Release dates might not mean what they used to. For the last several years, March has had its share of surprise hits at the box office. The Batman had an impressive run at the box office that was kicked off on a March 1, 2022, release date, and as recently as last year, Dune Part 2 kicked off a successful theater run that also began on March 1. Other relatively recent March release success stories include Captain Marvel (2019), Zootopia (2016), Logan (2017), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). March is not the box office black hole that it once was. That being said, it’s also not Memorial Day weekend, mid-June, or Thanksgiving. March seems to be a time when studios release movies that they’re not sure will be hits, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.
This brings us to Mickey 17.
Directed by Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho and starring Robert Pattinson, this science fiction adventure had all the makings of a summer blockbuster. My personal expectation was for this to be a fun and entertaining film reminiscent of Edge of Tomorrow. That isn’t what we got. Instead, we were exposed to a meandering, clownish film that attempted to portray itself as a morality play for our times but ended up being a circus. While it was almost saved by a strong ending, it still painted itself into a corner that Joon Ho had to contrive himself out of.
Mickey 17 was a massive disappointment.
Another thing I was expecting was a thematically strong film about life and death from a more existential point of view. While many people ask Mickey what it’s like to die, and there is a strong story point about him being erased once he’s duplicated while still being alive, Joon Ho, who also wrote the screenplay, never gave those ideas anything more than surface-level treatment. Mickey 17 had a chance to be a deep science fiction/action film that made you think and feel just as much as it excited. What we got was a shallow, boring film that I couldn’t wait to end.
To say that Mickey 17 was boring would be an understatement. The premise of the film has Mickey signing up to be an Expendable on a space mission in order to escape Earth and his debt to a deadly loan shark. The purpose of an Expendable is to experience deadly situations that usually cause death so that the crew can learn how to survive them. After being killed, another body is created, complete with the memories and personality of the original, so it’s like he’s just waking up for the next day’s work. The problem occurs when everyone thinks that Mickey 17 has been killed by an indigenous species on the planet they arrive at, so they create Mickey 18. Since it’s against the law to have duplicates, both must be killed, and Mickey’s information permanently deleted.
That’s a very cool premise that should be ripe for conflict and the aforementioned existential questions about life and death and what happens to us when we die. Is death permanent? Do we have a soul that lives on? Or is it simply the end? These questions have bothered humankind for as long as we’ve walked the earth, and Joon Ho had an opportunity to explore those ideas in a meaningful way but came up way short.
A frame of mind film.
It’s also entirely possible that I was not in the right frame of mind when I saw this film. It’s not the movie’s fault that I was expecting something other than what it delivered. However, the meandering pace of the storytelling, the flat nature of the storyline, and the clownish nature of the humor did little to make this film appealing. The first act dragged on forever. There was entirely too little action for a science fiction film, and the conflict in the movie never reached the point where I felt like the stakes were adequately raised.
There should have been a lot more conflict between Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. There was at the beginning, as the two of them tried to kill each other to save themselves. This is also where the thematic idea of the fear of death could have been explored. Instead, it was given a cursory look with a couple of throw-away lines before the two of them allied with each other to defeat Marshall.
It was almost like they were making it up as they went along.
It felt like there was no plan with Mickey 17. There was clearly a script of sorts, but it felt like Joon Ho didn’t know where he wanted the film to go or even what kind of film he wanted to make or what kind of story he wanted to tell. I’ve used the word “meandering” a couple of times, and that’s how the story felt. It felt like the story was lost in itself, and it was never able to get on track. Even at the end, this felt like a story that still hadn’t found its way. It looked like Joon Ho was going to give us a suspenseful twist that would have turned the story on its ear, but he bailed himself out with the mother of all contrivances. I honestly don’t think Joon Ho’s heart was in this, and that comes out in the filmmaking and storytelling.
Too on the nose
Finally, the film was too on the nose. Kenneth Marshall, the film’s antagonist played with over-the-top bravado by Mark Ruffalo, was such an on-the-nose caricature of Donald Trump that it wasn’t even funny. Daniel Henshall, who played Preston, Marshall’s spiritual leader and propaganda minister, was a clear representation of the religious right and the rightwing media who unapologetically spread Trump’s ideology to the masses. The indigenous lifeforms inhabiting the planet represent the people who just want to live and be left alone but are persecuted under the chaotic reign of terror that Trump and his minions have unleashed. A little subtlety would have gone a long way in making this a smarter film that would have been emotionally more satisfying.
Overall, Mickey 17 was a dud of a film that didn’t deliver what it promised. It gave us unlikeable characters trudging their way through a flat story that we don’t care about. It feels like a lot of lazy filmmaking was happening by a guy who really didn’t want to be making it. Pattinson and Ruffalo give excellent performances, as do Toni Collette, Steven Yuen, Naomi Ackie, and really all of the actors in it. The visual effects are terrific, and the visual effects involving the creatures are terrific. Unfortunately, the storytelling is so subpar that this isn’t a film anyone should rush to see.
It’s no wonder that this movie was a March release.