(Largely Spoiler Free) One of the ongoing debates between my wife and I is whether the transporters in Star Trek are genuinely transporting a person up to the Enterprise or just killing the original and making a cheap copy. While I think that’s a debate we’ll still be wrangling over when we’re 70, a recent Robert Pattinson film tackles the same problem with blood-drenched, hilarious results.
Mickey 17, written and directed by South Korea’s Bong Joon Ho, follows the misadventures of Mickey Barnes as he joins a quasi-religious terraforming colony at the out edges of space. Mickey has the thankless role of ‘Expendable,’ meaning every time he dies, he is printed out with a new body and sent back into the most dangerous, disgusting or outright suicidal jobs that space travel has to offer. Unfortunately for the 17th interaction of the colony’s favourite punching bag, after a particularly gruelling mission where he was written of dead, he arrives back at the colony to find his replacement has already been printed out. Awkward.
There’s some great performances in this film, with Pattinson in particular showing off some great comedy chops – it says a lot that he can play identical clones and yet it’s obvious in every word and mannerism which iteration is which. Toni Collette gives a stand-out performance as the self-absorbed matriarch of the ship, however the most outrageously fun scenes were with Mark Ruffalo as the colony’s cult leader/president-for-life Kenneth Marshall. Ruffalo was having a ball as the egocentric space villain, and does a great job playing off Pattinson’s beaten-down, world-weary pathos.
In terms of writing, the film is… a little weird. There’s a lot of thoughtful world-building, and the film takes its time to develop both the weird human printing technology and Mickey Barnes’s string of self-inflicted failures. The first act of the film was fantastic, switching effortlessly between the awe-inspiring vistas of space travel and the incredibly messy ways that Mickey dies while doing it. Act Two ups the ante, adding a new Mickey into the mix with some fun and well-paced scenes as they try and hide their secret.
Act Three is batshit crazy. It’s as if the writing room did a shitload of drugs, came up with four or five of the most insane, over the top cliffhangers possible, then said “F**k it, let’s do them all at once.” The politics of the film are very on the nose and are sure to turn off at last half of their US audience, but if ideology can be put aside, the whole thing is a very wild ride.
This film is probably not for everyone, but if you’re looking for some gory fun, then definitely check Micky 17 out! Loved it? Hated it? Please let me know in the comments below!
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