Mickey is by all metrics a failure. His life wasn’t going great before he decided to become partners in a risky business with an investor who is likely to cut you up with a futuristic deal bladed chainsaw. But that’s not where we start, Mickey appears to be a soldier on Planet Niflheim who has fallen into a dire predicament. And his rescuer, Timo, is more interested in simply retrieving his gun than saving him. But it goes a step further, because Timo mocks him about dying. Which makes a bit more sense when we find out the 17 behind his name relates to how often he has had a new body “printed” out. He is an “expendable.” Often being put into situations where the whole purpose is for him to die. He is a human lab rat that can give them real world data on how things happen during death moments. Ethics be damned. Well, Earth deemed the concept unethical, so the company does their experiments out in space. Because ethics don’t matter if you are off planet.

Mickey is played by Robert Pattinson, a name that most associate with the Twilight movies. A choice I have always been willing to overlook for him. His job is to get paid to act in movies. Whether the movies are good or bad only impacts how much he will get paid moving forward, and those movies put an estimated 67 million in his bank account. So maybe it’s time to quit giving grief about playing a sparkling vampire. 

But Mickey 17 is about vampires. And Robert Pattinson (to me) was unrecognizable in comparison to his other roles. His turn as Batman impressed me a lot too. But in this, he is a bit of a bumbling doof. Not physically bumbling, but his life choices are. Joining the “Expendable” program was his only way to escape from the death waiting for him at the hands of the bill collector back on Earth. Ironically, being an Expendable means he is going to die often.

At this point, it feels like we have an idea where the story is going, but then Mark Ruffalo shows up (I didn’t even know he was in this!) He plays a ruthless morally bankrupt leader behind everything. When I said they were in space, I didn’t mean orbit. They are heading to the planet Niflheim, and are given extremely strict regulations about what they can and can’t do. He is a dictator and they are travelling to a planet with the intent of taking it over as his own. In some ways he is both dictator and cult leader.

After they arrive at Niflheim, they use Mickey (numbers 12-16) to test the ravages of a virus on the planet and develop a vaccine for it allowing people to safely explore the planet. A fascinating concept, and again… unethical as hell!

Once exploring the planet, they find a creature about the size of a Shih Tzu, but looking like a cross between a tardigrade and a maggot. 

There’s a whole lot more story in this. What I’ve gone over is just like the first half hour of the movie! That’s less than 25% of it.

The world building in this is actually quite in depth and well done. I found myself enjoying it more than I expected to. So much so that I have watched it more than once. Not that there aren’t problems in it. The character of Timo is one I wasn’t very impressed with. Mostly because he went from being the friend on Earth that talked him into the debt to being on the space ship with him (but seeming to be cold and distant towards him) to leaving him to die in the opening scene to even deeper levels of betrayal later in the movie. I honestly felt like it would have been better for his role to have been different actors. The one on Earth didn’t need to be the same as the one on the ship, in my view. 

A great thing that comes up is the law against multiples. Something we are keyed into when Mickey 17 accidently survives, but everyone thought he was dead. So Mickey 18 was printed. They explain the genesis of the law and how any future problems would be dealt with.

There is so much to explore in this movie that I feel like I would need to write about 2500 words to deal with it all. Suffice to say this is a movie I think is well worth checking out. I want to give this an 8, but then I go back to the idea that I have watched it more than once and wouldn’t object to watching it again. So going with a 9 on this one!