, but I’m not interested in watching that, either.
However, because I liked writer/director Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 movie, “Parasite,” which won the Best Picture Oscar (I reviewed it here), I decided to give his new one, “Mickey 17,” a chance.
Robert Pattinson plays the title character, who had to leave Earth because a violent loan shark was after him and his partner after they lost a lot of borrowed money with their failed macaron business, which they’d been told would be bigger than hamburgers. Fortunately, there was a mission leaving our planet soon, headed for a new world for humans to colonize. Unfortunately, Mickey had no chance of being among the privileged masses allowed onboard, unless he signed up as an “expendable,” essentially a human guinea pig who will be put in all sorts of dangerous situations — and if he dies, they just use a 3-D printer to replicate him, complete with his memories, etc.
The first part of the movie shows us Mickey being subjected to all sorts of tests. Each time he dies, they throw that body into an incinerator and start over again with a new Mickey. By the time he’s up to iteration seventeen, the whole concept has gotten old — including innumerable other characters asking him what it feels like to die — yet there’s nothing he can do to change his expendable status.
But then, while Mickey 17 is working on the new planet’s frozen surface, he falls into a hole and is presumed dead. That prompts his bosses to print out Mickey 18, who comes as a big surprise when Mickey 17 gets out of the hole and finds this new clone in his tiny living space.
At this point, I’m going to try to limit how much more I tell you about the plot, although I do have to highlight Mark Ruffalo as Kenneth Marshall, a hyper-rich, highly arrogant ex-politician who wears lots of facial makeup and talks like a cult leader. You know, the kind of fictional character who has no equivalent in our modern-day world. Marshall is rarely seen without his wife, played by Toni Collette, who spends most of her time telling him how great his ideas are while standing or sitting so close to him they could share the same skin.
Pattinson plays Mickey as a likable loser, resigned to his fate, even if it means coming out of the 3D printer and flopping on the floor because someone forgot to put the gurney there, just as copies fell out of your old laser printer when you forgot to attach the paper tray. That’s just one example of Pattinson’s physical humor prowess on display in the movie.
The supporting cast also includes Naomi Ackie as Mickey’s girlfriend, who’s kind of excited to think of going to bed with two Mickeys, and Steven Yeun as Mickey’s former partner on Earth, who also had to escape from the loan shark. There are also some indigenous creatures on the planet which Marshall refers to as “aliens,” only to be corrected by Mickey: “This is their world. We’re the aliens.”
The replicated human plot has been central to many movies over the years, with results of varying quality. Among the best were Sam Rockwell in “Moon,” Michael Keaton in “Multiplicity,” Daryl Hannah in “Blade Runner,” and everyone but Kevin McCarthy in “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.” The good news about “Mickey 17” is that Joon-ho avoids many of the tropes common in the earlier films on his way to creating a dystopian future movie that left me with a smile on my face.
I’m giving “Mickey 17” an 8.5 out of 10. By the way, it’s worth seeing on a big screen for the outdoor scenes on the new planet.