Tag: 2025

Alien: Earth – Part 8: The Real Monsters (Review)

Posted on by fenrisfil

I am only doing this for completeness. This episode was equal parts stupid, disappointing and predictable. This was about as bad as it could possibly have been. There were perhaps three bits that may chart a path to a marginal redemption, but if it does it will be too little, too late. The main thing I’ve learned personally from doing these reviews is exactly why I favour movies to TV and why I really don’t want to do any TV reviews again. At least not for still running shows. Apparently I didn’t learn my lesson from “LOST”. I like stories, not ideas randomly thrown at a wall to see what sticks and then badly collected up and put in the bin.

I think what makes a TV series work is the characters. Since you may not get a complete story and if you do it may take years, you need to have good characters. LOST at least did have that and still bitterly disappointed. So when a show doesn’t have good characters, what chance does it have? Well, Alien: Earth is a good example of that. Since the previous episode sabotaged both Kirsh and Morrow, the only interesting character was Eyeball Squid. By the end of this episode I barely cared about that creature either. So let’s get onto the failings of this episode and show in general. There are definitely spoilers here.

The Show Gets Dumber

This show is definitely set in the Idiocracy universe. Weyland-Yutani decided to send in Morrow with a small team first before attacking in force. That’s fine. Morrow cuts off the islands communication (Not shown in the previous episode) meaning no one can report the attack. Then it gets stupid.Morrow follows up his sabotage with a direct front assault into a heavily armed and protected base with just two soldiers supporting him. These soldiers have vanished by this episode, because of course they did. Why even do that if your boss is about to send over multiple drop ships full of troops? But to make it worse they have a really long delay between the stealth assault and the main attack. The only reason is because they needed the plot to happen.

After his ridiculous plan for three man frontal assault failed, Morrow has now abandoned his mission and just wants to kill everyone. When coming face to face with Slightly, instead of using his family for leverage with a clever buff (Or legit threat), he meekly apologizes. Naturally he is easily taken out. Meanwhile Kirsh is reduced to a nothing character. No motivations, no plans, his role apparently over. Outside his fight with Morrow, Kirsh had nothing to do this episode. The head of security, Eins is still completely useless and is revealed as an android about 5 seconds before Wendy gains the new magic power of shutting down androids. Lame.

Wasn’t This Meant to be an Alien Show?

The Aliens or “Xenomorph’s” as the show likes to call them are no longer scary. But they are sometimes threatening. Basically in this show if the plot needs them to be really easy to take down, they are. But if Wendy is using her magic super powers of controlling them suddenly a lone one can take down entire squads of heavily armed marines without breaking a sweat. It’s not just the weird looking one born from a tadpole eating a lung (I could rant about that too). The new alien born from the regular lifecycle appears to be under control too. These creatures are now 100% loyal to their android mistress. Apparently their drive to capture and reproduce has been entirely replaced by being Wendy’s pet. Utterly ridiculous.

We don’t even get to see most of the alien action either. I think this episode literally spent more time with mouth closeups on Wendy making her clicking sounds than actually showing the Aliens kill things. Remember, this whole show exists because of these creatures. The franchise isn’t called “Android”, it’s called “Alien”. To be fair a good few entries in the franchise revolve around rogue androids, but that wasn’t the focus. Here it is and the “Xenomorph’s” are almost entire redundant. So much for Ripley’s warning of “If even one of those things gets down here….”.

Because The Plot Needed to Happen

The plant pod creature finally kills someone. But it’s totally random and clearly just put in there for the sake of saying it finally did something. What it did was the most generic thing it could do. So this is your average monstrous man-eating plant. Nothing special, at least not in this universe. The insects and flies have nothing to do at all here. You’d think with rogue androids everywhere maybe letting the flies out may be a tactic. But no one thinks of that. Indeed outside the hybrids, no one thinks of anything. Not a single person has a single idea. Cavalier, Kirsh and Eins all know Wendy can hack things and control Aliens and yet don’t take a single step to counter that or prepare for it. They don’t appear to have any kind of plan at all.

Basically this episode is everyone else sitting around and waiting for sociopath Wendy to kill them, imprison them and take over the facility. Cavalier is mostly just interested in putting Eyeball squid on Joe (The most predictable part of this episode). However rather than sticking around to watch, he decides he needs to go and give a monologue to the hybrids. He knows Wendy’s powers, but decides one guard should be fine. Side note here, not only did they do nothing about Wendy, even knowing their abilities. They also repaired out of control psycho Nibs and imprisoned previously loyal Curly. Basically making sure a team of super beings were at maximum strength and could easily escape.

Any Hope For Redemption?

So those three bits that I mentioned at the start. First of all one of the hybrid androids, Smee, actually seems to have a conscience. Not enough to do much about it, but it’s clear he is at least a little uncomfortable with how psychotic everyone else seems to be. Then there is the brother, Joe, who despite calling saving the lives of his friends from psychotic Nibs “A mistake”, is obviously uncomfortable. Then there is Wendy’s comments to Cavalier where it really seemed like she was talking about herself, not Cavalier. Coupled with her comment about “Ruling” at the end and it seems the show may actually consider her a villain. But it’s still not clear. Was the episode title the cliché of “Humans are the real monsters” or did it mean these hybrids?

The big problem is that this is something that impacts the entire show and I’m not inclined to wait around another three slow, tedious seasons of stupidity to find out. I actively dislike every single character in this show and possibly despise Wendy. A text book Mary Sue whose powers (Not shared with the other hybrids) have no explanation or apparent limit and who everyone seems to love or favour for no reason. That includes the other hybrids, Kirsch, Cavalier, the Xenomorphs, and her brother (Who accepted her as his sister too easily). I still think Eyeball squid is destined for Cavalier, but they may take years to pull the trigger on that and I’ve already stopped caring. If Cavalier was so smart, he’d have built in a kill switch to his hybrids, but no, he’s an idiot and so who cares what his fate is.

Final Verdict

So there we have it. A show that had a lot of potential early on. Clearly had a lot spent on it but totally blew it in regards to plot and characters. There’s still no justification for this being a prequel, but we are at the stage with it where that doesn’t matter. The show itself is bad regardless of where in the Alien timeline it is set. Everyone has their limit to how much stupidity from characters and plots they can forgive for their escapist entertainment. I know some people felt the show crossed that right out the door, some are perhaps still okay. But for me episode 7 crossed the line and this episode fell right off the cliff. Every character in this show is an idiot. When someone is on top, it’s not because they are clever, but because everyone else is dumb.

By far the worst element of this show was always the hybrids and they have ended up the only part of the show that actually matters. Not the Aliens, not the corporations and not any of the human characters. The new creatures had potential but were really just kill cameos that went nowhere. The world building in the first few episodes was good, but then the show shrank down to the island setting and the world building stopped. Literally everything in this show has ended in disappointment and yet the show keeps going. We didn’t get a single answer to any of our questions. So I am done. It’ll likely be two years before this show returns, but I have no intention of watching it. Episode Rating 3/10

Final Series rating: 4/10 – Not worth it. However, episode 5 is probably worth watching for most fans of the franchise. It’s pretty much a stand alone tribute to “Alien”. Not as good mind, so it’s not a must see or anything, but it remains the highlight of this disappointing show.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Back to movie reviews for me and I’m very glad October is around the corner. I need 31 horror film reviews to purge this mess from my memory. See you soon!

Alien: Earth – Episode Seven

Posted on by fenrisfil

Well, I wasn’t going to do single episode reviews for this show, but here we are. This one is going to be a bit of a rant because this show just jumped the shark. To be fair, it jumped the shark in episode two but I was willing to give it another chance. Now it’s playing pat-a-cake with Cthulhu. I’m not sure if this episode was as terrible as it felt or if it was just the straw the broke the camels back. There is only so much stupid I can deal with and I regularly watch B-Movie horror films. Last October I reviewed “Bad CGI Gator”. I can handle stupid. But there has to be limits. This is the dumbest episode of the series so far and one of the most disappointing. Of course we get some “Xenomorph” kills and a chest burst scene so some people will give it a pass I’m sure.

The Idiot Olympics

This episode killed off my interest in two out of three of the characters I previously found worth watching. Morrow is now just an idiot. Kirsh meanwhile lost all his mystery and it turns out he just manages situations by letting them get as out of control and have as high a body count as possible and then wrap it up at the last possible moment. That’s not a good management style! He may be the dumbest character of all. He’s only a step ahead of Morrow because he has access to the android hybrids sensory information and Morrow is too stupid to realize this. If you’ve been following, you’ll know the third of those characters and now the only one I’m interested in is the eyeball squid. This is where I’m at now with this show.

It’s easy to forget that Kirsh is actually meant to be the head scientist, not security chief. So why does he seem to be in charge of managing the security of the island, even down to being able to let these situations get wildly out of control so he can pull a trap that relies on Morrow being a complete tool. The actual security chief seems to be completely out of the loop of everything that actually involves security. Instead it seems to be running human resources. And that was one other character I was warming to. Nope, another idiot. Still, Morrow takes the cake for stupidity. His plan involved hoping a chestburster didn’t burst, having no plan to recover it if it did and then just marching straight in through the front door of the facility with only two troops supporting him, directly into an obvious kill zone.

My Pet Alien

Sadly, the stupidity doesn’t end there. All the hybrid androids are so incredibly stupid that I want to see them get wiped out. Especially Wendy, who is a complete sociopath. Now though, she’s a sociopath with the magic power of controlling “Xenomorphs” and despite my past speculation, the reason for this ability seems to be “Because we thought it’d be cool”. It isn’t. It takes the agency from the aliens themselves, making them pointless. That they can even be controlled, especially by some random android with the mind of a child, ruins them. They made a conscious decision to move the iconic aliens from “Scary” to “Cute”. That sums up this series really. You don’t need to fear the Aliens, you need to fear Wendy and Nibs.

In the previous episode the “Clever” people in charge decided that wiping Nibs memory of her psychotic breakdown would make everything okay. They didn’t bother to tell any of the other kids. They didn’t think that huge multi-day gap in her memory would be noticed (Including not know who Joe is, or the where the aliens came from). Nibs is clearly psychotic, but Wendy decided of all the kids she was the one that needed to be in the outside world She didn’t even look for Slightly and Smee. But then, Wendy is just as bad as Nibs. She happily releases her pet “Xenomorph” to kill innocent lab workers so that she can later use it to kill anyone else in her path. This is not a “Good” character.

The Hierarchy of Intelligence

Our one remaining good guy, the damp behind the ears Joe finally develops a character trait beyond protecting his “Sister”. But it’s nothing deeper than a basic regard for human life. This was enough to put him at odds with his sister however. Joe finally stands up to her blood lust and she acts with shock and revulsion, like he is the villain. This brings me to one of the make or break questions of the show. Do the show runners realize Wendy is a villain? We won’t find out until the final episode and honestly I’m not sure which way it’ll go. We may also find out if there is any believable reason for her magic powers. I’m guessing no to that one.

The one character left that is interesting is eyeball squid. It’s painfully obvious Kavalier wants to put the squid on Joe. I still think he’s destined to get it himself. That is a scene I am looking forward to in the finale. Kavalier is also an idiot, but that’s his character arc. He is destined to be a victim of his own hubris and that is fine. Right now the smartest character on this show is Eyeball Squid, followed by the various bug aliens, then probably the plant pod, who is still do contribute anything. The “Xenomorph’s” come in last among the creatures, but still ahead of the humans. I am starting to wonder if this show is actually set in the Idiocracy universe.

The Downward Spiral

Before I get to my verdict, were there any positives? The pace in this episode was good. Quite a lot happened (Even if most of it was stupid). As I mentioned, Joe finally got some character development. We did get “Xenomorph” action That’s it, but the action wasn’t great. For the third episode in a row they casually called the aliens “Xenomorphs”. There’s no getting around it, they’ve canonized a fan misinterpretation of a line from Aliens. They also started to refer to Synthetics as “Synths”, which isn’t a canon violation or anything, but does make the dialogue sound more like “Fallout” than “Aliens” (Where they said “Synthetic” or “Android”). Oh and there continues to be no reason for this show to be prequel.

So what’s the verdict? Well you can tell from the ranting that I was not a fan of this one. I know some people don’t mind a plot that requires total stupidity from everyone involved for it to work. I also know most people don’t really care about how the show impacts the larger franchise. That kind of thing is only important to those nerdy enough to re-watch an entire franchise. That’s me. I’m nerdy enough. So I want every entry in a franchise to be complementary and not contrary. I’m giving this episode a 4/10 and reducing the series rating to a 5/10. Recommendation rescinded! The show has one last chance to win me over. Can it do it?

Rating: 5 out of 10.

Alien Earth (Episodes 4-6)

Posted on by fenrisfil

Well after three more episodes I think it is time to update my review. That said, the jury is still out on this one. I’ve never come across a series I find so much to both love and hate about at once. That’s not to say it’s all extreme one way or the other, there is a lot of “Meh” to go about too. It is frankly all over the place. So let’s go over the Good, the bad and the Meh first and then’ll I’ll give you a score per episode.

Everybody Loves Eyeball Squid

No, that’s not a new sitcom, though I would probably watch it. We’re starting with the good and top of that list is Eyeball Squid. By far the coolest of the new species introduced in this show and one that could probably have worked in it’s own movie. Probably not it’s own TV series, but I could definitely see (pun not intended) it working for a movie. The creature is mysterious, creepy as hell and totally original. Of course where there is mystery there is room for disappointment. But so far, so good. The other new aliens, while not interesting enough for their own movie are also positives. We finally saw the bug-fly things in action in episode 6 and so the only creature not to have done anything of note is the plant pod. I’m sure it’s time will come.

Timothy Olliphant and Babou Ceesay continue to be the stand out actors. In episode five we learn more information about Morrow (Ceesay), which humanizes him somewhat. He continues to be a solid antagonist though. Olliphant’s Kirsh also continues to play the stealth antagonist. His goals are still no clearer and mostly he just reminds me of Michael Fassbender’s “David” in Prometheus/Covenant. That is a rogue android with his own agenda and no real care for humanity. Of course he could end up to simply be part of a scheme of one corporation boss or another, but I think he is more likely rogue. Adrian Edmondson is doing quite well as a secondary antagonist too. Small role, but he plays it well. Vyvyan has come a long way since the Young Ones.

A Xenomorph May Be Involved

So, let’s talk about the negatives and with this series its biggest issue is the continued massive dump from orbit the show keeps doing on to Ellen Ripley and the movie “Aliens”. The first movie is a little more protected since all that matters for that one is that the crew (Ash aside) are oblivious to the creatures. In Aliens however a team of space marines take Ripley along as the “Expert” on these unknown creatures. They take her because she’s the only person that has encountered them before. The Marines have no knowledge of these creatures and are woefully unprepared for what they are walking in to. Many people prefer Aliens to the original movie (I love both, but generally prefer the first). It’s objectively one of the best sequels ever made.

In Aliens, Gorman says the word “Xenomorph” as a general way of saying “Alien species”. He was informing the marines that they may be facing an alien life form of some kind. He wasn’t saying this specific, well known species. Since this was a cool word and not one that you’d hear in other franchises, fans started to use it to refer to the creatures themselves. Some because they didn’t understand the scene, others just for convenience (Since “Alien” doesn’t really narrow down what you are talking about). But now, in Alien: Earth they have twice deliberately used the word “Xenomorph” to refer to this specific species. It’s bad enough that it reveals a strange familiarity with them, but it also totally recontextualizes that scene in Aliens.

Why Is This A Prequel?

The problem goes beyond just the name, it also goes to the context. Ripley was meant to be the expert on these creatures and yet now thanks to this being a prequel her inclusions seems like a sick joke. Already Weyland-Yutani had a huge amount of information on the creatures. Now they even named it and when Gorman mentions the name in Aliens, he’s talking about a specific species and the space marines all seem to know exactly what he’s talking about. The series shows tactics and weapons designed to deal with the creatures and yet the marines head in spraying bullets in a way that was always destined to get them them covered in acid. Even if all the characters on this island die, Weyland-Yutani will still have their information. Man, space marines are morons.

So, why is this a prequel? So far I haven’t seen a single thing that means this show needed to be set before Alien. Almost all of these problems go away if it is a sequel instead of a prequel. Adopting the fan name for the creature is still dumb, but it doesn’t break past movies. If they introduced the black goo then at least it would make some sense as a prequel to Alien: Romulus, but then that shouldn’t have been a prequel either! Anyway, that aside my main complaint is how everyone is stupid. So much of this plot relies on stupidity to happen. It’s not a deal breaker for a horror series, but it is annoying.

Enough With The Peter Pan Stuff!

On to the Meh. I’m so very bored with the constant Peter Pan references. One of the characters themselves drew attention to how the analogy doesn’t even make sense in the first place since Kavalier is giving children adult bodies and expecting them to act like adults. This is the opposite to “Never growing up”. It’s something so dumb and obvious that the dumb characters in the show actually call it out. But it is relentless and it plays into another aspect of the show and that is it’s tendency to slow right down to a crawl for little to no benefit.

Another problem is I still don’t like either of the protagonists or really any of the characters at all. I appreciate Morrow and Kirsh, but they are antagonists, so I don’t actually like them. I don’t even appreciate Kavalier. To be fair some antagonists are there to make you want to see them get killed later on and I’m pretty sure the shoe fits here. But you are supposed to like the good guys. Joe has no agency outside of his sister and apparently little personality. Wendy meanwhile is that mixture of nativity and confidence that just makes you want to see them choke on their own hubris. It’s not endearing. The rest of the hybrid children are just as bad and this has been a constant since episode one.

Episode 4 – Do You See What Eye See

This was the episode that made Eyeball Squid everyone’s favourite. It didn’t even need to do a whole lot, but it was so well done it made the episode. The rest was a mixture of interesting and stupid. It did give me some theories about the hybrid androids having some kind of relationship with the black goo, but since that hasn’t been shown or talked about in this show (And is divisive with fans anyway), I’m probably way off. In the end the answer to how Wendy is communicating with the Aliens may just end up being “Because the plot needed that to happen”. We will see. This was a decent episode. 6/10

Episode 5 – A Prequel’s Prequel

I am already annoyed by the series being a prequel. So when I realized this episode was a prequel to that prequel, I wasn’t impressed. We get to see the events that lead to the ship crash on earth. We already know there will only be one survivor so the stakes here do not exist. Fortunately though the episode excelled in it’s execution. I mentioned in my previous review I was a big fan of the set design for the space ship and said it was a shame we didn’t see more of it. Here we did and it’s largely a stand alone Alien movie. Though one with a known outcome. The reason for holding this episode back was for one reveal about why the ship crashed. Barely seemed worth it, but the truth is this was the best episode yet. 7/10

Episode 6 – A Bad Day in the Lab

And then we are back to the main story and I can’t help but feel disappointed by it. This was another mostly slow episode that really hit us around the face with Peter Pan nonsense while very little happened. However, when it did happen it was pretty cool and went some way to redeeming the episode. We finally get to see the sixth alien species and it didn’t disappoint. Not as cool as Eyeball Squid, but who is? There was good here including a scene between Oliphant and Ceesay, but it wasn’t really enough for me to call this a good episode. 5.5/10

Conclusion – Marginal Improvement

So the good news is overall these three episodes have raised my average score (Slightly) and I am swaying more to the positive with the show. If this wasn’t a prequel I may even have been up to a 7/10 by now. However, the characters being idiots and the “Good” guys being unlikable would have held it from landing much higher. It is a prequel though and so it does still run a wrecking ball through the franchise. Still, the atmosphere is good, the creatures are fun and there is enough of interest here to have me speculating.

I’m also glad the obvious “Bloke in a suit” movement of the Alien in episode one and two hasn’t been repeated, so visually the show is improving too. If you haven’t watched the series yet, I think I can call it a cautious recommendation now. I’m raising the score to 6.5/10. Technically the average is only just over 6/10 but I feel a 6.5 is fair. We have two more episodes to go, so I’ll check in with you again when it is all over. A bad or good ending will make or break this series, so there is everything still to play for.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

28 Years Later (2025)

Posted on by fenrisfil

These days it is never considered too late for a sequel. So it’s not a shock to see Danny Boyle and Alex Garland dig up their “28” franchise. Its been 23 years since the pair launched the series with “28 Days Later” in 2002. The first sequel “28 Weeks Later” came out in 2007. Boyle and Garland were largely uninvolved as they were busy filming “Sunshine” (2007). With an 18 year gap between sequels, they have opted to go straight for 28 years later and skip past the obvious “28 months” option. The thinking seems to be that after such a long period they can effectively give the series a solid reboot. Unsurprisingly everything you need to know about this world is explained in the movie. You don’t have to watch either of the previous movies.

Also returning alongside Boyle and Garland is cinematographer Anthony Dodd. Not returning however is composer John Murphy, who has been replaced by progressive Hip-Hop group “Young Fathers”. I’ve actually seen them live, supporting Massive Attack (Another group known to dabble in soundtracks). Unsurprisingly there are no returning characters (Though since this is a planned trilogy, rumour is there will be returns down the line). Instead this movie stars a young Alfie Williams as “Spike”, Jodie Corner as “Isla”, Spike’s mother and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as “Jamie”, Spike’s father. Support comes mostly from Raph Fiennes as the eccentric “Dr Ian Kelson” and Edvin Ryding as “Erik” a Swedish soldier.

Survival

28 years after the outbreak of the “Rage” virus a group of survives have built a community on a small island isolated from the mainland (Except at low tide). The rage virus turns humans into feral killers, but after such a long time the infected have begun to evolve somewhat. The most notable of these changes is the appearance of “Alpha’s”, far stronger monsters that are especially hard to kill. The Paris outbreak reported on in 28 Weeks Later appears to have been retconned. Instead the UK is the only place effected and as such has been placed in permanent quarantine. A naval blockade surrounds the country shooting down anyone attempting to flee. The survivors are truly alone.

Living on this island is Spike and his parents. His father Jamie is a scavenger, tasked with braving the mainland to find supplies. A dangerous job and Spike is set to follow in his father’s footsteps. Despite his young age, he is ready for his first foray out into the dangers of the mainland. Spike’s mother, Isla is suffering from a mysterious illness and appears to be on her deathbed. The island has no Doctor, so there is not much that can be done. After narrowly surviving his first trip outside, Spike discovers that there may be a doctor on the mainland that could potentially save his mother and so he sets out with her to find him, whatever the risk.

Three Unequal Parts

This is a movie of three distinct sections. The section is effectively an epilogue and lead in to the next movie. Fortunately that section is short because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie and is frankly… stupid. The entire tone shifts gratingly and we go from a dark, thoughtful apocalyptic movie to outright B-Movie action cheese and ridiculous parody in the blink of an eye. It’s a bit like if you watched “The Road” (2009) and then in the last five minutes it turned into “Turbo Kid” (2015). Two great movies, but their tone doesn’t mix well. I have no idea what Boyle and Garland were thinking, but I don’t have high hopes for the sequel.

Now, that out of the way it’s important to let you know the rest of the film is actually good. The other two main parts are Spike’s journey with his father and then his more personal one with his mother. The two journeys contrast nicely and in it’s own way the movie examines the very different roles of fatherhood and motherhood. The latter provides a far more emotional journey and is the highlight from an acting perspective. Both Alfie and Jodie are remarkably good in their very demanding roles. By contrast, the first half where Jamie is trying to train Spike is both a very solid father/son story and much more of what you would expect from a zombie movie.

Bones To Pick

Despite the emotional pay off of the second half of the movie, it does start to have issues with consistency. The tone starts to get a bit more silly with the introduction of a Swedish soldier, whose boat has sunk and is now stranded. It wasn’t a big issue, but given what was to come it probably was a warning sign. Another issue here is just how well and how quickly Spike went from panic and struggling to shoot straight when out with his dad to a confident mainland survivor. There is also one plot event that just felt… unlikely (But no spoilers). It’s not a deal breaker though and I still enjoyed this section. For most though I think the film will peak early.

One thing I definitely approve of here is that the zombies (I mean “Infected”) are not just a colourful background to post-apocalyptic humans being generally awful to each other. That is something that is so overdone in zombie stories (Largely thank to the endless stream of Walking Dead shows). The original 28 Days later had a fair bit of this itself, but was relatively well balanced. That’s not to say the film focuses on the infected, they are still somewhat of a backdrop but the story is a much more personal one. For me, a zombie film needs to have an element of tragedy to it and making the story smaller and more personal allows for that.

Conclusion

Despite the horrendous misstep at the end, this is still a good story with enjoyable action. The visuals are good (Zombie wangs aside, I could have done without those), the acting is superb and the pacing is decent. The zombie evolution reminds me of a cross between Romero’s “Land of the Dead” (2005) and a video game like “Left 4 Dead”. I’m not sure how much it really added to the story. The first half of the movie is a good 7/10, the second a 6.5/10 and the final 5 minutes a 4/10. Fortunately the story is effectively over before the epilogue so it doesn’t ruin it. I’m giving this a strong 6.5/10

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Mickey 17 (2025)

Posted on by fenrisfil

“Mickey 17” is the latest movie from writer/director Bong Joon-Ho. It is his first feature as sole writer, though the movie is an adaption of the novel “Mickey 7” by Edward Ashton. According to Ashton the director made a lot of changes to the source material and those changes are not hard to figure out. Cinematography is provided by Darius Khondji and music by Jung Jae-il. The movie was originally scheduled to come out in 2024, but was delayed due to the strikes. The timing ended up being unfortunate because it’s pretty clear early in the film they thought the 2025 would look quite different….

Robert Pattinson stars as “Mickey Barnes”, a passive, low intelligence deadbeat loser. Mickey is dragged into trouble by his association with lowlife grifter “Timo” (Steven Yeun). After finding the need to flee Earth to avoid a loan shark’s vengeance Mickey signs up to be an “Expendable” for a colonization mission. This uses cloning and memory upload technology to effectively grant him immortality at the cost of having to do all of the jobs on the mission where death is all but guaranteed. His life would be bad enough but it is further complicated when an accident leads to a new clone being printed while the old one is still alive. This is considered a major crime. The colonization mission meanwhile is complicated by a first contact situation and the stupidity of the missions leader.

Afternoon Nap of the Clones

This movie is a major disappointment. The best moments are in the trailer. What isn’t in the trailer is all the cringe and really anything to do with the actual plot. Cloning ends up not really being key to any of it. Nothing to do with the cloning leads to either Mickey’s contact with the planets native species or the downfall of the movies antagonist. Rather it is just a gimmick, and as such is there to trick you into watching a largely unrelated film. Now to be fair, the first act is pretty focused on Mickey’s various deaths, but they are all in the trailer (Which mostly focused on this first act) and barely factor into anything. Mickey doesn’t develop as he goes on, instead his “Printing” just occasionally throws up personality quirks.

The question “What is it like to die?” seems something reasonable to ask Mickey. Yet we are told that he uploads his memories to a backup periodically, not on death. He shouldn’t remember any of his deaths or really any of the trauma involving his deaths. This presents many nasty plot holes and the movie doesn’t help itself by bringing constant attention to it with that recurring question. Indeed, it never really explores the technology at all. We are meant to believe they discovered immortality and instantly banned it for fear of duplicates. It’s pretty flawed logic. Having one expendable on the crew never really made sense. They use him for experiments and to cure a virus they could almost certainly cure via other means, but when another expedition member dies people seemed shocked that Mickey can’t just take all the risk all the time.

Two Dimensional Characters

None of these characters have any kind of depth to them. Mickey (1-17) shuffles through life (And death) like a zombie letting everyone else make every decision for him. He is passive and non violent, painfully stupid. His character barely evolves through the story and by the end he’s still letting others make decisions for him. His more renegade clone is the opposite as far as passiveness goes, he takes matters into his own hands at every opportunity. He is however, still and idiot. His girlfriend, Nasha is a walking cliché. Totally lacking any kind of charm, narcissistic, selfish, constantly horny and better at everything than everyone else. She controls every aspect of Mickey’s life that isn’t controlled by the company he signed his life to. Nasha and Mickey 18 are the actual heroes of this story and neither of them are likeable.

Steven Yeun’s “Timo” had potential to be an interesting character, but is pushed so far into the background you will probably need to remind yourself who he is half the time. The scientists are all largely cartoon characters, comically goofy or detached. The worst characters though is the painfully obvious Donald Trump stand in, horribly overplayed by Mark Ruffalo. As a primary antagonist, choosing a real life figure the writers clearly despise and have no respect for means that the villain of the story is also the biggest idiot. This gives the story no stakes as he literally just defeats himself. His wife does all his thinking for him and she too is an idiot. All these characters are idiots, but you do notice the women are always the less stupid and more capable. It’s as current year as you can get.

Any positives?

Robert Pattinson does deserve credit here. Pattinson is thoroughly convincing in this role. It’s just a shame his main character is the dampest of nothings to ever be in a movie. Where his talent comes through is in the contrast between Mickey 17 and 18. They are polar opposites of characters (Though neither are very bright) and they really feel like different people through his performance. Frankly Pattinson deserves to be in much better movies, but given the actor got his break from the “Twilight” series, I guess he is used to that. Sadly the rest of the casts performances range from barely passable to catastrophic.

This movie had a budget of $118m, which is at least visible on screen. The environment does look good and the alien (*Ahem*, sorry, “Native”) species looks both sufficiently “Alien” and relatively original. Sadly, the species is largely used for laughs. Their plot treds it’s most obvious path and fills up the final and most predictable act of the film. The confrontation is never offered any real tensions and certainly no stakes. The audience is fully aware of the species intentions and things are only escalated by the unbelievably over the top level of stupidity from Ruffalo’s Trump parody and his advisors.

The cloning concept would also be a positive, but it is barely explored, mostly used for laughs and ultimately just an excuse to have Pattison play two characters. It eats up the entire first act and while this is the best part of the movie it is also, as previously mentioned, perfectly summarized by the movies trailer. The brief look at the history of the technology gives a glimpse at a different story, one frankly far more interesting than this.

Post Mortem

The novel this movie is based on is more focused on the relationship between the two Mickey’s. The other characters are very much in the background and lacking the extreme cringe of the film. Mickey isn’t a complete idiot in the novel either. Instead he spent his youth studying History, something his world no longer considers a skill. That Mickey would have been a far more interesting character. The novel does examine what it means to be immortal in such a disposable way and goes a lot deeper into the perils of colonization. Basically, it is actually a science fiction story. The film however is not genuine sci-fi. It fails to ask questions and just spams the viewer with things that have already aged badly. It could just as well be any low tier genre TV show or movie of the last 10 years.

Sadly, this has taken over from “Wolf Man” as the most disappointing movie I’ve seen in 2025. I wouldn’t say it is worse than that film, but I had higher expectations. This was after all from an Oscar winning director, but then the Oscars aren’t what they used to be. However, I’ve enjoyed several of his movies before. Directors can have missteps, but this isn’t just a bad movie. It is filled with every modern day cliché you can shake a stick at. Worst of all, the film is painfully boring! This doesn’t give me much hope for future films from the director. This is a low 4/10. When the trailer is better than the movie, all you have is a missed opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 10.