Reasons to Love: Mickey 17

I'm going to try and keep this spoiler-free because this movie must be experienced. It's a solid trip and has all of my recommendations. So if you're prone to taking advice from a self-confessed chaos gremlin and gender-bending Tumblrina, then get your hands on a means to watch this movie and do that. But if you're still on the fence, allow me to pitch the premise.

There exists in this imagined future a means to save the human consciousness and print a whole new body for the backup to exist in. Fully organic, just the way it was when the individual was scanned. This renders the individual in question effectively immortal.

What would you do with that level of technology. What questions does it raise for you? Is it a matter of soul? Do you imagine a Multiplicity situation in which copies of you take up duties for which just one of you lacks the time? Do you picture a low-cost work force that can be recycled at the end of the day by shoving them wholesale into the vat of raw material?

Well, imagine the complications forwarded by the inventor of said technology being a serial-killing psychopath who made two extra copies of themself to Jack The Ripper their way through the dregs of society before they got caught at it. Thus rendering all the potential under a cloud of shame and ill repute.

Religious debates about the souls of duplicates just make it all worse.

Pair that with the necessary risks of space travel and you have a recipe for the worst of humanity to do nasty things to one person they view as expendable. Hence the seventeen in the title.

Mickey is the printable clone. The one person on a four-year journey to a new world who can be used and abused and reprinted to send into danger again. Everyone else on board is special - or believes themselves to be special. They're following the leader of a charisma cult to a strange new world.

Spoiler free hot take: When you name your new colony after a piece of Viking mythology - you might be a pack of white supremacist assholes.

When your whole deal is about "purity" - you might be a pack of white supremacist antivax assholes.

You'll understand when you get there.

Most of the film is about the journey, with little flashbacks explaining the why of everything. All told from Mickey's point of view. Mickey's a mild-mannered loser who trusts a little too easily and made one very bad decision in order to get out of trouble. Thus... the consequences.

And the pitch-black comedy that happens when a bunch of might-is-right probably-not-scientists get to run all kinds of unethical experiments on someone they can just reprint for the next unethical experiment.

I don't think a lot of those people in white coats actually had any kind of degree.

Then they get to the planet and discover a few things. Including the fact that there was already life on the planet. Intelligent life, as it turns out.

Cue the hot spicy invasive colonialism segment! Yay!

As a science fiction nerd, I have to applaud the creature design. Which is truly amazing. What I find interesting is that they only have perceptible eyes after it's revealed that they have a language. It's an interesting decision in consideration with the overall messages of the film.

The messages?

Invasive colonialism bad. Nobody deserves to be treated as less than human. Beware of charisma cults. Understanding and empathy are worth fighting for.

And also, as Sir Terry Pratchett eloquently put it - Evil begins with treating people as things.

Find and watch this movie. You're welcome.