“Well, it’s nice knowing you. Have a nice death. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Justin’s rating: This review was written by Justin 4, and when he died of embarrassment, it was finished by Justin 5

Justin’s review: I really like seeing Robert Patterson branching out to a variety of interesting roles to prove that he’s not just “The Twilight Guy.” I think he’s a pretty solid actor and was impressed with his turn as the Caped Crusader in The Batman. He’s also gotten some accolades for The Lighthouse and took a swing at a quirky scifi concept film in Mickey 17. The latter didn’t really work out for him or anybody, but it was odd enough I did want to see it.

Patterson is the titular Mickey, a poor dolt who’s so desperate to get off Earth that he signs up to become an “Expendable” for a colony to a Hoth-like frozen world. It’s not a good job, nor is it something anyone else in their right mind would choose, but it takes him in an interesting career direction.

Basically, Expendables get the absolute worst and most dangerous jobs where their chance of survival is low. But that’s OK, because each time they die, their memories are uploaded to the next 3D-printed clone, and they get another task.

Mickey isn’t very bright at all, and Patterson plays him with a dim-witted inner stutter as he finds himself bewildered at becoming the butt monkey of the entire colony. He’s swept up into a callous bureaucracy where only a single security guard named Nasha (Naomi Ackie) seems to care about him.

Life after life, death after death, Mickey endures the scut work of the new colony… until one day, Mickey 17 doesn’t die when they assume he did, and now there’s a Mickey 18 and 17 running around. This comes about the time that the colony discovers that there are giant Creeper aliens on the world happy to eat the newly transplanted humans. Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 are very different people — the latter is more aggressive and ruthless — but they’re trying to share the same life. It’s not bound for a great end.

Mickey 17 lays on the corporate, political, and even religious satire rather thick, looking at the extreme view of every company that views people as expendables there to be used up. There’s a bit of wonky cheerfulness throughout this film to offset what is actually a deeply horrible story, and the fact that Mickey doesn’t seem to mind dying too much helps keep this from becoming uncomfortable.

What’s surprising is that there’s a lot of thought given to the space colony — more than you’d anticipate for a silly premise. You might take a deeper look at this when you realize that it was made by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, a guy who’s already defied a lot of expectations. Through this brutal abuse of cloning and its implications, Mickey 17 slyly digs around at what makes us human in the first place.

I mean, hey, if Star Trek’s transporter effectively cloned and killed you every time, this is an examination long in the coming for the genre. Of course, 2009’s Moon took a poke at it, so if that fascinated you, Mickey 17 is worth a watch too.

Mickey 17 is a wild ride through a bizarre scifi setting. Maybe it was a little too strange and too long, but I found it far more captivating than I had anticipated. There’s a lot of ideas at play, and Patterson is game to try them all out. This might well be one of the more underrated releases this year — and one that I hope has a much better time in its next life to come.

Intermission!

• “What’s it feel like to die?”
• “Hopefully I’ll just be swallowed in one go.”
• Mickey’s hand taken off by a micro-meteorite
• True love is popping someone else’s pimples
• “From now on you have to get used to dying. This is your job.”
• That’s a paltry amount of food
• “We got the vaccine. My great gift to mankind.”
• Title card 32 minutes into the film
• “Saving me for the kiddos. What a great mom.”
• “I’m perfectly good meat! I taste fine!”
• The pigeon costume
• “Stand tall in your failures, like me, my friend.”