Mickey 17

Deep space travel and terrestrial colonization is dangerous work, so in the future, most of it is handled by disposable employees, because each time that a disposable employee dies, a new clone of them is regenerated. One such disposable employee is a guy named Mickey, who signed up to be part of the expedition to colonize the distant ice world of Niflheim, and didn't really read the fine print.

Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, Mickey 17 is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, which is the story of a space colonist named Mickey Barnes, a.k.a. Mickey7, as he tries to survive in a beachhead colony on an alien world because he reluctantly signed up to be "expendable." This means that he does the most dangerous tasks necessary on a mission to colonize the ice world Niflheim, and should he die, then a fresh version of him is cloned in his place, with most of his memories intact, but at significant cost to the colony. Mickey's survival becomes more difficult as the colony struggles for resources, the native life forms become increasingly threatening, and circumstances beyond his control result in the accidental creation of two Mickeys.

This is also the basic plot of the film.

I love the work of Bong Joon-ho, and you should too. A South Korean filmmaker, with movies like Memories of Murder, The Host, Snowpiercer, Okja, and of course, Parasite–which is incredible, not to mention the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes–his work is a mix of genres known for sudden shifts in tone between drama and comedy, and with often being concerned with social problems and class issues.

He's kind of a big deal.

So naturally, as the general audience is a stupid and fickle herd of vindictive dullards by nature, whenever you have a beloved creator who starts doing well consistently, people begin to look for reasons to pounce on them and tear them down. They do this for no other reason then the sweet, sweet dream of being able to celebrate in the public square that they were the first to turn, the trendsetting hater, the one who always realized the truth about this thing that other people dare to like. And while sure, it's maybe fair to say that Mickey 17 isn't Bong Joon-ho's best film, all that really means is it's still better than most movies out there.

But yeah, as a result of all this ready backlash nonsense, despite having received generally positive reviews from critics, Mickey 17 is considered to be a box office bomb, because it only grossed $131 million worldwide off a $118 million budget, and you gotta make double the budget before they consider it to be profit.

That's just Hollywood for ya'.

Set in the year 2054, in order to escape the clutches of a murderous loan shark, Mickey Barnes very hurriedly joins a colony expedition headed off to the distant ice-planet of Niflheim.

As I'm sure you're all aware, the word Niflheim comes from Norse mythology. Known as the ”Home of Mist," it was one of the first realms to form out of the void known as Ginnungagap. It is also the location of the Well of Hvergelmir, the spring from which all rivers flow. Forever cold, dark, and misty, it is the abode of Hel, the goddess of death and the daughter of Loki, and the place where all of those who did not die a heroic or notable death are sent.

So, fuck yeah, let's move to a place that was named after that, right?

Sounds awesome...

Anyway, Mickey signs up as an "Expendable" because he otherwise has no skills and didn't read the fine print. Being an "Expendable" is a relatively new process, one that, due to an issue involving a serial killer who cloned himself multiple times simultaneously, is now only legal off-planet. This is great, because dying suddenly is pretty much a daily occurance on a colonization ship, both on the way there, and also once you've arrived. Expendable crew members end up taking a lot of surprise bullets for the rest of the crew, but that's okay, because should they be maimed or killed, then a new clone is simply spit out of this machine that's basically like a 3-D printer for people. So, not only are the Expendables protecting the more important members of the crew from dying needlessly in sudden and shocking ways, they are also giving the colony a chance to adapt to, or inoculate themselves against, any new, unexpected, and/or lethal obstacles they might run into along the way.

This is also why Mickey no longer has a last name too, and is now only a number. It's because, even though he's easily replaceable, he dies a lot, and that scares and fascinates people, but also, because of that he's not seen as a person anymore. In the eyes of most of the rest of the crew, he is less than them, and therefore, has no real value, or at least, no more than any other tool.

But that doesn't mean Mickey isn't still a person, or that no one else recognizes this. And as the voyage gets underway, a romance develops between him and a ship security agent named Nasha.

As much is Mickey is kind of an amiable fuck-up and goofball, Nasha is a confident and capable bad-ass. Smart and clever, fearless and quick on her feet, Nasha is as much a hero of the story as Mickey is, especially where taking action is concerned. She is also an obvious leader, one who takes no shit. But for as tough as she is, she also very clearly loves and supports Mickey. Mickey is only ever supportive of her as well, openly admiring of her success, and never getting jealous over it. They're a good couple, and for four years, they're happy, and really enjoy having a lot of sex, even though the crew is supposed to be celibate for the journey, and despite the fact that Mickey dies a couple of times along the way.

And when the ship lands on snowy Niflheim, due of several iterations of Mickey, the ships' scientists are able to develop a vaccine for the pathogens in the planet's atmosphere. Finally, the process of colonization can begin.

Niflheim isn't devoid of life though, so Mickey 17 is sent out to capture one of the planet's native lifeforms, creatures that the colonists have dubbed "Creepers." They are big hairy mole rat meets roly-poly bug type creatures.

Unfortunately, Mickey 17 falls into a fissure in the ice. Since he's too far down to reach, and it's too much of a hassle to go all the way back to the ship for more rope, his coworker rationalizes that it's not worth the effort, as Mickey 17 will probably just freeze to death before he gets back, or he'll get eaten by the Creepers, so he leaves Mickey 17 to die, but only after first making sure that Mickey 17 is cool with that. Mickey 17, never one to want to inconvenience anyone, gives his somewhat reluctant and resigned blessing, and settles in... waiting to die.

But then it turns out the Creepers don't eat him, they rescue him. The beasts work together to push him up out of the fissure to the surface. Still alive, he walks home. But when Mickey 17 finally makes it back to the ship, half-frozen and exhausted...

He meets Mickey 18.

This is where the trouble starts...

The expedition's leader is a man named Kenneth Marshall. A vainglorious and egomanical blowhard of a failed politician, with blisteringly white teeth in a face that has been smeared in orange tanning cream, he is a deeply insecure, vindictive, and stupid little man-baby asshole, someone who craves adoration and approval, and believes Earth is beyond saving due to all its “muddy” people. Marshall has a vision of creating a “pure white planet full of superior people" all for him and his wife Ylfa to rule. That he only created this expedition because he has no other options after losing the election for President of Earth is immaterial, especially to his cult-like fans. So, he gathers his flock of eagerly enrapt red-hat-wearing dipshit sychophantic zealots, who all belong to his vaguely Christian church/company, which has an emblem that definitely gives you the impression of a swastika, and they rocket off to Niflheim.

The problem for Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 is, before leaving Earth–because of the whole "serial killer cloning multiple versions of himself so he could kill a bunch of people" debacle–Marshall had to publicly announce that, in the event of any "multiples" of Mickey, all of the clones would be eliminated.

So, the Mickeys need to keep this secret...

Mickey 18 immediately tries to kill Mickey 17, because Mickey 18 is a generally more agrressive version of Mickey than Mickey 17, but Mickey 17 is a little more clever of a Mickey than Mickey 18, so he suggests they secretly rotate duties and deaths in order for them both to survive. Nasha, meanwhile, wants to have sex with both Mickeys at once.

But before they can decide anything, it's announced that Mickey 18 has won a special prize, Mistaking, Mickey 17 for Mickey 18, he is taken to have dinner with Marshall and Ylfa. Unfortunately, the only reason Mickey 17 is actually there is so he can be fed experimental meat and painkillers, which nearly kills him. And when Marshall, the idiot God-king, decides to put the struggling Mickey 17 down like a horse with a broken leg, Ylfa berates him for nearly doing so in a way that would've gotten blood on the fancy carpet. During the resulting kerfuffle, Mickey 17 recovers enough for him to get up and go home.

When Mickey 18 hears about this, he rages, and decides to kill Marshall at a ceremony that night to commemorate a piece of Niflheim rock that Marshall is touting as a win. But it turns out that two baby Creepers, Luko and Zoco, are inside the rock, and as they try to escape, Zoco is captured and Luko is killed. Nasha stops Mickey 18 from killing Marshall too, but now the Multiples are exposed, Mickey 17, Mickey 18, and Nasha are all arrested.

But before they can be executed, Luko's death brings thousands of Creepers up from beneath the planet's icy surface. The creatures surround the ship, demanding the return of Zoco or they'll kill all the humans with their mind powers. Marshall is not happy with this, and he is ready to respond in the way humans always respond: extreme violence.

Luckily, Mickey 17 has a plan...

Mickey 17 is a lot of things.

It's an anti-colonial parable. It's a cautionary tale about a culture of bigotry, hatred, and shallow stupidity, that embraces rampant corruption, and a constant casual cruelty, and prides itself on it's stubbornly obstinate ignorance. It's an epic story of the workers rising up in the face of the dehumanizing mistreatment by the Ruling Class, due to an exploitive system that was born of ever-widening economic disparities and predatory debt. It's a commentary on an authoritarian future, and the dangers that come with societies built on entitlement and greed. It's a sci-fi workplace comedy.

These are all pretty standard subjects for Boon Jong-ho, a brash satire depicted with his signature style. And they are all subjects that only become more and more relevant as a fascist right-wing ideology pushed by the greedy billionaires and their evil corporations, all of whom are beloved of the cruel monsters of White Christian America, sweeps across the globe.

Mickey Barnes dies, again and again and again, over and over, in a myriad of cold and senseless and banal ways, each time under the desensitized, apethetic eyes of the people around him, who then print out a new one of him, and send him out to die again. And each time, each death reveals that Mickey's pain, his suffering, his deaths, simply don't matter to these people. They are able to compartmentalize it, to ignore it, to sneer at it and to even spit on it, and all because of the simple fact that his suffering makes their lives easier. It's not a sublte message. These people, this society, they're basically the people of Omelas,

And while I always love a clear and sharply-edged indictment of the vicious bigotry, the love of hatred and cruelty, and the insatiable demand of entitlement that defines not just white Americans, but the rotten culture they were raised in, and continue to perpetuate every single day, what I really loved about this is that Mickey's suffering, and his humanity in the face of it, is ultimately what motivates others into taking action against the horrible system they live under and enable, to finally bring it down and to do the work to try to be better. This is how they restore Mickey's humanity in the eyes of everyone, recognizing that he is a fellow person deserving of respect and dignity and happiness. I loved that. This is why the film ends with his number ticking over from "17" to "Barnes."

That was good stuff.

I also really liked that the film understands that the real hero is Nasha, and it doesn't act like Mickey is now this wise sage and a gifted leader at the end of the movie after otherwise portraying him as kind of a dumbass throughout it. He's a nice dumbass, sure, but still... he's a dumbass. Making it out the other side didn't magically make him a leader, and the film doesn't pretend that he is.

Which leans into another big plus of the film, it's funny. It's sarcastic. It's cheeky. It's a good skewering of society. Plus, moments like the montage of Mickey dying and being reborn again and again, and Mickey's affable outlook to the realities of his job, is some funny stuff. As is Ruffalo's decision to play Marshall as Trump, but without doing a direct Trump impersonation. Everything about Marshall and Ylfa what they do, and all their people and their idiot beliefs, it's all very funny in a life imitating art imitating life kind of way. And I really loved how Marhsall and Ylfa are not redeemed at the eleventh hour, because they're unrepentant pieces of shit, terrible people to their very core, who will not only never change, but are incapable of change, and it's always satisfying to see our big stupid asshole reality reflected on screen without apology or capitulation.

People can talk all day long how the character wasn't drawn specifically from Trump, like that matters. I get why Boon Jong-ho would say this, the last thing a person of color wants is to rile up a horde of rabid bigots and assholes and have them screaming at you online all day for weeks, just ask Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega. I get that. Just like how I get the reason why so many "good" white people rush to point this out too. Really, in a way, they do this for almost the same reason, except instead of doing it to protect themselves, they're doing it to protect the feelings of their bigot loved ones and fellow white people, the people who voted for Trump, who might "feel bad" if their cruel bigot beliefs and their asshole God-Emperor is portrayed as anything other than amazing on the big screen. This is what they always do, so points for consistency once again.

So yeah, while Kenneth Marshall may not specifically be Trump, that doesn't really matter, because Trump is who the Kenneth Marshall is.

Don't let anyone tell you any differently.

So, for me at least, the prime lesson to take away from this film is, once we stop listening to these narcissistic white male sociopaths, and the white women who raise them and enable them, and instead, start blowing them up and/or jailing them… then the world will be a much better place.

In the end, Mickey 17 might be a little uneven, but it's still fun and goofy, and still has plenty to say, so I definitely think it's worth checking out. It's early still, but it's definitely one of my favorite films of 2025.