BEFORE: Well, we're all in shutdown/survival mode, it seems. I'm working tonight but I haven't worked in 5 days, and after tonight it will probably be another 5 days before I work again. Just waiting for my next paycheck from shifts I did two weeks ago to come in so I can pay my monthly bills for February. I'm also going to the comic-book shop today but I haven't been there in a month, and I scaled my pull list WAY back, so there's that. I'm really only stepping outside if I need to get food or there's a basketball game I need to work. Riding the storm out is fine, but there's still another two months of winter left, so it's going to be a while before things warm up, I guess - and there's another snowstorm they're tracking that could hit this weekend...is this the fun part? All of the news is horrible, all of it, I don't even want to turn on the TV some days, however these are exactly the headlines that we should NOT be turning a blind eye to, if you follow me. We're well on the way to living in a dictatorship unless somebody puts a stop to it.
Patsy Ferran carries over from "Living".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "High Life" Movie #4,818
THE PLOT: During a human expedition to colonize space, Mickey 17, a so-called "expendable" employee, is sent to explore an ice planet.
AFTER: Yes, this is the SECOND film where Robert Pattinson plays a space explorer on a long journey who really gets the short end of the stick and ends up learning just how terrible space travel can be. That feels kind of like a conscious choice, to play a very particular type of character in sci-fi movies, ones who are just covered in bad luck no matter what they do - here we are, ready to back to the moon again for the first time in like 50 years, and now these films come along and are ready to harsh my mellow. Sure, it's maybe not all going to be "Star Trek" peace and love and united cultures and no need for money in the future because everybody just has whatever they need (awfully convenient...), surely there must be a down side somewhere.
And this is from director Bong Joon Ho, who made films like "Snowpiercer" and "Parasite", also "Okja", this film kind of ends up being a combination of all of those things - it takes place on a vehicle headed to a very snowy planet, there are forms of class warfare on board, and then there are weird creatures on that planet, and at one point Mickey has to hide in his cabin, much like the poor family hid themselves inside the rich family's house in "Parasite". Hey, this maybe is like the ultimate Bong Joon Ho combo film!
The main hook here is that Mickey has signed on for this space expedition as their "expendable", a special job that requires him to die over and over again, being exposed to radiation or viruses or hungry alien creatures as a sort of test subject, so the upper class people on the spaceship can remain safe. If there's a terrible job to do that could kill someone, well, he gets to do it, and if he dies, they just restore him using a 3-D printer and a back-up of his brain. In the bowels of the ship there's a "recycling" furnace, just throw garbage or leftover food or dead bodies down there and it will burn up that material and turn it into new, usable material to make more Mickeys with. Or probably also make some form of flavorless, nutrition-less food for the second-class passengers. It's probably best not to think too much about how it all works.
This would seem, at first, to be a riff on the Tom Cruise film that was originally called "Edge of Tomorrow", but that title honestly seemed very vague and boring, so the posters were filled with the words "Live. Die. Repeat" and many people thought that was a better title for the film - so on cable right now it's airing under a title that's a combination of both, which is now the most confusing possible way to promote it. Whatever your movie's title starts as, just KEEP IT that way and don't ever change it. If it's a good movie, people will want to find it, and they can't do that if you change its name. Anyway, in that film Tom Cruise battled aliens unsuccessfully, over and over again, and each time he died he went through a time-loop and started over, with a bit more knowledge and skill to help him defeat the aliens. Eventually.
But really, this is more based on a thought experiment that is also based in science fiction, and I'm thinking about the transporters seen on "Star Trek", the ones that disassemble Federation officers into millions of tiny atoms, and then re-create them on the other side by putting those atoms back together again. It's impossible IRL, and I'm guessing this will also be impossible in the future - your body contains millions, billions of atoms that would need to be put back together in the same exact way they once were, and if they don't do that exactly right, you're not going to be YOU on the other end, or your large intestine's not going to line up with your small intestine, or some other body part's not going to be in the right place. OK, but let's assume for a second that your body could be broken down into atoms, or energy or whatever, and sent through a transporter device to another location and could be assembled again on the other side of a large distance. Great, that's all sorted out, why do we need spaceships, then? Just asking.
Now, imagine that instead of sending your atoms across that distance, it was easier just to break your body down, destroying it, but also re-creating it on the other side of that distance, just using the elements and materials on hand THERE - or turning energy into matter, whichever. Essentially you would step into a transport chamber on Earth, the device would disintegrate you but also take an inventory of every single molecule, every atom - then this information would be relayed to a similar chamber on, say, Mars, which would re-create you, atom by atom, using the elements and materials there on Mars, creating a version of you over there. Is that you, or just a replica of you? It would appear to an outsider that you were "transported" from Earth to Mars, but were you? Or were you destroyed on Earth and re-created on Mars? Now, does that Mars version of you also have your memories, or is it a blank slate, mentally? Is that person on Mars a clone or a replicant or something completely different, or is it still you?
I think that's kind of what we're dealing with here in "Mickey 17". Mickey has died 16 times in the service of this spacecraft, and each time he's been re-created using a 3-D printer and that brain back-up. My main NITPICK POINT here is that people keep asking him what it's like to die, only he wouldn't know, would he? If Mickey 10 died they would create a Mickey 11 using the brain back-up of #10, but the back-up would have been made a few days before his death, so the death part just wouldn't be in his memories, right? The X-Men tried something like this a few years ago, they had all of Earth's mutants living in harmony (sort of) away from humans, on their own island nation of Krakoa (the island itself was a living mutant, long story) and they found that a combination of the powers of five specific X-Men (Egg, Proteus, Elixir, Tempus and Hope Summers) could be used to resurrect any mutant who died. They similarly made back-ups of each mutant's memories so those could be implanted into the new body of any resurrected mutant, essentially the comic book writers had "solved" death, not that any comic book character ever really dies, because for important characters like Black Widow or Captain America, the writers always find a way to bring them back. Why? To sell more comic books, duh. In my time I think I saw each member of the Fantastic Four "die" at least once, probably twice. Then there's always a time loop or a black hole or a "that was really a Skrull masquerading as Human Torch" moment that brings them back.
What a story "crutch" for the X-Men writers, though, they could have any character sacrifice themselves in battle, and be back up and running with a new version of Gambit or Rogue or Cyclops within 48 hours. But again, I have questions, because if Cyclops died, and the Five Mutants resurrected him, is he still him, or is he something else? He has all of Cyclops' memories, sure, but only before the last "back-up". Also, how many times can you kill off Cyclops before the audiences realizes that in this scenario, death has no meaning if they can just be brought right back. Why should I care, then, if Cyclops dies? Also, what happened to his "soul" when his body died? Or is there no such thing as a "soul"? Are you saying we're all just crude matter with electrical neurons firing in our brains, creating the illusion that we are alive and have consciousness? Are "WE" our bodies, our brains or our souls, or a unique combination of all three things working together? What happens when we die, does our life energy just get dispelled into the universe and do we just stop feeling and thinking, lights out and that's it? Or are there going to be 17 versions of Cyclops' soul meeting up in comic-book heaven?
Anyway, back to "Mickey 17", what really is forbidden in this scenario is the concept of "multiples" - like, under no circumstances are you supposed to make more than one version of Mickey, or anyone, at a time. Because that would mean that there are two Mickey souls walking around in different bodies, and therefore maybe there's no soul at all, we're just bags of chemicals that think we are smart and alive, and that's too horrible to contemplate. Also, knowing how humans are, most people would probably want to have sex with their clones, and we can't allow that either. Like if you can't have sex with your twin, well then you can't have sex with your clone either, I think we just maybe like over-regulating this sort of thing, but I get it. Then again, having sex with your clone is just another form of masturbation, right, it's sex with somebody you love AND you probably know just how to please them, so I don't know, maybe just go for it and then let me know how it was... No, wait, don't tell me. No, wait again, please do and don't leave out any detail. No, wait...
Wouldn't you know it, Mickey 17 is left for dead on this alien world of Niflheim - they come and pick up his weapons, because you know, they have value, but Mickey 17 is at the bottom of a really deep ice crevasse, and it would be kind of dangerous to get him out, what's the point when they can just make a new Mickey? Funny story, Mickey is attacked by the Creeper aliens but they DON'T eat him, they bring him back to the surface, and he hitches a ride back to the spaceship on a transport truck, but that takes so long that by the time he gets back, there's Mickey 18, living in his cabin and sleeping in his bed. Uh, oh, what happens NOW? Multiples are strictly forbidden, but you know, Mickey's girlfriend has been thinking about the possibilities of a threesome. Should they? No, it feels so wrong, but if that's wrong then they kind of don't want to be right...
The guy in charge of the mission is Kenneth Marshall, half-failed politician and half-failed preacher, it seems, and he wants to colonize this new planet with only the FINEST genetic stock (sounds a bit like Hitler) and also turning a hefty profit (sounds a bit like Trump) all while Making Alienworlds Great Again (sounds a lot like both Hitler and Trump). But he can't do that if there are "impure" soulless multiples on his ship, and also the planet is full of these Creeper aliens that need to be eliminated/exterminated. Eventually somebody calls him on his own B.S. by pointing out that the Creepers ARE already the dominant species on this planet, and they're not the aliens, but the HUMANS are. Whoa, Niflheim is just really Greenland, if you think about it, and this movie could NOT BE more relevant and timely. We in America are former colonists, mutts, people who were kicked out of every other country on Earth, given a second chance, and now WE are invading Venezuela and threatening to take Greenland from Denmark? It's just not a good look.
The Creepers eventually realize that there are thousands of them, and they way outnumber the humans, so they surround the ship and demand justice for the baby Creeper that was killed, also they want the living one that the humans have to be returned. I won't say anything about how it all turns out, but all they want is a life for a life. If only the humans had a spare person kicking around that they didn't really need...
This one's really way far out there guys, but a lot of great and interesting ideas here, some we've seen before and some that we haven't. The director adapted this film from a novel, and claims that none of the characters are meant to be mirrors of active politicians, but come on. Or maybe we're all just taking what we know about Trump and applying that to the corrupt leader seen here, I don't know. Overall it drags on a bit too long, like maybe if they could have trimmed 20 minutes or so out from somewhere I'd give it a higher score. But it's still wild, man.
It also occurs to me that today's film is like a reversal of yesterday's film - "Living" was about a man who had to learn how to live, and he kept living until he died. "Mickey 17" is about a man who had to learn how how to die, and he kept dying so he could live. Just me?
Directed by Bong Joon Ho (director of "Okja" and "Parasite")
Also starring Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Good Time"), Steven Yeun (last seen in "Nope"), Michael Monroe, Cameron Britton (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Christian Patterson, Lloyd Hutchinson (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Samuel Blenkin, Ian Hanmore (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Tim Key (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Rose Shalloo (last seen in "Emma."), Angus Imrie (ditto), Bronwyn James (last seen in "The Dig"), Holliday Grainger (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Milo James (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Steve Park (ditto), Naomi Ackie (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Daniel Henshall (last seen in "Okja"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Poor Things"), Toni Collette (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Jude Mack, Anamaria Vartolomei, Ellen Robertson, Haydn Gwynne (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)), Edward Davis (last seen in "Radioactive"), and the voice of Anna Mouglalis,
RATING: 7 out of 10 cafeteria trays
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