Movies: Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-Ho)

RandV

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Jul 29, 2003
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It reminds me a little of Edge of Tomorrow and Moon. It's Bong Joon-Ho's first directorial effort since Parasite, which he won Best Director for.


Oh hey now I know why this caught my eye, I read the book on my kindle maybe 2 years ago Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, and still have the sequel in my reading queue.

I never saw Moon but its nothing like Edge of Tomorrow. The book wasn't a comedy but more hard science fiction, decent story with an interesting and unique premise, though nothing too amazing. Certainly has room for the people involved to go nuts with it and make a much better movie. Last time this unexpected book-> movie thing happened to me was with Annihilation, where the movie wasn't as good as the book, but watching the trailer I feel like here it's going to be the opposite.

Doesn't really show the plot but more the premise which like I said is really good. On a distant long term colonization mission where you only have so much storage space and valuable high tech components can't be resupplied, but you have the technology to brain scan some one and spin up a new copy of a person only requiring 'biomass', some poor sap is going to have the worst job imaginable. But Mickey just had to get off planet and with no other valuable skills there was one position available on the mission.
 
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Osprey

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Feb 18, 2005
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Oh hey now I know why this caught my eye, I read the book on my kindle maybe 2 years ago Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, and still have the sequel in my reading queue.

I never saw Moon but its nothing like Edge of Tomorrow. The book wasn't a comedy but more hard science fiction, decent story with an interesting and unique premise, though nothing too amazing. Certainly has room for the people involved to go nuts with it and make a much better movie. Last time this unexpected book-> movie thing happened to me was with Annihilation, where the movie wasn't as good as the book, but watching the trailer I feel like here it's going to be the opposite.

Doesn't really show the plot but more the premise which like I said is really good. On a distant long term colonization mission where you only have so much storage space and valuable high tech components can't be resupplied, but you have the technology to brain scan some one and spin up a new copy of a person only requiring 'biomass', some poor sap is going to have the worst job imaginable. But Mickey just had to get off planet and with no other valuable skills there was one position available on the mission.
I read that Bong Joon-Ho wanted to kill Mickey ten more times than in the novel, which is why the title is different. That and the trailer making it seem like it plays with the absurdity of that are why I was reminded of Edge of Tomorrow. Even if the novel is hard sci-fi, it wouldn't surprise me if the adaptation leans a bit into dark comedy, especially from the director of Parasite. From what I can tell, the novel that Edge of Tomorrow was based on was somewhat serious sci-fi, too, but had its tone lightened up in the adaptation, probably to make it a little more fun and appealing to general audiences.

On the other hand, maybe this trailer was deliberately made to appear more fun and lighthearted than the film actually is. I'd actually welcome that, since I'd rather have a serious sci-fi than just a semi-serious one. So, I hope that you're right.
 
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RandV

It's a wolf v2.0
Jul 29, 2003
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I read that Bong Joon-Ho wanted to kill Mickey ten more times than in the novel, which is why the title is different. That and the trailer making it seem like it plays with the absurdity of that are why I was reminded of Edge of Tomorrow. Even if the novel is hard sci-fi, it wouldn't surprise me if the adaptation leans a bit into dark comedy, especially from the director of Parasite. From what I can tell, the novel that Edge of Tomorrow was based on was somewhat serious sci-fi, too, but had its tone lightened up in the adaptation, probably to make it a little more fun and appealing to general audiences.

On the other hand, maybe this trailer was deliberately made to appear more fun and lighthearted than the film actually is. I'd actually welcome that, since I'd rather have a serious sci-fi than just a semi-serious one. So, I hope that you're right.
Oh yeah when I categorize it as "hard sci-fi" I meant more that the setting pays attention to the details. Doesn't mean its like an Arthur C. Clarke story or that isn't ripe for a whole lot of dark humour. Like in the book the reason why 'multiple copies' became so taboo is starts with the technology was invented by an Elon Musk-type egotistical billionaire tech mogul, who decided what the world needed more of him and started feeding people into the 'bio mass converter' to print more Elon Musk's. You can see the appealing dark comedy there for a guy like Bong Joon-Ho.

Also in Edge of Tomorrow the character had to repeatedly die until he got things right to save the world. The plot around Mickey 7 is that he's already died a bunch of times but now he specifically has to not die to save the colony. A problem greatly compounded when Mickey 7 was falsely reported dead to the colony so when he gets back they've already spun up Mickey 8.
 

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It reminds me a little of Edge of Tomorrow and Moon. It's Bong Joon-Ho's first directorial effort since Parasite, which he won Best Director for.


This seems like an exact copy of EoT and Moon. Not sure about this one. Pattinson is usually really good and I loved "Parasite" so I'm sure Bong Joon-Ho could put a fun/interesting spin on this. I'm curious if I've already seen all these themes play out from Moon and Edge of Tomorrow though.
 
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