I was certainly interested in the science fiction movie, “Mickey 17”. I like Robert Pattinson as an actor despite his bad rap in the Twilight movies. I thought he showed some good acting chops in Water for Elephants. He is mostly wasted in Mickey 17 until late in the second half when both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 (both Robert Pattinson) dialog. He does clearly express two personalities in the exchange, almost as well as John Noble’s two characters did when they met (both John Noble) in the series. Something I did not understand in the multiple iterations of the Mickey iterations (each a new copy of the previous version) is why all the previous incarnations had the same milk toasty personalities, so waiting to be put upon and used that I didn’t even feel sorry for them, and Mickey 18 was the polar opposite of the previous iterations (maybe its explained in the book.
The storyline could have been Avatar, with a group taking over a new planet without concern, in fact with distain, for the natives. The central antagonist, played by Mark Ruffalo is comic at beast. He is a defeated politician, leader of a religious? Movement, lacks confidence, and is bolstered up mainly by his wife played by Toni Collette. She seemed to take the role more seriously. Perhaps the intent is Donald Trump followers after he lost the previous election, portrayed as mindless followers to whatever outlandish ideas spout from his mouth. If that was the intent I really didn’t think the parallel worked.
Despite a weak antagonist, and an even weaker protagonist I did enjoy the second half of the film. Traveling to, and exploring new worlds always at least catches my interest. I liked the aliens. They were delightful and stole the show anytime there were only a few around interacting with the humans. When they were a mob? Not so much.
Would I watch the film again? Probably not, but channel surfing sometime in the future I might pop in and watch a few minutes of it again. The word innocuous comes to mind.