“Mickey 17” (Warner Brothers) showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is a pure-play science fiction movie that, as with much great sci-fi, tells a profoundly resonant ethical and political story.
Alternative political realities, sometimes of great complexity, can be worked into fiction, packaged into books and subsequently enjoyed equally by both 10-year olds and curious adults. “The Machine Stops,” published by E.M. Forster in 1909, is considered to be a warning about technology becoming the ultimate controlling force over society. It was written a full century before the despicable terror of artificial intelligence. Ursula Le Guin is an extraordinarily prolific American sci-fi author whose work covered many themes that perhaps could be considered ethical, moral, alternative, progressive; in other words, political. And how about “1984”, written as sci-fi by George Orwell in 1949 and uncannily predicting the technology companies’ surveillance economy profit machine (“big brother”) of the current part of our century. Many Hollywood blockbuster franchises are considered to have political meanings (“Dune”, “Star Wars”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Avatar”). And then there are contemporary runaway streaming successes like “Game of Thrones” or even “Squid Game.”
“Mickey 17” is a full member of this worthy tradition. Unlike Bong Joon-ho’s previous blockbuster “Parasite” (the highest grossing South Korean film in history), it does not segue from thriller to fantasy/horror but remains firmly in the sci-fi/political genre throughout.
It is 2054. Mickey is a poor, uneducated man who falls foul of a loan shark. Warned that the loan shark could find him to extract what he is owed “anywhere on earth,” Mickey decides that the solution is therefore to take a space ship to a different planet. The catch is that there is a huge waiting list of people wanting to leave their earthly troubles behind and the only way he can get onboard is by signing up as an “expendable.” This means that in exchange for a place onboard he becomes a lab rat, the subject of grotesque experiments, killed in order to answer some scientific question or test a new medical formula. Once he is dead his body can be reprinted in a machine that looks like a CT scanner, and his memories re-uploaded using a chip embedded in a sort of external hard drive. Thus the “17” of the movie’s title is the 17th “printing” of the original Mickey. A new print cannot be made until the previous Mickey has died. If two of the same individual are printed then “multiples” have been created, which is a serious ethical violation. But, of course, eventually the inevitable happens and Mickey 18 is accidentally printed because the scientists in charge of the whole horror show think “17” is dead, killed by cockroach-like aliens (baptised “creepers”) on a frozen wasteland planet such as on “Star Trek.”
The Mickeys are played by Robert Pattinson whose delicate body seems well suited to the precarious nature of his expendable status. He also narrates the story, a storyboarding device used to explain many of he technological details, not always successfully. I wished at times we had been left to experience the film and work things out for ourselves.
Mark Ruffalo plays the maniacal despot in charge of the spaceship, and commander in chief upon its arrival at the new planet, Kenneth Marshall. His character is part Hugo Drax from the Bond film “Moonraker” (1979) and part Omar Baba, the airline owner from the series “Come fly with me” (2010). Michael Lonsdale, who played Drax, would have been perfect for the baddie in Mickey 17 (alas he died in 2020). Ruffalo tends to overplay the comic and underplay the sinister. While very funny, especially in earlier scenes, perhaps he is simply too nice to have been cast in this role.
The two most interesting characters for me were Mickey’s love interest, Nasha, played with incredible range by Naomi Ackie, and his drug dealing friend Timo, played by Steven Yeun. Timo is such a great character and Yeun’s performance so well developed that I would have dearly loved him to be given a much, much bigger part.
How would it be if your boyfriend kept getting killed and reprinted?
Nasha really, really loves Mickey. Her role onboard is as a kind of all-purpose security guard and she uses this position to put right his bullies, console him when he is in pain, attend to him when the scientists are spitefully ignoring him, joke with him about sex, and then to playfully deal with having two identical boyfriends when the time comes. She is both confident and vulnerable, moving with tremendous dexterity around these different faces of her character.
Another actor who can really act is Robert Pattinson. Just watch him as he simultaneously plays two versions of himself which are more than subtly different. The one shy, introverted, nervous, indecisive. The other forceful, direct, raunchy. It is exceptional acting, reminding me of Tom Hardy playing both the identical Kray twins in “Legend” (2015).
What of the politics? In a short essay there is only space to describe one or two mindbenders. First, it is immensely sad but quite predictable that our approach when going to a new planet will be to load the spaceship with off-road vehicles, armed to the teeth and shoot all aliens first, ask questions later, like some sort of facile computer game. That’s the near certainty with the likes of Kenneth Marshall setting the ethical standards for us. Second, the drug Timo is peddling is called “oxy,” surely a not-too-subtle link to Purdue Pharma and the opiate tragedy. But for me what has remained is the wordplay which developed in my mind as I was watching for the first time between “expendable” and “untouchable”, the latter being a pejorative name given to a so-called “lowest caste” person in India, often a member or the Dalits, who face discrimination and unprovoked violence. Or perhaps the memory which returned was of reading with horror about the poor, mostly people of colour, in the 20th century who were forcibly sterilised or experimented on in the name of “progress” or “science.”
Despite layer upon layer like this, “Mickey 17” isn’t too heavy, it’s worth a shot even if sci-fi isn’t normally your thing. It is not over long, maintains forward momentum very effectively, very well acted, at times very funny, and highly original.
Adam Poole
8 March 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
