What can we say about Mickey Barnes? This unexpected hero repeatedly dies- yes dies– for the future of the colony he joined. Not only does he do this whilst being socially awkward, BUT also getting the girl of his dreams. I think the only thing we can say is that he’s lucky!

My favorite part of the movie is the Expendable part of the story. These Expendables are people who are cloned after every single time that they die. For Mickey this has been his 16th death- hence being Mickey 17! Through and even after the movie I kept thinking about the ethics of this system of clones. How often do they usually die? Do they ever get old? Do they have a last death? There’s also the ethics of printing out a new Mickey each time he dies. All of these questions don’t make a big difference to the movie, but it does allow you to explore ideas that you have about the program from the movie.

Throughout you can tell that there was symbolism for anti-capitalism. Mark Ruffalo’s impression of Donald Trump, or in this case Kenneth Marshall, was amazing. His performance made the movie more relatable than it needed to be. Comparing his character to Mickey, we can tell the remarkable difference in their attitudes. Where Mickey only signed up to escape debt, Kenneth only signed up to enhance his political state. This combined with Mickey having to die and do all the hard work whilst Kenneth eats and messes around shows these anti-capitalism themes. Through showing why this unjust system shouldn’t work, the director is showing why we should live in an anti-capitalist world.

Overall this movie is definitely a good recommendation for any sci-fi lovers out there. 4/5 stars