Disney 2025: Lightyear

After investing in an X-wing pilot's helmet and a toy-grade lightsaber during our 2022 visit to Disneyland, I decided that I would take it easy this time in terms of souvenirs - both in terms of price and size, given the challenges of getting my previous purchases back to Canada. 

However, it's not a blanket boycott, I'm just restricting myself to something that will be an easier fit in my luggage, so I keep my eyes open as we make our way around the two parks.  It's a target rich environment, given that a lot of Disneyland rides exit their passengers into a themed gift shop - not a subtle tactic, but undoubtedly effective.   

One of our gift shop destinations is at the exit from Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, one of the few competitive rides at the park.  The shop's offerings are a combination of Toy Story and Lightyear items - personally, I enjoyed Lightyear, regardless of its mixed critical reception and relatively poor box office performance, and I decide to purchase a boxed set featuring three characters from the movie: Buzz himself, Izzy Hawthorne, and Mo Morrison.  (Darby Steel isn't in this box, and I'm fine with that - sorry, Darby was just not one of my favourite characters.) 

The figures are well molded and have good articulation, although I'm surprised that they don't have ankle joints, based on the poses from the box art. (There's probably a disclaimer someplace on the packaging indicating that the artwork isn't representative of the actual toys.) 

If you look closely, the painting is an odd combination of fine detail, such as Buzz's name tag, and general sloppiness.  But let's be fair, these are general toy grade figures, you're not intended to look at them with a magnifying glass. 

Buzz's handgun doesn't fit easily into his hand, but the hot water trick* quickly solves that, and the other characters have no problems holding onto their props - overall, a nice little addition to my collection of toys, although I have no plans to write my name on the soles of their feet. 

Oh, and I bought a Mickey Mouse mug as well - good size, comfortable grip, simple artwork.  I know, it's not science fiction, but it's probably time to pay tribute to the fact that, after all, it all started with a mouse.

 - Sid 

* If you’re not familiar with this solution, it is incredibly useful if you are having trouble getting a vinyl action figure to hold onto something: run hot tap water over the figure’s hand until it becomes flexible, shape it around the weapon or tool, then switch to cold water to set it.  

The Infinite Mickey.

Karli and I attended a matinee show of Mickey 17 this weekend, and I think she summarized our reaction well: if you're curious about the film, by all means go, but if you're on the fence, don't bother.

Why the mixed recommendation?  Mickey 17 is undeniably an interesting movie with a satisfying conclusion, the performances are good right across the board - Robert Pattinson in particular does a notably excellent job as the Mickeys, and Mark Ruffalo's colony leader Kenneth Marshall savagely channels Donald Trump at his worst  - but somehow, it fails to break through into brilliance. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the premise, Mickey Barnes is an affable if misguided loser, suffering from longterm guilt over his perceived responsibility for his mother's death in a car accident.

Hoping to escape from a loan shark with a fetishistic interest in brutally punishing borrowers who get behind on their payments, Mickey and his exploitive friend Timo (an epically underutilized Steven Yeun) attempt to get seats on the next interstellar colonization ship leaving Earth. Timo manages to bluff his way into a shuttle pilot job, but Mickey, lacking in any kind of skills or talents, unwittingly signs up to be an Expendable without reading any of the small print. 

As an Expendable, Mickey's body is scanned and his memories recorded so that a duplicate Mickey can be created every time he dies in the line of duty - and he dies a lot. He is callously treated as completely disposable, being used as a living guinea pig for the effects of solar radiation, and as a test subject for dangerous allergens (and fatally experimental iterations of possible vaccines) on Niflheim, the new colony planet.

His only solace is his girlfriend Nasha, played by Naomi Ackie.  Nasha is a member of the mission's security team, and the only person on the ship who treats him like a human being. 

Things change for the 17th Mickey when he is reported as dead and an 18th Mickey is printed*, when in fact Mickey 17 has been saved from an icy death by Niflheim's grublike indigenous species, the Creepers. Co-existing duplicates are forbidden by law, and both Mickeys are now under a death sentence as the colony goes to war with the Creepers.

The original concept isn't unique - I can think of three or four different novels that feature disposable duplicates, with the Cuckoo Saga series by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson being the closest in spirit to Mickey 17 in that the tachyon duplicates in their stories are tasked with terminal assignments. 

Without giving away too much, I would have ended the story differently.**  The movie returns Mickey's individuality at the end, whereas I would have had him embrace his multiplicity: in my version, Mickey would use the duplication technology to create hundreds of Mickeys - an army of Mickeys, if you will - who unite to defeat Marshall and his loyalists and bring stability and equality to the colony.

The final scenes would show Mickeys everywhere, a valued part of the settlement and a key part of its now-peaceful relationship with the Creepers.  The film would end with a small group of Mickeys in white lab coats observing the scientist most cruel in his treatment of earlier Mickeys, as he nervously explores an unstable icy catacomb under their supervision - what goes around, comes around.

 - Sid

* One of the running gags in the film is that each replacement copy of Mickey is literally printed, using a machine that deliberately evokes the jerky rhythm of early dot-matrix printers.

** Is there a technical term for the opposite of a spoiler - ie, telling people something that didn't happen in a movie? 

Because really, how hard is it to come up with ten ways to kill someone?

I'm looking forward to seeing Mickey 17, the new film by Oscar-winning South Korean director Bong Joon Ho. (Genre fans will know Bong as the director of The Host and Snowpiercer.  Everyone else will know him from Parasite.)

For readers unfamiliar with the film's premise, the titular Mickey is an Expendable, a human guinea pig who dies repeatedly as part of an interstellar colonization project, whose brain is recorded and imprinted onto a new copy of his body, death after death after death...until one time when the previous Mickey isn't actually dead yet.  Hijinks ensue, as they say.

However, I was a little confused by the title, given that the script is based on a 2022 novel by Edward Ashton titled Mickey 7*.  

When questioned on this unexpected alteration, Bong provided a very simple explanation:

I killed him 10 more times, that’s why we changed it.

Well, there you go, asked and answered.  Moving on...

 - Sid

* But not a lot confused - after all, Bladerunner is the title of a complete different novel than the one that the film is based on.