After writer/director Bong Joo Ho won multiple Academy Awards for his last movie “Parasite” (including Best Original Screenplay, Best Directing, and Best Picture), it seems like he decided to cash in for his next movie. He spent a reported $120 million on “Mickey 17” – some reports say the movie’s release was postponed a few times so the visual effects could be completed. Instead of writing an original story like almost all his previous movies (except for “Snowpiercer”) he just adapted the script from a book.
“Mickey 17”, adapted from Ashtons Edwards science fiction novel “Mickey 7”, tell the story of Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) who is desperately trying to get away from a loan shark. So, he decides to leave earth by getting on a spaceship heading to a new planet known as “Niflheim”. However, there are thousands of other people in line to board the ship. To earn a spot on the ship he volunteers to be an “expendable”, despite a few people asking him if he read all the details of the position (which he hadn’t). If he had read the details, he would have learned that his whole body will be scanned and copied. That way, he can go on very dangerous missions or endure some deadly experiments – for some of his assignments the goal is for him to die. Once he dies, they reprint his body so he can go on another assignment the next day.
Other than repeatedly dying and repeatedly hearing the question “what’s it like to die” – which almost everyone he meets eventually asks him – things go well for Mickey at first. He meets and falls in love with Nasha (Naomi Ackie). However, once they reach the new planet things begin to go badly. First, he gets the attention of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Colette), the leaders of the spaceship, after a young and very pretty woman that Kenneth hoped would help populate the new planet (probably by having sex with him) is accidentally killed instead of Mickey. Second, the new planet is already populated with creatures they name “creepers” that look like giant roly-poly (I just learned that their correct name is “woodlouse” according to this link). One of Mickeys new assignments is to capture one of the creatures so they can figure out how exterminate them. Third, he gets captured by – and presumed eaten by – the “creepers” so the people on the ship create Mickey 18. After he isn’t eaten and the creepers eventually release him, he returns to the ship. That means there are now two Mickey on the ship. Having duplicate people was the reason that copying people was banned on Earth, and it follows that if they are discovered on the spaceship, they will both be instantly killed. Except that once Kenneth Marshall discovers the “multiples” – after threatening to kill them a couple times and branding the cheek of one of them so he can tell them apart – he has another idea for them.
There are a few very moments in this movie that made me laugh out loud, but there is also a lot of problems with the movie. One of them is the main character, Mickey. Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 are too different to be from the same source. Also, I don’t understand how he is able to attract 2 different women almost instantly (while Nasha is with Mickey 18, another woman brings Mickey 17 back to her room).
The shots where both Mickey are side by side aren’t convincing to me. There have been a lot of movies that have had two characters played by the same actor including Michael Keaton in “Multiplicity”, Lindsey Lohan in “The Parent Trap”, Tom Hardy in “Legend”, and (from what I understand) Robert DeNiro in the upcoming “Alto Knights”, but it still feels like an actor is playing two roles at different times and then they put the shots together with CGI. A scene where they’re trying to kill each other doesn’t work well because it’s obvious they’re avoiding shots with both of their faces most of the time, and there’s a ridiculous scene where they’re both in bed with Nasha (she calls one “mild” and the other “habanero”).
Another problem I have is the CGI in the movie. There was a TV series on HBO a few years ago called “Avenue 5” where a spaceship is supposed to travel through space for a few weeks (sort of like a cruise through space) but gets diverted and ends up stuck in space for 3 years. That TV series had visual effects that were seemed more realistic that this movie has (although I saw this movie on a big screen, and I watched that show on television).
The biggest problem I had with this movie is Kenneth Marshall. The writer/director seems to be trying to make the character an exaggerated version of our current president (although – according to reports – they finished filming the movie in 2022). I have a hard time with anyone trying to do a version of him – even when the movie has an equally exaggerated wife Ylfa – because the real person is sometimes even worse than the exaggeration. If that really was him commanding the ship, it would be even more outrageous than the movie is.
Overall, the movie has a good story with a few scenes that are very funny, but they’re overshadowed by the odd main character, the unimpressive CGI, and the character that is an exaggerated version of you know who.
Overall: 7 out of 10
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 