The kids and my wife spent some considerable time out of the house yesterday evening so I sat down to watch Robert Pattinson’s Mickey 17. And you know what? It wasn’t half bad. Now I do need to add a caveat here that states for the first 2/3rds of the film I did NOT have CC activated, and I likely missed a whole lot of nuance, and exposition because I was trying to listen to it, rather than read it. Maybe that might be cause for concern among you other Gen X’ers or elder Millenials out there. I don’t know. I liked what I saw, and for the most part felt I could hear the dialogue just fine. Mind you I am partially deaf in one ear. But!, but – I did not have my phone on me, nor my laptop so I actually sat down on the couch and watched the film, and just the film, attention undivided. Do with that information what you will.
First off it looked great, sometimes that’s a terrible give away when you discuss sci-fi or fictional works, but in this case there was more to the film than just looking good visually. But I can dig the aesthetic. I thought the space suits, uniforms, and general wearables looked good. Not always brand new from off the rack, but lived in, worn, and scuffed up a bit. The CGI was decent, the live streamed view of the creepers circling the ship was outstanding. BUT CGI isn’t the big draw it once was, it now goes without saying sadly. Every single movie is going to have it whether you think it does or not.
Robert was very convincing as two very different versions of himself as numbers 1 to 17, and the number 18 (a murderous nutcase). It was well done. Bravo. I have seen a couple of sci-fi space man movies of his now, along with The Batman and I no longer think of him as Edward the shiny, sparkly vampire. Good for him.
There was a lot of social commentary with Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette chewing up the scenery with their villain portrayals and what not. Fun stuff. A mix n’ match of Elon, Trump, Bezos and a many number of other billionaire fools out and about in popular media right now. The main stream culture is rife with the deluded bunch. The propagandist, and the doctors were fun characters too.
It wasn’t really something I see myself sitting down to watch again any time soon, but it was enjoyable enough. I had originally intended to go see it in theaters, but we went to Florida for sixteen days back in February, and I couldn’t find the film still available anywhere local upon our return. My next step was to buy it on BluRay, but other things we needed took that off the list of immediate purchases. Then I forgot all about it. Until, that is — yesterday. I looked through Disney+, and Netflix, and Amazon Prime, as well as Apple tv, before I remembered we also have Crave. And then BAM! There it was, Mickey 17 on the title screen, landing page or whatever. Two plus hours later it was in the bag, watched in its entirety. What a Sunday evening to behold.
Do you know why I used to buy the BluRay for movies? For the behind the scenes stuff. The making of featurettes about the writing, the filming, the pre production art and design, music, costumes, fight choreography, weapons training etc… you used to get information that was as long as the main feature or longer. Now there are far fewer physical releases of anything, and all we get are YouTube shorts spliced together from that type of stuff. I loved nothing more than to inure myself in the minutia of a favoured film by watching, and rewatching the BTS stuff and then finally capping it off with a rewatch of the theatrical release, unless a directors cut was the better option (not always the case, but when it hits, oh! It hits so good!). I have spent many an evening in the thrall of a great long list of featurettes about LOTR, or Blade Runner, or Avatar, or The Abyss, or even Apollo 13. Love it.
I did not have the chance to see any of those kinds of details about Mickey 17 because I streamed it instead of buying the BluRay with those extras added in. C’est la vie. Ciao Bella!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 