Letterboxd
Occasionally the word "decent" really summarizes a film.
I have not read the book, but I think it is the story of a bit of a simpleton who gets to act as a "fly on the wall"' narrator to a set of events. By my memory there were only 2 points in the film where 17 actually took a self directed action.
Anyway, even with a dull-normal protagonist, it could have been an interesting movie about individuality, effective immortality, colonialism, theocracies, the-evils-men-do-when-they-regard-someone-as-less-human, just... lots of things.
Instead there was something vague here about "white supremacy", a message about not murdering other sentient species, and I guess ultimately the dismissal of the "Mickey making" tech.
I thought the dismissal of the tech made little sense truthfully. The evil was not that 17 was printed, it was that people were treating him as "less human" because he was. If people would simply treat him with the same respect, a person who could be fabricated would be an incredibly valuable member for any space expedition.
I think a really interesting movie could have been made about the questions of who should be allowed to be the reprinted one. You would want someone who is deeply needy of others, slightly servile in demeanor, and not very ambitious. It would have been an interesting movie to watch 17 reprinted over thousands of generations as the planet was colonized. It raises questions about whether death is part of humanities ability to adapt to change. Is reprinting the same person over and over ultimately stagnating society? Or perhaps the continuation of a single person through all time would act as a stabilizing force? Lots of interesting stories here, not explored in this film.
Anyway, I'm giving it a fairly decent score as at least it made me think of many interesting things, but was disappointment that it failed to explore any of the things I thought were interesting.