Warning: This post contains spoilers for Mickey 17.
In a 2019 interview pegged to the release of his Oscar-winning film Parasite, the first foreign-language movie to ever take home the Academy Award for Best Picture, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho reflected on why the South Korea-set black comedy seemed to be resonating so deeply with audiences not just in Korea, but around the world. “Essentially,” he said, “we all live in the same country, called Capitalism.”
Given his previous exploration of social inequality and class struggle in the 2013 apocalyptic action thriller Snowpiercer, 2017 animal rights fable Okja, and more, it’s no secret that Bong’s body of work frequently takes aim at the brutalities of life under such an oppressively hierarchal system. But this time around, his new English-language feature Mickey 17, now in theaters, posits that humanity may soon find a way to extend capitalism’s cruel reach to the far corners of outer space.
Based on Ashton Edward’s 2022 novel Mickey7, the sci-fi satire, which opens in the year 2054, centers on Robert Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes, a down-on-his-luck schlub desperate to escape the clutches of a loan shark whose chainsaw-wielding henchmen are after the money their boss is owed for helping Mickey and his slippery business partner/frenemy Timo (Steven Yeun) open a now-failed macaron shop. The pair decide to sign up for an intergalactic colonizing expedition bound for the distant ice planet of Niflheim. But while Timo gets a gig as a pilot, Mickey thinks so little of himself he decides to volunteer for the role of “expendable.” That means Mickey’s job is to die, over and over again.
Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17 Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Whether it’s accidental or in the name of scientific research, Mickey is routinely subjected to agonizing, terrifying, and dehumanizing ends. Once he’s dead (or sometimes only almost dead), he’s tossed into a churning fire pit called the “cycler” alongside the rest of the ship’s organic waste, reprinted as a new Mickey, artificially imbued with his memories and consciousness, and sent back to work. Mickey’s one solace throughout the four-and-a-third-year journey to Niflheim is his romance with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), the only crew member who thinks of every version of him as a person rather than a human guinea pig.
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The expedition is led by blowhard failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a two-time congressional election loser whose ethics, mannerisms, and red cap-sporting followers bear some pretty striking similarities to those of a certain sitting U.S. president (although Bong has said the character wasn’t inspired by Trump). Marshall, along with his far savvier—and bizarrely sauce-obsessed—wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), are determined to establish a genetically “pure” colony of disciples who will live under their despotic rule.