Mickey 17 Isn’t About What You Think It Is

By all accounts, I should have been excited to watch Mickey 17 - and I was! I’m not much of a gamer, but it reminded me of all the Hardspace : Shipbreaker playthroughs and analyses I watched, even though the film is apparently actually based on a book. As a lifelong leftist and anti-cap girlie, seeing the themes of indentured servitude and the darkest version of capitalism explored on screen was a deeply appealing premise... So tell me why I was disappointed.

Or at least, I was disappointed at the start.

It’s funny, looking back. After about the first 30 minutes I was ready to quit the film, not because it wasn’t what I thought it was but rather because it was exactly what I thought it was. But luckily, the film quickly went off-script - and oh boy let me tell you, Mickey 17 isn't about what you think it is.

If you’re not familiar with the film yet, Mickey 17 tells the story of Mickey - all 18 versions of him. See, after some financial issues involving a slightly (okay, very) murderous loan shark, he decides to get off the planet ASAP on whatever ship he can find. Only issue is that he didn’t quite read what the “Expendable” job he was signing up for entailed, and so he ends up working as a guinea pig, exposed to new medications, radiation, and mysterious diseases. Not to worry, though! Each time he dies, he just gets cloned again, so it doesn’t matter... right?

Well, it doesn’t matter until one day Mickey 17 gets in a sticky situation and is presumed dead, only to make it back to the base and discover that Mickey 18 has already been printed out. Not only does this make Mickey 17 finally realise that it isn’t really him who’s getting printed each time, it’s also super illegal, so no matter how excited his girlfriend is to have two of him (and really, who wouldn’t be excited to have two Robert Pattinsons?), they’re now at risk of being permanently killed.

At this point, everything probably makes sense, right? It definitely fits the anti-capitalist themes I so love, plus there was some anti-demagogue messaging thrown in for good measure thanks to the commander, a religious nut and frighteningly accurate Trump impression played by Mark Ruffalo. It’s another one of director Bong Joon Ho’s classic class critiques, and, well, he’s critically acclaimed for a reason.

But... Despite my appreciation for the subject matter and the promise of Bong’s reputation, I found myself growing bored somehow. Nothing in Mickey 17 felt new - it was just a painfully obvious satire that asked for zero effort from the audience. It was inelegant, uninspired, dull… Until all of a sudden, the whole workers' rights theme seemed to get a bit lost in the mess of, well, whatever the hell happened in the rest of the movie. Literally, I tried to explain to a friend of mine what the movie was about and I couldn’t, because by the time the human-intelligence-level centipede thingies (and of course, the amazing sauces they could be made into) become an important plot point, things got way too messy to explain.

And you know what? I couldn’t ask for anything better.

You’re going to go into Mickey 17 expecting the same liberal messaging I was, but what you’re going to get is what I can only describe as the sci-fi equivalent of Mamma Mia. It's less rewatchable since shock and confusion are key to the experience, sure, and there's a bit more plot than Mamma Mia, but at the end of the day, it feels just as rickety as the ABBA-musical-turned-movie. There’s a distinct sense that in the writer’s room, they just kept saying “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and adding anything and everything mentioned to the fina script. The longer the movie went on, the more pointless everything felt, and I mean that in the best way possible.

These days, so much of the media we consume is trying to convince us of something, to deliver some grand message about society and the universe… But there comes a point where every script is more or less the same, and maybe even more importantly, it’s nice to enjoy a wild ride and not have to think too much sometimes. Do I think Mickey 17 intended to be fun and ridiculous? Maybe, maybe not. The humour at least has to be intentional. But regardless of Bong’s goal, he succeeded in creating a film that genuinely surprised and delighted me, so I'm not going to interrogate his creative process too much.

Mickey 17 is getting a bit of hate from cinephiles online, and a lot of it is valid criticism… If you go into the film expecting it to live up to the legacy of Bong's more serious works. So don’t. Go into the film thinking that it looks weird and funny and maybe a little bit overwrought. Ask yourself how Mamma Mia’s vibe would translate to sci-fi, realise you have no idea, and then enjoy finding out the answer for the next 2+ hours. I promise you won’t regret it - because Mickey 17 isn’t about what you think it is. It’s about so much less, and because of that, it’s about so much more.