Another pitch-black sci-fi satire from the guy who made Snowpiercer? With Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo in the cast? Hell yeah, I’m in. What have we got?
The premise for Mickey 17 is centered around a new cloning technology that can 3D-print a near-perfect copy of someone — memories, personality, and all — in roughly 20 hours. Long story short, humanity realized the legal and ethical ramifications pretty much immediately, and cloning was banned worldwide. Which left a glaring loophole: Cloning is still legal in space.
Enter Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician who somehow maintains a zealous cult of personality even after losing his last two elections. Marshall gets the bright idea of launching an expedition to the ice planet Niflheim, where he and his lunatic disciples can escape the broken planet Earth and build their own colony. In the process, Marshall makes use of the cloning program to provide slave labor and scientific test subjects.
However, this cloning program operates under tightly controlled parameters. This means that only one person can be selected to get repeatedly cloned. Far more importantly, multiples are strictly forbidden. There can’t be two or more clones of the same person running around at the same time, or all copies are exterminated and the cloning program is scrubbed entirely.
That may sound extreme, but it makes sense in context. It’s a long story, trust me.
Anyway, the lucky expendable is Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a put-upon loser on the run from a loan shark. Out of clueless desperation, he signs up to serve as a slave laborer and scientific guinea pig on condition that he comes back as a clone each time he dies. The initial landing on Niflheim proved especially deadly, burning through many clones in the process of developing vaccines for the native viruses in the planet’s atmosphere.
Speaking of the planet’s native life, we’re quickly introduced to the creepers, these weird tardigrade-looking subterranean critters native to Niflheim. Naturally, Marshall immediately declares them to be an existential threat with no idea what he’s talking about. So it is that when the 17th clone of Mickey gets lost in a whole colony of critters, he’s written off for dead.
But no, Mickey 17 somehow survives and makes his way back to home base. Only to find that Mickey 18 (Pattinson again) had been printed after 17 was written off for dead. Yes, we have multiples. What’s worse, while Mickey 17 is kind of a spineless nitwit, Mickey 18 turns out to be a reckless sociopath. Hilarity ensues.
What we’ve got here is very much a sci-fi satire in the Terry Gilliam mold. The protagonist is a lovable idiot. The antagonist is so over-the-top obsessed with himself that the MAGA comparisons are unavoidable. The antagonist’s wife (played by Toni Collette) has this strange obsession with sauce. There’s a guy walking around in a pigeon costume for some unspecified reason. The characters are all heightened self-absorbed dolts well in keeping with the style of Brazil or Zero Theorem.
It’s a movie in which the political figures and their enablers are all small-minded brutes with no interests beyond their own, incapable of accomplishing anything that can’t be done with brute force alone. Exactly the kind of political satire we need right now. It’s an intelligent movie about rock-stupid characters, which works nicely as a commentary on authoritarianism and colonialism. In turn, these themes nicely mesh with the cloning angle to examine individuality, mortality, and the worth of a human life. I might further add that the cloning/mad science angle is just gruesome enough to get the point across without going anywhere near “body horror” territory or “The Substance” extremes.
It’s great fun watching Robert Pattinson act against himself and die repeatedly. I loved watching Ruffalo and Collette chew the scenery. Unfortunately, the plot is so terribly paced that one or two big climactic twists border on deus ex machina. Not to mention a translator that conveniently pops up so the creepers can provide some necessary exposition.
Speaking of strangely convenient plot devices, it seems like half the supporting cast has no development beyond what’s strictly necessary for the plot. Take Steven Yeung, for instance. He plays Timo, an old friend to Mickey who also boarded the colony ship to get away from the same loan shark. Except Timo is somehow able to get a job as a pilot, and not even Mickey himself can ever come up with an explanation for how that makes sense. Timo only ever shows up when Mickey is out of other options, his loyalty switches on a dime to serve the needs of the plot, and Mickey himself calls attention to how Timo is lucky to a degree that can only be described as lifelong divine intervention.
Then we’ve got Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), a beautiful security guard held up by Marshall as a genetic paragon fit for breeding the next generation of humanity on Niflheim. Nothing is ever done with this outside of one scene. Kai is then established as a potential secondary love interest for Mickey (we’ll get to the primary one in a minute), and nothing is done with this. It’s like Kai is introduced, then the filmmakers visibly grasp for anything they can possibly do with her, until the filmmakers throw up their hands and sideline her until a quick acknowledgment in the denouement.
But then there’s Nasha Barridge, another security agent, played by Naomi Ackie. Nasha is the primary love interest, someone who pretty much immediately fell in love with Mickey and proves to be the most steadfast ally to both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 all throughout the runtime. On the upside, Ackie is more than charismatic to hold her own and she plays Nasha as a bona fide powerhouse. I must also give due props to a female lead who takes proactive and impactful measures in the third act independent of the male lead.
On the downside, I’m at a loss for why such a gorgeous uber-competent hardass would fall instantly and ardently in love with poor pathetic Mickey. (Again, Mickey himself explicitly points out that this makes no sense.) Moreover, if Nasha is faithfully partnered with each and every iteration of Mickey, and if each iteration of Mickey is markedly different (as clearly evidenced by 17 and 18), that raises a whole bunch of fascinating questions that the movie never bothers to ask.
Ultimately, Mickey 17 is a film that lives and dies on its own bizarre terms. For all of my complaints about the supporting cast and the plot, most of those drawbacks fail to register because of the snooker-loopy tone and the heightened characters. Incidentally, both also serve to make the film comical and fun to sit through without distracting from the headier concepts and satire.
It’s enjoyable to sit through, and pickings are slim in the multiplexes right now. I’d suggest giving it a shot.