‘Mickey 17’ blends sci-fi, comedy in fun adventure

Henry Sincic | Contributor 

“Mickey 17” had high expectations to live up to. Originally scheduled to come out in March of last year but delayed by writers’ strikes, the sci-fi/comedy seemed to have just about everything else going for it. Based on a modern and popular novel? Check. Starring Robert Pattinson, the most versatile dreamboat in the business? Check. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, the visionary mastermind behind best picture winner “Parasite”? Double, triple and quadruple check. It’s hard to imagine a more pedigreed collection of people to bring out a sci-fi romp for the ages. Luckily, even though it’s not the flawless masterpiece we all were hoping it would be, “Mickey 17” is still a lot of fun. 

The film follows Mickey Barnes, who works on a spaceship that is searching the distant reaches of space for another home for humanity. Mickey might otherwise be “just another face in a gray jumpsuit” if not for his status as an “expendable.” Basically, the top scientists in the world have come up with a method of recycling all manner of organic material into human beings, thereby allowing people to be cloned after their deaths. Since Mickey has volunteered to be one such person, he is forced to do the most dangerous tasks because, if he dies, he can simply be cloned again, memories intact. Hence, the “expendable” status.

The film has the proper amount of fun with this concept. Every time Mickey is brought back, his personality changes a little, so when Mickey is accidentally cloned before he dies, the interactions between the two “multiples” are pure comedy gold. Pattinson really gets to show off his range as an actor here, and it is glorious.

The film’s success largely hinges on its ability to blend comedy and sci-fi. Like much of the best sci-fi, it knows not to take itself too seriously. This is good because the concept of the film might’ve provided a more sensationalizing director the keys to turn their film into a preachy, dreary bore. 

This is not to say that there isn’t the proper conflict, or even commentary, provided in the movie. The main villain, an eccentric politician played by Mark Ruffalo, who is aboard the ship in a leadership capacity, plays the traditional capitalistic and colonizing mustache-twirler that we’ve seen in so many movies. In a way, it’s disappointing to see such a standard villain take the reins in a movie that is filled with so many fresh ideas, but Ruffalo adds enough of a comedic edge to his character’s antics that the movie manages to skate by. 

Maybe “Mickey 17” isn’t the “next Star Wars” that we built it up to be in our heads, pre-release. Maybe it isn’t an airtight masterpiece of social storytelling like “Parasite.” But “Mickey 17” does fall right in line with another of Bong Joon-ho’s most enjoyable films, “Snowpiercer.” Like that film, “Mickey 17” provides an enjoyable and atmospheric slice of working-class life in a speculative sci-fi world that feels at once distant, and yet, eminently relatable.

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