Mickey 17: Who Deserves to Die?

 

“Hey, Mickey, what’s it like to die?”

This seems like a valid question to ask someone who never dies, not really, anyway. After all, Mickey Barnes is the one who signed the contract to be an “expendable,” where his body is owned by a U.S. government space colony and his only job is to quite literally die—in the name of furthering scientific progress for extraterrestrial colonization, of course.

(Un)Luckily for Mickey, even after being poisoned by toxic air pathogens, injected with Ebola-esque diseases, and stranded in outer space with his hand cut off by spinning propellers, he is “re-printed” by a DNA copier that is powered by recycled Mickey bodies, food scraps, chicken bones, and human waste. 

Mickey had died and been printed out like a greasy piece of paper seventeen times, straw-like tubes pumping in juices of his past body’s memories into his head until he’s a fully baked iteration of himself, ready to go through another life-endangering mission for advancing the livability of Niflheim, the ice planet meant to be the new, pure home for humanity. 

Although adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, in true Bong Joon-ho fashion, the film strays from being a solid sci-fi exhibition to make room for an array of political, cultural, and social commentary and satire. Mickey 17 could be seen as a cocktail of Joon-ho’s iconic films, with the dystopian backdrop of Snowpiercer (2013), the slips of ecological, environmentalist, and corporate greed attitudes seen heavily in The Host (2006) and Okja (2017), and, of course, the signature criticism of capitalism and its role in promoting social inequality and “poverty stuckness” emphasized in Parasite (2019).

It’s fair to say that Mickey 17 has an overwhelming amount going on. At times, it’s hard to keep up with the reality it presents, as if you’re rapidly flipping through every news channel on TV.

The story is dictated by Kenneth Marshall, a celebrity-like political leader adored by the right-wing working class (who also wear red hats that read “One and Only”) despite losing multiple elections on Earth. He spearheads the mission to develop Niflheim as a pure planet with “super” people with “superior” genetics (a key example being a blue-eyed, thin, white woman), all while trying to maintain the illusion that he isn’t controlled by his unhinged wife and a nationalistic church. 

Does that sound a little familiar?

After the DNA-printing technology was banned by earthly supreme courts after a serial killer made “multiples” of himself to stab homeless people to death, Kenneth Marshall and his following called DNA-printing unnatural and an abomination— but claimed it would be a waste not to explore the possibilities of what creating multiples could do for the future.

Enter Mickey Barnes, a bottom-of-the-social-ladder, ex-macaroon restaurant owner actively being hunted by blood-thirsty loan sharks who saw off limbs if a payment is late. Mickey needed a way off Earth, and a job billions of light years away seemed like just the place to hide. 

That brings us back to the question: “Hey, Mickey, what’s it like to die?”

Mickey’s fellow “colleagues” and colonists ask him this question throughout the movie, either to mock Mickey for his “abominable” and “unnatural” lifestyle or in genuine curiosity of the feeling. Does it hurt? Are you scared? Does it get easier with time?

Mickey seems to wonder this himself. It’s hard for him to give a direct answer without mumbling under his breath or not saying anything at all. After all, it wasn’t in his job description to ponder death, it was only to experience death over and over and over again. 

The viewer doesn’t know for certain what Mickey’s relationship with his life truly is until Mickey 17’s mission of capturing a sample of roly-poly-like creatures (which are later named “Creepers”) goes wrong, and he accidentally falls into a cavern beneath the planet’s icy terrain.  

Mickey prepares himself to be eaten by the big mother Creeper that rolls her way towards him with her threatening, alien aura and hundreds of smaller Creeper babies. He hopes this death is quick, wanting to be swallowed in one, whole bite— but death never comes. The Creepers drag his body through their tunnels and throw him back out to the surface.

Instead of being thankful that these aliens just saved his life, Mickey is shocked, shouting at the creatures: “I’m still good meat…I’m perfectly good meat…I taste fine!”

Even without any corporate witnesses or signs of authority, Mickey is frustrated that he failed to do his job: get eaten, die, and try again. He doesn’t view his life as something precious enough to be saved because he knows that there will be another printed copy of him, hot and fresh, in the science lab waiting to be sanitized, clothed, and suited up for the next day.

Mickey dehumanizes himself into being just meat, acting as his own supervisor. Chew him, gnaw at his bones, rip out his hair— none of that matters because, through the rules of this intergalactic capitalist structure, he is designed to be dispensed in the face of failure. 

Sure, Mickey has a woman whom he loves— Nasha— who makes every day worth living. And yes, he also loves to eat, have sex, and smell hair. Mickey is also funny, and according to Nasha, some of his past lives were also clingy, angry, or whiny. Sure, Mickey is human— but how much of that matters when it’s not his job to be?

Unlike his past work, Bong Joon-ho uses Mickey 17 to tell a new story about exploitation under capitalism, one where the audience is witnessing the main character play a key role in degrading himself because there is simply no time to explore ideas of self-worth and identity. Work needs to be done, bodies need to be printed, and a new planet needs to be made habitable. 

The audience needs to understand that Mickey isn’t an idiot, no matter how many of the jokes in the film try to frame him as one. Anyone with the ability to feel pain would grow sick of death, punishment, and working fourteen hours a day on an obsolete icicle of a planet. The only way this is possible for Mickey is through his unexplored self-hatred. Mickey tells himself that he deserves every death and that pain is a needed punishment. 

He dies. He’s reprinted. He has another mission that presents inhumane levels of cruelty and suffering. In order to get through it, Mickey simply tells himself a story like how: “I once mistreated a frog in fourth grade science class. I figured this was my punishment.”

It’s foolish and a surface-level memory that is enough justification for Mickey to continue his hellish career.

He dies. He’s reprinted. Mickey reminds himself that when he was a child, he caused a car explosion that killed his mother by pressing a mysterious red button. He continues his work because it’s his punishment.

He dies. He’s reprinted.

Bong Joon-ho highlights the impossibility of enduring capitalistic, slave-like labor without self-loathing and a detachment from human identity. Mickey 17 is a look into the final result of profiteering and exploitation— where the working class individual has to choose between their humanity or their survival through a system that was never designed for them.

Mickey himself represents passivity, a disposition many of us have grown accustomed to and become comfortable with in capitalistic landscapes. Life with labor is something happening to us, not with us, and we accept false prophets—those wearing the skins of promising politicians like Kenneth Marshall—to decide our role in the world. After all, we are far too busy, and exploitative, fascist leadership begins to appear as a form of relief.

Bong Joon-ho uses the sci-fi backdrop of Mickey 17 to underline one of the overlooked problems of the capitalist hellscape: You. 

For the sake of convenience and a brief escape from the burden of agency, will you let your life be expendable? Will you convince yourself that you play a purposeful role in society, that suffering is the natural order of things, even if you‘re the only one who is actively mutilated?

While Mickey 17 uses humor, deepfake VFX, and outlandish worldbuilding to visualize a world that allows a person to sign their life and humanity away to the government, the film’s framing of how self-loathing and apathy fuel capitalism reflects the viewer’s face right back to them.